Installation staging

Use installation staging to copy the files that comprise an update to an appropriate location for eventual installation. That location might not be the system that the update is to be installed on. This task is not required. If you skip this step, the update is staged when it is needed. This task is provided to save time during installation maintenance windows, in order to minimize system downtime and unavailability.

About this task

Note:

This topic describes how to access this task in the IBM® Flex System Manager Web user interface. If you are using the IBM FSM Explorer, use the finder at the top of the user interface (shown here) to locate this task:

Use the finder at the top of the user interface to locate this task

The task of installation staging is accomplished by running the Installation staging wizard on an update. The Installation staging wizard guides you through the task of copying the installable files for an update from the management server to an appropriate location for eventual installation.

If the installable files for an update have not been previously downloaded, a download is run before the installation staging is performed.

It is important to note that the membership of an update group is not resolved at the time that a task using the group is scheduled. The membership of the update group is resolved at the time that the task runs.

To perform an installation staging for an update, complete the following steps:

Procedure

  1. Click Actions > Installation staging on the menus for an update or update group. The page of the Installation staging wizard is displayed.
  2. Clear the Show this welcome page next time box if you do not want to see the Welcome page again.
  3. Click Next. The Updates page is displayed. The Updates page is skipped if the Installation staging wizard was invoked from an update or update group. In this case, proceed to Step 5.
  4. Select each update that you want. If an update that is part of an update collection is chosen, a warning is issued because it is advisable to install the update collection as a whole.
  5. If you select updates that require a manual download, these updates cannot be staged until you manually download them. The Downloads required panel will be displayed.
    1. Click Details to manually download updates.
    2. Click Continue, the updates are now downloaded and ready when you have completed the manual download.
    3. Click Skip the updates which must be manually downloaded if you do not want to manually download these updates, or the process has failed for one or more of them. Those updates will be removed from the list and will not be staged.
    4. Click Next The Systems page is displayed.
  6. You can stage updates for installation by selecting the systems or system groups that the updates are to be installed on. Select the system or system group name and click Add

    Be aware that if you selected system groups, the list of individual systems in these groups is not determined until the task runs. You are presented options only for those systems that were individually selected. Group membership is not determined until the task runs.

  7. If some of the updates are for AIX® or IBM BladeCenter systems, and you had not already specified the necessary AIX or IBM BladeCenter options on the Settings page, it is displayed so that you can choose these options.
  8. Click Next. The Options page is displayed.
  9. If you do not want updates that are required for the installation of the selected updates to also be staged for installation, clear Automatically stage missing required updates. Clearing this box is not advised. Missing mandatory updates will cause the installation task to fail.
  10. A table of the known update requirements for each selected update is displayed.
    1. Select a system from the list of systems to see its update requirements.
    2. Review the required updates that will be installed when Automatically stage missing required updates is selected. You cannot edit the required updates here.
  11. Click Next. The Summary page is displayed.
  12. Review the information on this page.
    • If it is correct, click Finish. A panel is displayed for you to specify notification and schedule settings for the installation staging task being launched by this wizard.
    • If some information is incorrect, click Back to go to previous pages and correct the information, or click Cancel to cancel the entire process.

Results

After the installation staging task completes, the updates are staged in the following locations:
  • When staging to AIX, IBM i, and Linux systems, updates are staged to /tmp/updatemanager/staging in all cases.
  • When staging to Windows systems, updates are usually staged to TEMP\updatemanager\staging, where TEMP usually resolves to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP but can change depending on the resource type to which you are staging.
    Note: To ensure that updates are staged to the Windows TEMP directory, specify RELOAD_STAGING_LOCATION=true in the install_path\IBM\Director\lwi\runtime\core\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\com.ibm.director.mgr.updates.server\update.properties file.
To determine the exact staging path for a particular system, see the related entry in the job log. To verify that the path has sufficient space, explicitly stage an update to the target system and then verify the staging at that path.
Parent topic: Acquiring and installing updates with the IBM Flex System Manager Web interface