As more of the features of Oracle Solaris 11 Express come into use, the literature on best practices grows accordingly. One recent addition is "How to use Automated Installation instead of Flash Archive on Solaris," a blog post by Philip Torchinsky. Rather than using the option that Solaris 9 and 10 provided called "flash installation," -- essentially a disaster recovery feature with other uses -- the blog recommends installing Solaris on one server, called "master machine," making an archive containing all files installed on the master machine (so called "flash archive"), and then cloning it using flash installation option to other servers, called cloned machines. Like flash installation, Torchinsky writes, flash archive can be used for disaster recovery, as Solaris sysadmins generally know. It is possible to make a flash archive from an existing server's installation and use it to install the server with the same configuration in case of fatal disaster requiring complete system reinstall. The blog provides the code samples necessary for the described process.
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