A system that provides services and/or file systems, such as home directories or mail files, for other systems on the network. An OS server is a server that provides the Solaris software for other systems on the network.

A system that stores the Solaris software on its local disk and does not require services from an OS server. Both networked and non-networked systems can be set up as standalone systems in the Solaris operating environment.

Guides you step-by-step through installing the Solaris 8 software. The Solaris 8 Interactive Installation Program does not enable you to install all the software (Solaris and additional software) in the product box at once; it only installs the Solaris software. After you install the Solaris software, you need to use other installation programs to install additional software.

Enables you to install the Solaris software on a new system automatically by inserting the CD labeled Solaris 8 Software 1 of 2 SPARC Platform Edition or Solaris 8 Software 1 of 2 Intel Platform Edition into the CD-ROM drive and turning on the system. The software components installed are specified by a default profile that is selected based on the model and disk size of the system; you don't have a choice of which software gets installed. 

A JumpStart boot image, which is required to use this installation method, is preinstalled on all new SPARC based systems. You can install JumpStart on IA or older SPARC based systems with the re-preinstall(1M) command.

Enables you to automatically and identically install Solaris on systems. It requires preliminary work before you can install Solaris on the systems, but it's the most cost-effective way to install Solaris software automatically in a large enterprise. Chapter 6, Preparing Custom JumpStart Installations contains information about custom JumpStart.

When using custom JumpStart to install Solaris, you do not need to use the boot command. The JumpStart boot image that is preinstalled on all new systems automatically boots the system when you turn it on.

Because the Solaris software is distributed on CDs, a system needs access to a CD-ROM drive. However, if you have a large number of systems that don't have a local CD-ROM drive, or if you don't want to insert the Solaris 8 Software CDs (the Solaris 8 Software 1 of 2 Intel Platform Edition and Solaris 8 Software 2 of 2 Intel Platform Edition CDs, for example) into every system's CD-ROM drive to install Solaris, you can set up the systems to install from remote Solaris 8 Software CD images. The remote Solaris 8 Software CD images must be available on an install server that has the Solaris 8 Software CD images copied to its hard disk. 

You can use all of the installation methods when installing a system over the network. However, installing systems over the network with the custom JumpStart method is a good way to centralize and automate the installation process in a large enterprise. 

To set up your site to install Solaris 8 software on systems over the network with no user intervention, you must:

• Preconfigure network information for the systems, such as the date, time, geographic region, site subnet mask, and language. Preconfiguring network information eliminates prompts that are otherwise shown during installation. Preconfiguring network information is described in Chapter 4, Preconfiguring System Configuration Information.

• Set up the custom JumpStart files for the systems, as described in Chapter 6, Preparing Custom JumpStart Installations.

• Set up the systems on which you intend to install Solaris 8 over a network, as described in Chapter 9, Preparing to Install Solaris Software Over the Network.

Provides a graphically based user interface that enables you to install all the software (Solaris and additional software) in the product box at once. You can install all the software with a default option, or you can use a customize option to install only the software you want.