RHEL 5 has introduced two new features: Fastboot (Kexec) and Kdump. Fastboot allows you to boot into a new kernel without going through the BIOS and reduces reboot time. Kdump is a more reliable kernel crash dumping solution.
Customers have been using various crash dumping solutions like diskdump and netdump in the past releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But often customers had reliability concerns and none of these solutions were in upstream kernel. Kdump is a new kernel crash dumping solution that has been accepted upstream, and it should prove to be a better way of doing things.
This presentation starts with an overview of the Fastboot mechanism and how you can use it. You will also learn about the high-level design of Kdump, the details of various user configurable options, and how to deploy kdump in your production environment.