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With Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, you can provision, patch, monitor and manage Oracle Solaris 11 instances. To do this, Ops Center creates and maintains a Solaris 11 Image Packaging System (IPS) repository on the Enterprise Controller. During the Enterprise Controller configuration, you can load repository content directly from Oracle's Support Web site and subsequently synchronize the repository as new content becomes available.

Of course, you can also use Solaris 11 ISO images to create and update your Ops Center repository. There are a few excellent reasons for doing this:

1. You're running Ops Center in disconnected mode, and don't have Internet access on your Enterprise Controller
2. You'd rather avoid the bandwidth associated with live synchronization of a Solaris 11 package repository
   

This demo will show you how to use Solaris 11 ISO images to set up and update your Ops Center repository.

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Prerequisites

This tip assumes that you've already installed the Enterprise Controller on a Solaris 11 OS instance and that you're ready for post-install configuration.

In addition, there are specific Ops Center and OS version requirements depending on which version of Solaris 11 you plan to install.You can get full details about the requirements in the Release Notes for Ops Center 12c update 2.

Additional information is available in the Ops Center update 2 Readme document.

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Part 1: Using a Solaris 11 ISO Image to Create an Ops Center Repository

Step 1 – Download the Solaris 11 Repository Image

The Oracle Web site provides a number of download links for official Solaris 11 images. Among those links is a two-part downloadable repository image, which provides repository content for Solaris 11 SPARC and X86 architectures. In this case, I used the Solaris 11 11/11 image.

First, navigate to the Oracle Web site and accept the OTN License agreement:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html

Next, download both parts of the Solaris 11 repository image. I recommend using the Solaris 11 11/11 image, and have provided the URLs here:

http://download.oracle.com/otn/solaris/11/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-a
http://download.oracle.com/otn/solaris/11/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-b

Finally, use the cat command to generate an ISO image you can use to create your repository:

# cat sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-a sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-b > sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso

The process is very similar if you plan to set up a Solaris 11.1 release in Ops Center. In that case, navigate to the Solaris 11 download page, accept the license agreement and download both parts of the Solaris 11.1 repository image. Use the cat command to create a single ISO image for Solaris 11.1

Step 2 – Mount the Solaris 11 ISO Image in your Local Filesystem

Once you have created the Solaris 11 ISO file, use the mount command to attach it to your local filesystem. After the image has been mounted, you can browse the repository from the ./repo subdirectory, and use the pkgrepo command to verify that Solaris 11 recognizes the content:

Step 3 – Use the Image to Create your Ops Center Repository

When you have confirmed the repository is available, you can use the image to create the Enterprise Controller repository. The operation will be slightly different depending on whether you configure Ops Center for Connected or Disconnected Mode operation.

For connected mode operation, specify the mounted ./repo directory in step 4.1 of the configuration wizard, replacing the default Web-based URL. Since you're synchronizing from an OS repository image, you don't need to specify a key or certificate for the operation.

For disconnected mode configuration, specify the Solaris 11 directory along with the path to the disconnected mode bundle downloaded by running the Ops Center harvester script:

Ops Center will run a job to import package content from the mounted ISO image. A synchronization job can take several hours to run – in my case, the job ran for 3 hours, 22 minutes on a SunFire X4200 M2 server.

During the job, Ops Center performs three important tasks:

1. Synchronizes all content from the image and refreshes the repository
2. Updates the IPS publisher information
3. Creates OS Provisioning profiles and policies based on the content

When the job is complete, you can unmount the ISO image from your Enterprise Controller. At that time, you can view the repository contents in your Ops Center Solaris 11 library. For the Solaris 11 11/11 release, you should see 8,668 packages and patches in the contents.

You should also see default deployment plans for Solaris 11 provisioning. As part of the repository import, Ops Center generates plans and profiles for desktop, small and large servers for the SPARC and X86 architecture.

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Part 2: Using a Solaris 11 SRU to update an Ops Center Repository

It's possible to use the same approach to upgrade your Ops Center repository to a Solaris 11 Support Repository Update, or SRU. Each SRU provides packages and updates to Solaris 11 - for example, SRU 8.5 provided the packaged for Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2

SRUs are available for download as ISO images from My Oracle Support, under document ID 1372094.1. The document provides download links for all SRUs which have been released by Oracle for Solaris 11. SRUs are cumulative, so later versions include the packages from earlier SRUs.

After downloading an ISO image for an SRU, you can mount it to your local filesystem using a mount command similar to the one shown for Solaris 11 11/11.

When the ISO image is mounted to the file system, you can perform the Add Content action from the Solaris 11 Library to synchronize packages and patches from the mounted image. I used the same mount point, so the repository URL was file://mnt/repo once again:

After the synchronization of an SRU is complete, you can verify its content in the Solaris 11 library using the search function. The version pattern is 0.175.0.#, where the # is the same value as the SRU.

In this example, I upgraded to SRU 1. The update job ran in just under 8 minutes, and a quick search shows that 22 software components were added to the repository:

It's also possible to search for "Support Repository Update" to confirm the SRU was successfully added to the repository. Details on any of the update content are available by clicking the "View Details" button under the Packages/Patches entry.