It's the Oracle of install systems!

Oracle databases have the reputation of being extremely flexible, extremely scalable, and extremely difficult to configure and tune, relative to other systems.

The bad news is, Solaris 11 installation methods have gone the same way, to the point where Oracle's installation docs are now an all new 200-page PDF document (Oracle document E21798, Installing Oracle Solaris 11 Systems).

The good news is, this chapter will let you know about the majority of what you need to know, in a considerably smaller amount of space.

More good news:

If all you wish to do is manually install one or two systems directly from a CD image, it is still relatively simple. Things get more complicated only when you wish to do preconfigured installs. This is because jumpstart has been completely replaced, and even wanboot has been changed.

The following topics are covered in this chapter:

The first part of this chapter will address the simple case of installing from physical media. Each section after that, will build on knowledge from prior sections. So be sure to read this chapter from the start, to however deep you want to go, rather than just jumping into the middle somewhere.