Sun Microsystems X4640 manual Getting Started With Sun Installation Assistant

Getting Started With Sun Installation Assistant 2.2

The Sun Installation Assistant (SIA) is a tool designed to be used with x64 Sun Fire and Sun Blade servers to assist in the deployment of supported Linux operating systems (OS), as well as system firmware upgrades. With SIA, your deployment tasks can be completed using the graphical wizard-based interface or in unattended mode.

Note – As of the release of this document, SIA can not be used to install Windows Server 2008 R2. You will need to perform a manual installation of Windows. For more information on performing a manual installation of Windows, see the Sun Fire X4640 Server Windows Installation Guide.

■For operating system installation, when used in interactive mode by booting the SIA interface, SIA assists in the OS installation process. You will need to provide a retail version of OS distribution media and SIA will hand you off to the OS native installer as required. SIA will automatically inventory your system hardware and download the latest device drivers supported by Sun. This means you will not need to create a separate drivers disk. SIA does that work for you.

■For system firmware upgrades, SIA can be used to upgrade the system BIOS, service processor, and optional HBA (host bus adapter used for disk control) firmware with the latest fixes and enhancements.

■For automated deployment, SIA can be used in unattended mode to automate the process of OS installation or system firmware upgrades. A special text-based SIA state file is used to automatically answer prompts you would have answered in interactive (attended) mode.

Note – As of the release of this document, SIA can not be used to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 4.8 or 5.3 in unattended mode. You can use a normal PXE-based installation of these operating systems that does not use SIA. For more information on performing a PXE installation of RHEL, see the Sun Fire X4640 Server Linux Installation Guide.

For more information about SIA, see:

■“SIA Version 2.2 Features and Benefits” on page 12

■“SIA Task List” on page 12

■“Server Support and SIA Media Availability” on page 13

■“Supported Operating Systems” on page 13

11