Solaris Flash Archive

Solaris Flash is a standard Solaris installation mechanism that installs a Solaris Flash archive on a system. The archive is a single file that encapsulates the entire software contents of a previously installed and configured Solaris system. Change Manager also refers to this file as an integrated software stack. The Solaris Flash archive is currently the only software object that can be deployed by Change Manager.

Change Manager cannot create a Solaris Flash archive itself. A Solaris Flash archive must be created from a master system that contains the software you want in the archive. The master system is typical of the systems on which you deploy the archive. The master system can be installed by using one of the standard Solaris installation methods:

• Solaris Web Start installation

• Interactive installation

• Custom JumpStart installation

• Solaris Flash installation

After the Solaris software is installed, you can customize the master system by applying patches and installing and configuring software applications.

For a Solaris Flash archive to be deployable by Change Manager, the archive must include the Sun Management Center agent and the Change Manager agent module. This software must be installed on the master system prior to creating the archive.

The Solaris Flash archive can be customized by defining a set of archive parameters and by writing deployment finish scripts to process these parameters. Archive customization on a per-host basis is achieved by modifying the archive parameter values in the shared profile or in the host properties.

For example, by creating an archive parameter to specify the software license key, you can specify a different key for each managed host that you install.

After a master system is installed and configured, use the flar create command to create the Solaris Flash archive. When the archive is ready, you must import it to the Change Manager repository before you can deploy it to managed hosts.