US Patent 7627746 Network appliance management

Installing software on a network appliance having a short term memory and a hard disk is disclosed. Installing includes receiving an image of the software, loading the image into a short term memory on the network appliance, and writing the image to a hard disk on the network appliance. Updating software and data on a network appliance having a hard disk is disclosed. Updating includes writing a new version of software to an inactive software partition of the hard disk, writing an old version of data to an inactive data partition of the hard disk, activating the inactive software partition, and migrating the old version of data to a new version of data.