You can manage a prototype system by using chroot. For example, you can update a package this way:
chroot /srv/stateless/protosystems/DemoSystem yum update evolution exit
This will update the evolution package, using the RPM database within the protosystem.[3]
Once you're happy with the state of a prototype system, run stateless-snapshooter as above.
This will update the LDAP directory. Client machines check the LDAP directory every hour to see what they should be running. If an update is detected, a caching client will automatically rsync the new file tree into its reserve partitions.
Reboot the client machine after an update has occurred in order to use the new snapshot.
[3] Unfortunately this is not a perfect system, since although the chroot environment has access to the appropriate file hierarchy, it does not have access to the correct set of processes. We are working on a better solution to this.