What Is an Automated Installation?

AI automates the installation of the Oracle Solaris 11 OS on SPARC and x86 clients over the network. The clients can be customized with installation parameters such as disk layout and software selection and with system configuration parameters such as host name, network configuration, and user accounts. Customizations can be made on a client-by-client basis and can be scaled for large environments.

An automated installation of a client over the network consists of the following high-level steps:

1. The client system boots over the network and gets its network configuration and the location of the install server from the DHCP server. SPARC clients can optionally get network configuration and location of the install server from the network-boot-arguments variable set in the Open Boot PROM (OBP).

2. The install server provides a boot image to the client.

3. Characteristics of the client determine which installation instructions and which system configuration instructions are used to install the client.

4. The Oracle Solaris 11 OS is installed on the client, pulling packages from the package repository specified by the installation instructions in the AI install service.