Hot-plugging is an operation in which you add, remove, or replace system components while the system is running. Dynamic reconfiguration refers to the ability to adjust configuration of hot-plugged components. This term also refers to the general ability to move both hardware and software system resources around in the system or to disable them in some way without physically removing them from the system.
In Oracle Solaris, you can add, remove, or replace devices while the system is still running provided that the system components support hot-plugging. Without the support, new devices are configured at boot time, after the new components are installed on the system.
You can hot-plug bus types such as USB, Fibre Channel, SCSI, and so on. Additionally, you can hot-plug devices such as PCI and PCIe, USB, InfiniBand, and so on.
To perform hot-plugging and DR, you typically use the cfgadm command. This command also guides you through the steps to complete these tasks. With the command, you can perform the following:
Display system component status
Test system components
Change component configurations
Display configuration help messages
Performing DR and hot-plugging require administrative privileges that are not generally granted to user accounts. Therefore, you must obtain the appropriate rights for these tasks. For more information, see Using Your Assigned Administrative Rights in Securing Users and Processes in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
Use DR in conjunction with additional layered products from Oracle, such as alternate pathing or fail over software. These products work together to provide fault tolerance in the event of a device failure and thus ensure higher availability of the systems.
Without high availability software, you replace a failed device only by manually stopping the appropriate applications, unmounting noncritical file systems, and then proceeding with the device replacement.