A Flash Archive is basically a package with all the operating system configuration in a certain point of time (some kind of snapshot of the operating system) this package can be used to recover a system, to restore a backup, basicaly disaster recovery. This Flash Archive can be stored in any storage media (CD,DVD,Tape) and recovered without manual intervention if desired in many machines (by default 5 at the same time but this can be customized).
As soon as the process do not actually takes a snapshot (like the snapshot command or ZFS Snapshots) it is recommended to disable the processes that are working on disk and making critical changes like a database engine for example.

To create a flash archive of your Solaris 10 System, for example:

flarcreate -n "Solaris Archive #1" -a "This is the authors name" \
-R / -x /export /export/install/ultra.flar


The flash command syntax is this:

flarcreate -n [-R root ] [-A system image ] [-H] [-I] \
[-M] [-S] [-c] [-t [-p posn]] [-b blockSize] \
[-i date] [-u section] [-m master] [-f [fileList | -] [-F]] \
[-a author] [-e desc | -E desc_file] [-T type] \
[-U key=value ... ] [-x Dirs to exclude ] [-y Dirs to include ] \
[-z textfile with files to include ] \
[-X textfile with files to exclude ] archive_name.flar


To see the flar file content:
flar info -l archive_name.flar

Now the big question, how can this flar file change my installation procedure ?
Using a JumpStart installation procedure, you create a class (or profile) file and that file instructs for
one or a group of machines what and how you want to install, the far file just created can be shared through NFS and in the profile file you instruct something like this:

install_type flash_install
archive_location nfs://192.168.0.2/home/archive_file.flar
partition explicit
# When the explicit word is used, the "filesys" word has to be used also:
filesys rootdisk.s0 free /
filesys rootdisk.s1 1:449 swap


Other Flar commands:
flar combine
Combines different archive sections in different files into one archive
flar info
Give information about the archive
flar split
Split an archive into multiple file, each with a section of the archive
flar create
Create a flash archive from the master system.