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From: hume.spamfilter on 4 May 2010 14:34
Doug McIntyre <merlyn(a)geeks.org> wrote:
> But if you have hundreds of servers that have no need of X and Gnome
> and all that crud, and you need to do a patch cycle, its could save
> you days of real work time not patching *everything* solaris would
> install in a full install.

In a similar vein, a half-gig or full gig on a single server is noise.
Counterintuitively, 0.5g extra across a hundred or more servers mounting
their disks from a SAN (and as more datacenters look at virtualized
environments, it comes out) adds up quick.

As a general rule I tend to install everything, but there's sound logic
behind excluding, say, the StarOffice packages from your blade farm flash
archive.

Perhaps by the time Solaris 11 rolls around, this will be a moot concern.
IPS' warts aside, a packaging system that knows how to pull in dependencies
will be very nice.

--
Brandon Hume - hume -> BOFH.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Ca/
From: Richard B. Gilbert on 4 May 2010 20:15
Doug McIntyre wrote:
> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88(a)comcast.net> writes:
>> I'm sure there must be people who do "tailored" installations. I never
>> have. Even ten years ago, disk space was relatively cheap; certainly
>> cheaper than the several hours of my time it would have taken to do a
>> tailored installation and then, later, add pieces.
>
>> Adding "SUNWGLOTZ" requires not only installing it but also finding all
>> the the things it depends upon and then installing all those
>> dependencies as well! Then you must identify and install or reinstall
>> all the applicable patches. It can be done but doing it that way costs
>> far more in terms of my time and system down time than simply installing
>> everything to begin with!
>
>
> But if you have hundreds of servers that have no need of X and Gnome
> and all that crud, and you need to do a patch cycle, its could save
> you days of real work time not patching *everything* solaris would
> install in a full install.
>
> Also, some regulatory items are requiring things like single app on
> single server, and tailoring just the enviornment for that app could
> save you tons on audit time and again patch time. Audit time is expensive.


IFF you have those hundreds of servers AND you are certain that you will
NEVER need some piece of software, you might do a tailored installation.
I found that depending on such assumptions was less than perfectly reliable!

YMMV!

From: Ian Collins on 4 May 2010 20:22
On 05/ 5/10 06:34 AM, hume.spamfilter(a)bofh.ca wrote:
> Doug McIntyre<merlyn(a)geeks.org> wrote:
>> But if you have hundreds of servers that have no need of X and Gnome
>> and all that crud, and you need to do a patch cycle, its could save
>> you days of real work time not patching *everything* solaris would
>> install in a full install.
>
> In a similar vein, a half-gig or full gig on a single server is noise.
> Counterintuitively, 0.5g extra across a hundred or more servers mounting
> their disks from a SAN (and as more datacenters look at virtualized
> environments, it comes out) adds up quick.

Run an OpenSolaris SAN - dedup will work wonders for that use case!

--
Ian Collins
From: dawe on 5 May 2010 09:03
Ian Collins <ian-news(a)hotmail.com> wrote:


>
> I've never heard that one before. I've been swapping ZFS drives between
> machines sice ZFS first appeared.
>
> I assume your subject is misleading and you are moving a pool between
> systems.

I've been moving a zfs from FreeBSD to Solaris without (almost) any
issue, just zfs export / import
From: Colin B. on 10 May 2010 15:44
Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88(a)comcast.net> wrote:

(snip)

> I'm sure there must be people who do "tailored" installations. I never
> have. Even ten years ago, disk space was relatively cheap; certainly
> cheaper than the several hours of my time it would have taken to do a
> tailored installation and then, later, add pieces.
>
> Adding "SUNWGLOTZ" requires not only installing it but also finding all
> the the things it depends upon and then installing all those
> dependencies as well! Then you must identify and install or reinstall
> all the applicable patches. It can be done but doing it that way costs
> far more in terms of my time and system down time than simply installing
> everything to begin with!

Where I work, we do custom 'tailored' installations, a decision that
predates me by a long shot. The standard model here is "minimal install
plus necessary extras." This reduces the build time, maintenance time and
complexity, and potential security holes. However, it's a pain to develop
a 'just enough' model for every new application that comes down the pipe.

On the other hand, Oracle's install clusters are flat-out...wrong! Why
would you install StarOffice on anything other than full installs? Why
wouldn't a "required packages, fully networked" (i.e. core) install
include ssh?

That's right, there is NO install cluster that includes ssh (client OR
server) but excludes StarOffice, Gnome desktop, firefox, mozilla,
thunderbird, etc.. bash and zsh are also absent from the 'core' install,
and tcsh doesn't get added until the "entire" cluster is selected.

This is all nicely summarized in the docs, thankfully:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0435/eezdz?l=en&a=view

If I were to start with a blank slate, I would begin with everything,
and remove what I didn't want, via the metapackages. That is, install
SUNWCXall, and then delete SUNWCstaroffice, and so forth.

Where do you find the list of metapackages? It is helpfully documented...
NOWHERE!!!! So pay attention here folks, because this isn't something
you'll easily find on your own:

On the DVD, look in Solaris_10/Product/.clustertoc and you will find
each of the 'packages of packages' which describe a product. If you're
using JET for installing, you can stuff these into the
"base_config_profile_del_clusters" variable, and save yourself a lot of
grief trying to track down the individual packages for each product (11
for staroffice, I believe!).

I would love to install a single supported bundle from Oracle/Sun, but
they don't exist except for standalone (i.e. not-networked!) servers
and user workstations, which means either customization, or a workstation
for every server.

Cheers,
Colin

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