Deploying Software Stacks
The SunMC Change Manager provides a framework that helps enable the rapid deployment of software stacks. These software stacks are managed and deployed in the form of flash archives. When used with LU, the SunMC Change Manager framework enables you to deploy and manage software stacks while the managed systems (for example, the installation target or clone systems) are up and running, even within a production environment. Further, the framework provides a grouping mechanism with which you can group similar managed systems together and manipulate them as one. This grouping mechanism helps to ensure that systems performing similar functions are not only installed identically, but that configuration changes to any of those systems are made to all systems in the group. This mechanism is a powerful tool to help prevent configuration drift among systems.
Component Systems of the SunMC Change Manager Implementation
The SunMC Change Manager implementation utilizes three distinct types of systems:
SunMC Change Manager server. The system that runs the SunMC Change Manager and also acts as a repository for flash archives (software stacks), profiles for installing those stacks, and configuration files.
Managed systems. Systems where software stacks are deployed. The SunMC Change Manager controls these systems by remotely executing and monitoring commands for the installation, upgrading, and auditing of software and their systems.
Master systems. Systems used as templates to build software stacks. Master systems must have SunMC Change Manager client software packages installed on them to ensure that software stacks contain the components required to deploy and manage the stacks.
Component Software of the SunMC Change Manager Server
The SunMC Change Manager server provides a Solaris boot image to the managed systems. This boot image is the hardware architecture neutral Solaris OE miniroot. For initial installations, the miniroot boots the managed host and begins the installation.
The SunMC Change Manager also provides a software stack audit tool to create inventories of software stacks running on clone systems. This tool helps validate the contents of deployed stacks by comparing the contents of a managed host's file systems (the deployed and installed software stack) to a known good reference configuration. These auditing features are referred to as the bart subsystem. For details on the usage of the auditing tool, consult the bart(1m) man page.