Dynamic Root Disk: Quick Start & Best Practices

Version of SWA: C.02.26 or later

Objective: Perform maintenance on my server, including the identification and repair of security

issues, while minimizing downtime.

BP2: Overview of steps

1. Use drd status to view the clone: drd status

2. Determine what patches are needed:

3. Mount the clone: drd mount

4. Create an SWA report: swa report -s \ /var/opt/drd/mnts/sysimage_001

5. Download the patches identified by SWA into a depot: swa get \

6. -t /var/depots/1131swa

7. Patch installation might require special attention. Review any special installation instructions

documented in /var/depots/1131swa/readBeforeInstall.txt.

8. Install everything in the 1131swa depot: drd runcmd swinstall \

-s /var/depots/1131swa -x patch_match_target=true

9. Ensure the patches are installed: drd runcmd view /var/adm/sw/swagent.log

10. Unmount the clone: drd umount

11. Create a shutdown script that runs drd sync so that files changed on the original image after

the clone was created will be propagated to the clone (see the “DRD sync” section below for more

details)

12. Activate and boot the clone: drd activate -x reboot=true

BP2: Additional Considerations

Using Software Assistant (SWA)

In this best practice, we combine the features of SWA and DRD to create a solution that helps reduce

the time required to identify needed patches, while still reducing downtime. The default functionality

of SWA is used in this scenario. For information on how to customize networking and the SWA

analyzers utilized, see the SWA Web page:

http://www.hp.com/go/swa

Note that the SWA report created in Step 2b will identify two basic categories of requirements:

• Product, patches and manual actions that need to be applied in order to address known security

issues

• Patches and patch bundles that are missing, warned, etc.

All required patches and patch bundles identified in either category listed above will be downloaded

to the depot 1131swa in Step 5. In order to address the other issues identified in the SWA report,

you might need to take one or more of the following steps:

• If products need to be updated to address security issues, you will need to download and install

those products. Note that this step can be taken after Step 5 above, with the required product

updates added to the 1131swa depot so that all products and patches may be installed at the

same time and with a single reboot.

• If manual actions need to be taken in order to address security issues, these actions will need to be

addressed.

• Other patch issues may be identified and addressed, such as warned patches in recommended

bundles, missing patch dependencies, or site specific patches.