Installing Over the Network

Because the Solaris software is distributed on a CD, a system has to have access to a CD-ROM drive to install it. 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 CD into every system's CD-ROM drive, you can set up the systems to install from a remote Solaris CD image. The remote Solaris CD image must be provided by an install server, which has either the Solaris CD copied to its hard disk or the Solaris CD mounted from its CD-ROM drive.

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 for a large enterprise site.