Chapter 7 Managing Server and Client Support (Overview)

This chapter describes the management of server and client support on a network, and it provides overview information about each system configuration (referred to as a system type) that is supported in the Solaris environment. This chapter also includes guidelines for selecting the appropriate system type to meet your needs.

This is a list of the overview information in this chapter.

• What's New in Server and Client Management?

• Where to Find Server and Client Tasks

• What Are Servers, Clients, and Appliances?

• What Does Client Support Mean?

• Overview of System Types

• Diskless Client Management Overview

For step-by-step instructions about how to manage diskless client support, see Chapter 8, Managing Diskless Clients (Tasks).

What's New in Server and Client Management?

This section describes new server and client management features in the Solaris 9 release.

Diskless Client Support

In this Solaris release, you can manage diskless clients with the smosservice and smdiskless commands. Diskless clients are systems with no disks that depend on servers for all their services.

These commands are part of the Solaris Management Console tool suite. You cannot use the Solaris Management Console to manage diskless clients. You can only use the smosservice and smdiskless commands to manage diskless clients.

For more information on managing diskless clients, see Diskless Client Management Overview and Chapter 8, Managing Diskless Clients (Tasks).

Where to Find Server and Client Tasks

Use this table to find step-by-step instructions for setting up server and client support.

What Are Servers, Clients, and Appliances?

Systems on the network can usually be described as one of the following:

What Does Client Support Mean?

Support for a client means providing software and services to help the client function. Support can include the following:

• Making a system known to the network (host name and Ethernet address information)

• Providing installation services to remotely boot and install a system

• Providing operating system (OS) services and application services to a system with limited disk space or no disk space

Overview of System Types

System types are sometimes defined by how they access the root (/) and /usr file systems, including the swap area. For example, standalone systems and server systems mount these file systems from a local disk, while other clients mount the file systems remotely, relying on servers to provide these services. This table lists some of the characteristics of each system type.

Servers

A server system contains the following file systems:

• The root (/) and /usr file systems, plus swap space

• The /export and /export/home file systems, which support client systems and provide home directories for users

• The /opt directory or file system for storing application software

Servers can also contain the following software to support other systems:

• Operating system (OS) services for diskless systems or AutoClient systems that are running a different release or clients that are a different platform than the server

• Solaris CD image software and boot software for networked systems to perform remote installations

• JumpStart^TM directory for networked systems to perform custom JumpStart installations

Standalone Systems

A networked standalone system can share information with other systems in the network, but it can continue to function if detached from the network.

A standalone system can function autonomously because it has its own hard disk that contains the root (/), /usr, and /export/home file systems and swap space. The standalone system thus has local access to operating system software, executables, virtual memory space, and user-created files.

A standalone system requires sufficient disk space to hold its necessary file systems.

A non-networked standalone system is a standalone system with all the characteristics listed above, except it is not connected to a network.

Diskless Clients

A diskless client has no disk and depends on a server for all its software and storage needs. A diskless client remotely mounts its root (/), /usr, and /home file systems from a server.

A diskless client generates significant network traffic due to its continual need to procure operating system software and virtual memory space from across the network. A diskless client cannot operate if it is detached from the network or if its server malfunctions.

For more overview information about diskless clients, see Diskless Client Management Overview.

AutoClient Systems

An AutoClient system is nearly identical to a diskless client in terms of installation and administration. An AutoClient system has the following characteristics:

• Requires a minimum of a 100-Mbyte local disk for swapping and for caching its individual root (/) file system and the /usr file system from a server

• Can be set up so that it continues to access its cache when the server is unavailable

• Relies on a server to access other file systems and software applications

• Contains no permanent data, making it a field-replaceable unit (FRU)

Appliances

An appliance, such as the Sun Ray appliance, is an X display device that requires no administration. There is no CPU, fan, disk, and very little memory. An appliance is connected to a Sun display monitor, but the appliance user's desktop session is run on a server and displayed back to the user. The X environment is setup automatically for the user and has the following characteristics:

• Relies on a server to access other file systems and software applications

• Provides centralized software administration and resource sharing

• Contains no permanent data, making it a field-replaceable unit (FRU)

Guidelines for Choosing System Types

You can determine which system types are appropriate for your environment by comparing each system type based on the following characteristics:

• Centralized Administration

  • Can the system be treated as a field-replaceable unit (FRU)? This means that a broken system can be quickly replaced with a new system without any lengthy backup and restore operations and no loss of system data.

  • Does the system need to be backed up? Large costs in terms of time and resources can be associated with backing up a large number of desktop systems.

  • Can the system's data be modified from a central server?

  • Can the system be installed from a centralized server, quickly and easily, without handling the client system's hardware?

• Performance

  • Does this configuration perform well in desktop usage?

  • Does the addition of systems on a network affect the performance of other systems already on the network?

• Disk Space Usage

  • How much disk space is required to effectively deploy this configuration?

This table describes how each system type scores in terms of each category. A ranking of 1 is most efficient. A ranking of 4 is least efficient.

Diskless Client Management Overview

The following sections and Chapter 8, Managing Diskless Clients (Tasks) describe how to manage diskless client support in the Solaris 9 release.

A diskless client is a system that depends on an OS server for its operating system, software, and storage. A diskless client mounts its root (/), /usr, and other file systems from its OS server. A diskless client has its own CPU and physical memory and can process data locally. However, a diskless client cannot operate if it is detached from its network or if its OS server malfunctions. A diskless client generates significant network traffic because of its continual need to function across the network.

In previous Solaris releases, diskless clients were managed with the Solstice graphical management tools. In the Solaris 9 release, the diskless client commands, smosservice and smdiskless, enable you to manage OS services and diskless client support.

OS Server and Diskless Client Support Information

The following table describes which Solaris releases and architecture types are supported by the smosservice and smdiskless commands.

This table describes the combination of OS server-client configurations that are supported by the smosservice and smdiskless commands.

Diskless Client Management Features

You can use the smosservice and smdiskless commands to add and maintain diskless client support on a network. By using a name service, you can manage system information in a centralized manner so that important system information, such as host names, does not have to be duplicated on every system in the network.

You can do the following tasks with the smosservice and smdiskless commands:

• Add and modify diskless client support

• Add and remove OS services

• Manage diskless client information in the LDAP, NIS, NIS+, or files environment

You can only use the diskless client commands to set up diskless client booting. You cannot use them to set up other services, such as remote installation or profile services. Set up remote installation services by including diskless client specifications in the sysidcfg file. For more information, see Solaris 9 12/03 Installation Guide.

Working With Diskless Client Commands

By writing your own shell scripts and using the commands shown in the following table, you can easily set up and manage your diskless client environment.

You can obtain help on these commands in two ways:

• Use the -h option when you type the command, subcommand, and required options. For example, to display the usage statement for smdiskless add type the following:

  % /usr/sadm/bin/smdiskless add -p my-password -u my-user-name -- -h

• View the smdiskless(1M) or smosservice(1M) man pages.

Required RBAC Rights for Diskless Client Management

You can use the smosservice and smdiskless commands as superuser. If you are using Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), you can use of either a subset or all of the diskless client commands, according to the RBAC rights to which they are assigned. The following table lists the RBAC rights that are required to use the diskless client commands.

Adding OS Services

A Solaris OS server is a server that provides operating system (OS) services to support diskless client systems. You can add support for an OS server or convert a standalone system to an OS server with the smosservice command.

For each platform group and Solaris release that you want to support, you must add the particular OS service to the OS server. For example, if you want to support SPARC Sun4m systems running the Solaris 8 release, you must add Sun4m/Solaris 8 OS services to the OS server. You would also still need to add OS services to support SPARC Sun4c systems or x86 based systems that runs the Solaris 8 release, because they are different platform groups.

You must have access to the appropriate Solaris CD or disk image to add OS services.

Adding OS Services When the OS Server Has Been Patched

When adding OS services to an OS server, you might see error messages saying that you have inconsistent versions of the OS running on the server and the OS that you are trying to add. This message occurs when the installed version of the OS has packages that were previously patched and the OS services being added do not have those packages patched (because the patches have been integrated into the packages).

For example, you may have a server that is running the Solaris 7 release. You may also have additional OS services loaded on this server, including the Solaris 2.6 SPARC sun4m OS services that have been patched. If you try to add the Solaris 2.6 SPARC sun4c OS services from a CD-ROM to this server, you could get the following error message:

Error: inconsistent revision, installed package appears to have been 
patched resulting in it being different than the package on your media. 
You will need to backout all patches that patch this package before 
retrying the add OS service option.

Disk Space Requirements for OS Servers

Before you set up your diskless client environment, make sure you have the required disk space available for each diskless client directory.

In previous Solaris releases, you were prompted about diskless client support during the installation process. In the Solaris 9 release, you must manually allocate an /export file system either during installation or create it after installation. See the following table for specific disk space requirements.