Software Distributor Administration Guide for HP-UX 11i

Reliability and Performance
Staging
Chapter 8 247
Staging
The standard way to install software onto multiple targets is to specify a
single source depot and each target that is to receive the software.
However, some software distribution environments require that you
manage software on large numbers of geographically dispersed target
systems. This may require the use of one or more intermediate source
depots or staging areas. This variant on the standard model is referred to
as a staged installation.
There are two reasons for using a staged installation:
1. Minimize the amount of data transferred across a slow and
expensive segment of your network.
2. More easily ensure a successful installation on all targets by
reducing the risk of an unreliable segment in your network.
If your environment has targets organized in separate, local area
networks (LAN) and connected via a low-throughput, less-reliable wide
area network (WAN), staging software to intermediate depots that are
local to each grouping of targets and then doing the installation using
these intermediate depots reduces the amount of data that travels over
the WAN segment.
By doing so, you also decrease the likelihood that a problem with the
WAN will interrupt the installation step.
Before you do a staged installation, you must first decide where the
intermediate depots should reside. Here are two possible approaches:
1. If the targets are grouped, you can put an intermediate depot on one
system in each group and configure the other targets to use it as
their alternate source. This approach requires that each target in the
group be configured to use the designated intermediate depot.
2. If making sure that installations succeed is of highest importance,
you can locate the intermediate depots on the targets themselves,
one-per-target. An advantage to this approach is that it doesn’t
necessarily require that you configure an alternate source on each
target. However, this approach requires that each target system have
enough disk space to accommodate the intermediate depot.