Solaris 10 11/06 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade

Installing a Solaris Flash Archive Instead of Upgrading

The Solaris Flash installation feature provides a method of creating a copy of the whole installation from a master system that can be replicated on many clone systems. This copy is called a Solaris Flash archive. You can install an archive by using any installation program.


Caution – Caution –

A Solaris Flash archive cannot be properly created when a non-global zone is installed. The Solaris Flash feature is not compatible with Solaris Zones partitioning technology. If you create a Solaris Flash archive, the resulting archive is not installed properly when the archive is deployed under these conditions:


Creating an Archive That Contains Large Files

The default copy method that is used when you create a Solaris Flash archive is the cpio utility. Individual file sizes cannot be greater than 4 Gbytes. If you have large individual files, the flarcreate command with the -L pax option uses the pax utility to create an archive without limitations on individual file sizes. Individual file sizes can be greater than 4 Gbytes.

For information about installing an archive, see the following table.

Installation Program 

For More Information 

Solaris Live Upgrade 

Installing Solaris Flash Archives on a Boot Environment in Solaris 10 11/06 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

Custom JumpStart 

To Prepare to Install a Solaris Flash Archive With a Custom JumpStart Installation in Solaris 10 11/06 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations

Solaris interactive installation 

Chapter 4, Installing and Administering Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks), in Solaris 10 11/06 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation)

WANboot 

Chapter 12, Installing With WAN Boot (Tasks), in Solaris 10 11/06 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations