IBM REDP-4372-00 manual Switching hardware, POS system up and running

4372ch05.fm Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm

11..The restore operation ran for several minutes and then, as we had specified, it booted POS04 into the operating system (Figure 5-28 on page 118).

Figure 5-28 POS system up and running

5.5 Switching hardware

When a POS device experiences a hardware malfunction it can potentially have a major impact on a store’s ability to provide service to its customers. Therefore, it is a good idea to have at least one spare POS device availabe that can be used to replace a malfunctioning device either permanently, or temporarily while the ailing device is being repaired.

If the hard drive of the affected POS device is okay then, in theory, it might be possible to install it into a different device of the same model in order to obtain a working machine with the same software state as the broken one. However, this would not generally be practical at a retail outlet because of the expertise needed to perform the change, and the time that would be spent waiting for qualified personnel to be dispatched to perform it. The POS plug-in provides another alternative—the “Hardware Switch” function.

In section 5.4, “Creating Backups” we discussed the fact that backups created with the POS plug-in are intended to only be restored to that same machine. However, by using the “Hardware Switch” function, we can get Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment to logically substitue a different terminal in place of one that currently exists. Once this substitution has been performed, the backups that were made against the old terminal, may be restored on the new hardware which will then function in place of the original.

118Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment