JumpStart Technology: Effective Use in the Solaris Operating Environment (With CD-ROM) [Paperback]

John S. Howard (Author), Alex Noordergraaf (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sun Microsystems Press | Publication Date: October 2001

A significant concern of datacenter personnel is the rapid deployment of systems shile maintaining consistency and control over their environment. This BluePrint provides techniques on using JumpStart technology for automated, standardized, and secure installations of the Solaris Operating Environment. In addition, detailed examples of using JumpStart technology effectively on a day-to-day basis are provided in combination with never before documented features and functions. The materials on the included CD contain the Solaris Security Toolkit (formerly known as "JASS") and examples referenced in the book.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A significant concern of datacenter personnel is the rapid deployment of systems shile maintaining consistency and control over their environment.

This BluePrint provides techniques on using JumpStart technology for automated, standardized, and secure installations of the Solaris Operating Environment. In addition, detailed examples of using JumpStart technology effectively on a day-to-day basis are provided in combination with never before documented features and functions. The materials on the included CD contain the Solaris Security Toolkit (formerly known as "JASS") and examples referenced in the book.

About the Author

John S. Howard is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems working in the Enterprise Engineering group. He has over 19 years experience in software engineering and systems administration on a diversity of platforms and is currently working on projects for enhancing system availability and serviceability.

Alex Noordergraaf is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems working in the Enterprise Engineering group. He has over ten years' experience in the area of Computer and Network Security and is currently developing, documenting, and publishing security best practices. In addition, he is a strong proponent of automating Solaris OE installations—which led to his interest in JumpStart. He is also one of the authors of the freeware Solaris Security Toolkit.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130621544
• ISBN-13: 978-0130621542
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,273,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #72 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Solaris

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Must have for jumpstart deployments, March 23, 2002

By 

Matthew J.D. - See all my reviews

This review is from: JumpStart Technology: Effective Use in the Solaris Operating Environment (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

This book is a must-have for administrators that want to deploy jumpstart effectively. The book comes with a CD that has scripts that are referenced in the book chapters. This is a huge time saver, since you don't have to start from scratch for different deployments.
Sun's online documentation and man pages for jumpstart aren't that great. This book fills the gap, for the most part. If you read through this quickly, you will understand jumpstart fairly well. I give it 3 stars because the book is lacking a complete, succinct description of how to quickly "just set it up". Some of the commands are vague as to exactly on which system they should be run, or what syntax might blow up an installation. There is a lot of information, but it isn't organized that well. Better organization and a chapter on the entire jumpstart system and which files are essential on which servers would make this a 5 star book.

Jumpstart is still not for the faint of heart, but this book at least offers more detail on the subject, and a solid sysadmin will get everything they need from this book and a little time troubleshooting any issues.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Less Than Average, February 26, 2003

By 

"axeleble" - See all my reviews

This review is from: JumpStart Technology: Effective Use in the Solaris Operating Environment (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

While documentation about JumpStart is extremely limited, this book just doesn't cut it. It is a conglomeration of documents that are available from Sun for free. Only, there is more documentation from Sun available than is accumulated in this book.

There is supposed to be a new edition out in a few months that's supposed to have much more information in. Save your money for this edition and download the documentation from Sun - check the next edition, maybe it'll be better.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great users manual for the JumpStart technology., April 20, 2002

By 

Gordon (Winnipeg, MB, CAN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JumpStart Technology: Effective Use in the Solaris Operating Environment (With CD-ROM) (Paperback)

Summary

A solid reference of implementation details and simple real
world scenarios of the JumpStart technology from Sun.

However, enterprise class design issues such as high availability, scaling and resource requirements are not covered in detail.

Details

This book provides thorough coverage of the JumpStart boot process and installing and configuring a JumpStart server.

Boot process details examined include supported boot protocols ( NFS, DHCP, NIS+, NIS ), the systems used during a JumpStart boot, and an illustrated guide of the boot sequence.

In depth explanations of configuration options will help advanced administrators make the most of their JumpStart deployment. Rules file, profiles file and sysidcfg files are reviewed. Begin and finish scripts are covered.

Post installation customizations are demonstrated with examples in it's own chapter.

Other issues such as system recovery, web flash, security and cloning are briefly covered.

Advice on JumpStart deployment issues such as bandwidth, scaling or high availability are not included in the scope of this book.

It was extremely interesting to learn the process on building a bootable JumpStart CD.

Personally, I thought this book provided value because it is a great single point of reference for a lot of expert advice on installing and configuring the Jumpstart technology. This book is well organized to help administrators setup and configure a JumpStart server.