There may be times when the CacheFlow appliance needs to be restarted. Restarts are required when upgrading software, during some hardware maintenance or, occasionally, to assist in troubleshooting a problem. This document describes the different types of restarts and their purposes.
There are five types of restart: regular (hardware or software), upgrade (hardware only) and abrupt (hardware or software).
A hardware restart shuts down the appliance and gives control to the BIOS. It is a complete hardware reset equivalent to power-cycling the appliance. During a hardware restart, the user is given the option to select an image to boot. A hardware restart is also called a cold boot.
A software restart is done completely in CacheFlow software and is much quicker than a hardware restart. Because the software is not halted, a new image cannot be loaded. A software restart is also called a warm boot.
By default, CacheFlow appliances will employ a software restart:
Blue Coat CacheFlow 5000 Series>show restart
Restart settings
Restart: software only
Core image: context only
Compression: disabled
Blue Coat CacheFlow 5000 Series#(config)restart mode ? hardware Set for hardware restart software Set for software only restart
Blue Coat CacheFlow 5000 Series#restart regular restart regular initiated ... Initiating a software only restart Waiting for disk activity to cease
Blue Coat CacheFlow 5000 Series#restart ? abrupt Reboot system abruptly, according to restart settings regular Reboot system according to restart settings upgrade Reboot system to start running new image
A hardware restart will go through a full bootup including a BIOS check and an option list of available systems. Afterwards, the system restart message will be displayed:
These messages are also logged to syslog and can be viewed in the GUI: