Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide

Required Servers for Network Installation

To install the Solaris operating environment from the network, the systems to be installed require the following servers to be present on the network.

Install server – A networked system that contains the Solaris 8 CD images from which you can install Solaris 8 on another system on the network. You create an install server by copying the images on the Solaris 8 Software 1 of 2, Solaris 8 Software 2 of 2, and Solaris 8 Languages CDs to the server's hard disk.

You can enable a single install server to provide CD images for different Solaris releases and for multiple platforms by copying the images to the install server's hard disk. For example, a single install server could contain the CD images for both the SPARC and IA platforms.

For details about how to create an install server, refer to To Create an Install Server.
Boot server – A system used to boot the system to be installed from the network. A boot server and install server are typically the same system. However, if the system on which the Solaris 8 software is to be installed is located in a different subnet than the install server, a boot server is required on that subnet.

A single boot server can provide Solaris 8 boot software for multiple releases, including the Solaris 8 boot software for different platforms. For example, a SPARC boot server can provide the Solaris 7 and Solaris 8 boot software for SPARC based systems. The same SPARC boot server can also provide the Solaris 8 boot software for IA based systems.

For details about how to create a boot server, refer to To Create a Boot Server on a Subnet.
(Optional) Name server – A system that manages a distributed network database, such as NIS+ or LDAP, that contains information about users and other systems on the network.

For details about how to create a name server, refer to Solaris Naming Administration Guide.

Note –
The install server and name server can be the same or different systems.

Figure 8–1 illustrates the servers that are typically used for network installation.

Figure 8–1 Network Installation Servers