12.8 ExercisesNetwork Installation Management (NIM) is used to manage remote sites on a network. The types of machines you can manage are stand-alone, diskless, and dataless. A stand-alone machine is one that can boot (start up) by itself. Diskless and dataless systems cannot boot by themselves; they must use remote resources to boot. Diskless systems have no disk drive. Dataless systems have a local disk drive but they cannot boot from it.
Using NIM, you can install a group of machines with a common configuration or customize an installation for the specific needs of a given machine. The number of machines you can install simultaneously depends on the throughput of your network, the disk access throughput of the installation servers, and the platform type of your servers.
The NIM environment comprises client and server machines. A server provides resources (for example, files and programs required for installation) to another machine. A machine that is dependent on a server to provide resources is known as a client. In this guide and reference, any machine that receives NIM resources is a client, although the same machine can also be a server in the overall network environment.
13.1 Debugging NIM Boot
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