Managed Hosts

After a Solaris Flash archive and matching Solaris boot image have been imported to the repository, you can set up managed hosts to be installed by using Change Manager. A managed host is a target system that can have software deployed to it by Change Manager. Managed hosts are added to the Sun Management Center topology. Managed hosts can be organized into administrative domains and host groups. You can perform a Change Manager operation on individual managed hosts or on host groups, which causes that action to be performed on each managed host in the host group.

Shared Profiles

When you add a managed host to the Sun Management Center topology, you must associate the host with a shared profile. The shared profile describes the configuration characteristics to be used for the installation of that managed host.

A shared profile can be used by one or more managed hosts. For example, if you have 100 managed hosts running search engine software and the hardware configurations of these managed hosts are the same, the same shared profile can be used by each managed host. Any per-host differences must be specified in the host properties.

A shared profile must specify the Solaris Flash archive you want to deploy. In addition to specifying the archive, the shared profile specifies configuration data that is used to install and configure the software on managed hosts. This configuration data (sometimes called sysidcfg data or custom JumpStart data) includes information about the network interface, naming service, security protocols, and disk layout.

Host Properties

When you add a managed host to the Sun Management Center topology, you must specify the following information:

• Ethernet (MAC) address

• Platform group (for example, sun4u)

• Shared profile

After you specify the shared profile, you can view and modify any archive parameters that are part of the Solaris Flash archive you specified. These archive parameter values, plus the configuration parameters specified in the shared profile, constitute the host properties for the particular host being added.