Ignite vs. solaris jumpstart vs AIX NIM

[Penni Nussbaum]

Does anyone know of a document that compars Ignite with Solaris and Ignite with AIX NIM (i.e. which uses arp, requires boot server, etc.)?

[Steven E. Protter]

Last I heard, Ignite was an hp product that ran on HP-UX and extensively uses swinstall, an hp utility.

Is it being ported to Solaris?

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Perhaps this can give some help.
http://www.tcsa.org/auto_install/sld005.htm

[Patrick Wallek]

Hmmm......Comparing Ignite to Jumpstart to NIM would be a bit like comparing an Apple to an Orange to a Kiwi.

I don't know NIM so I can't say anything about it. I suspect it is proprietary to AIX.

Jumpstart is geared more toward installing the OS on a system. There is no ability to do any backups to enable you to recover your system if the system disk blows up. Jumpstart is via the network only, so you have to have a jumpstart server. Your client and server also have to be on the same subnet as well. I believe jumpstart supports a boot-helper, I don't remember. Jumpstart uses, I believe, bootp to assign an IP address the server you Jumpstarting. It is also proprietary to Solaris as far as I know.

Ignite can handle golden images, so you can install a base OS on a new server. Ignites strength though is that it also allows you to backup VG00 and restore your system as is for whatever reason (disk crash, upgrading OS disks, etc.). Ignite can write a backup to tape thus allowing you to boot a server from the tape. There is also a procedure you can go through to create a CD from an Ignite image. You also have the ability to create Ignite images on a server via the network. This option does require another HP server to act as the Ignite server which will allow you to boot the machine from the server and install / restore it over the network. Ignite also requires that the client and server be on the same subnet unless you have a boot helper available. Ignite is proprietary to HP-UX.

This is not an official document, but does this give you what you are looking for?

[Scott Van Kalken]

I don't know of any specific document that compares the three of them.

I'd agree with Patrick though, that jumpstart is for very specific uses, not for recovery.

On the AIX side, I also don't know about NIM, but prefer the old mksysb method, which has always been able to restore machines from almost any state for me in the past.

Scott.