Satellite 6.2 Beta Now Available
Download the beta here
Review beta documentation
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Red Hat is pleased to announce the Satellite 6.2 beta. Available to all current Satellite customers, the beta includes several highly demanded features.
Satellite 6.2 Beta - New Features and Functionality
Increase Efficiency with Automated Workflows
Satellite 6.2 introduces remote execution, automating workflows and enabling users to take multiple actions against groups of systems. Now Satellite 6.2 can automatically reboot a system after a patch install or conduct rolling upgrades across hundreds of systems as easily as one.
Users can easily build a script library, share scripts, and share repeatable workflows, so that less experienced administrators can execute complex workflows. In addition, users can schedule tasks and use new dashboards for enhanced interaction with systems under management.
Increase Security in Disconnected Environments
Satellite 6.2 provides the ability to synchronize and export content from one Satellite to another. This new feature is especially useful for organizations that require their systems management solution to run disconnected from the internet for security purposes.
Take Advantage of Expanded Bootstrapping and Provisioning
Discovery enhancements in Satellite simplify the process of building systems. End users can now efficiently provision systems in secured environments where DHCP and PXE may not be available.
See More Information about Capsules
The Red Hat Satellite Capsule user interface provides much deeper insight into the health of the Capsule. View what services are running and their status, from the centralized Satellite console.
Achieve Tighter Integration with OpenSCAP
SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) is a collection of standards managed by NIST. It was created to provide a standardized approach to maintaining the security of enterprise systems.
This feature includes:
Host-based scanner and report generation
Store and forward delivery to the capsule
Host reports stored in Satellite’s relational database
Aggregated reporting through a dashboard on the Satellite GUI
Import to existing hosts
Satellite 6.2 features new scripts and automation to import existing Red Hat infrastructure hosts that may reside on any Red Hat systems management platform, including Red Hat Satellite 5.x. This bootstrap script automates the process of registering systems to Satellite and dramatically reduces the number of steps required to get existing systems ready to be managed by Red Hat Satellite.
Support Containers and the Container Host Infrastructure
The latest version of Red Hat Satellite includes support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Atomic Hosts, Red Hat’s hardened platform for container workloads.
Users can provision and manage RHEL Atomic Hosts and use it as a compute resource to deploy containers. In addition, Red Hat Satellite now supports Docker v2 API and registries.
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Comments
Did the officially supported HA implementation make the cut for Satellite 6.2?
Is 6.2 based off of Katello 3 or were these new features just cherry-picked into 2.4?
Owen, please see https://access.redhat.com/node/1343683 for the list components which are in Satellite 6. It does contain katello 3.0.
Bryan,
We were advised that 6.2 would include a pluggable configuration management architecture so Ansible and/or Puppet plugins could be utilised for configuration management. I don't see any mention of Ansible in the component list, can I safely assume this hasn't made the cut for 6.2?
Sean.. did you see https://access.redhat.com/articles/2089291
That's great news Bryan, thanks! Really looking forward to the unified hosts feature!
In 6.1 they had a sort of interim tool to use with Docker. Satellite 6 is meant to eventually be a managed registry. Currently they have tools to have a registry along side of it, with some weird integration tools (like hammer or something) but this was supposed to be sorted out in 6.2.
I don't see any of the docker highlights with the notes above. Is there a separate doc for that?
Thanks
Denny,
This deprecation warning from Katello 3 might be relevant to you:
Denny.. you will see some additions around Atomic in 6.2. We are still testing this internally, but the bits are there for you to play with.
Bryan,
Will patching of Atomic hosts using rpm-ostree from Satellite make this release?
I was going to start testing Satellite for our small Red Hat environment next Tuesday. Should I start with this beta or 6.1? It is only going to be a testing/POC right now so beta hiccups wouldn't be of concern.
Thanks.
Timothy... it is tough to advise on that. I will say that 6.2 has alot of good bug fixes and improvements over 6.1. But, it is a Beta :) What are you looking ot get out of the POC?
How easy will the upgrade be when it comes out of beta to be the standard version? Will you just need to stop satellite and upgrade/update satellite in place?
We're a new Red Hat environment and will max out with only around 20 servers. I'm just looking to see its usability for package management and possibly configuration management through Puppet. We'll have some production databases that I want to seperate into a a different lifecycle environment and only push security errata to. These are all things I know satellite can do and just want to test before giving it a thumbs up to management that this is the product we need. Though we purchased it so I suppose I'll be using it either way ;)
I do not know how easy the upgrade will be, but please know that upgrading from Satellite 6.2 beta to Satellite 6.2 GA is not supported. So, unless you plan to start fresh after testing in your environment, you will want to go with Satellite 6.1 since you will then be supported after upgrading to the final Satellite 6.2 when it is released.
Thanks for that information Bernie. Based on that I think I will just go with 6.1 and wait for 6.2GA to be available.
Bernie's advice is correct. If your goal is to POC into production, I would not start with the beta. If you are willing to restart the beta may be better.
Or, take a look at https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/satellite61_summit_lab_2015/blob/master/summit.sh
We use scripts running hammer to build out satellites. It would allow you to recreate the install.
I would do my PoC with the Beta and use post-install scripts running hammer commands to build out the Satellite like Bryan suggests. We're doing exactly this with Satellite 6.1 at the moment, but our Prod rollout keeps moving backwards. A PoC environment is ideal for running the Beta. Just have your eye set on building a fresh 6.2 GA install when it comes out. Plus there are some big engineering changes under the hood which make aiming for 6.2 a no-brainer for me. If you're not running in production yet, think about tying your prod rollout to the GA - it can't be too far away. Rolling out 6.1 to almost instantly upgrade to 6.2 is pointless IMO.
Still 2 hosts pages (Foreman & Content). Were they not supposed to be merged with the host unification work?
Bringing the UI together is next release. The Host Unification means there is one record in the DB for a host, regardless of the "type"
Since when have Red Hat advertised internal DB structure changes as new features in releases?
When can we realistically expect the 'host unification' to be implemented in the UI? 6.2.1 or 6.3?
osTree content is in there. We are still working through the flows, so we would love your feedback on that part.
Maybe this will shed some light on things?
http://www.katello.org/docs/3.0/release_notes/release_notes.html#host-unification
Thanks for that Owen.
Slide 47 from this deck suggests it's slipped. https://access.redhat.com/sites/default/files/attachments/red_hat_satellite_6.pdf
'Collapsed dashboard for host management'
Quote:
Host Unification in 6.2 isn't just the DB changes, which i would agree aren't as newsworthy at face value. However, having a unified record in the DB means that a LOT of Satellite's workflows become a lot simpler. Examples include API scripting. (as I no longer potentially have to query both the Content Host (/systems) and the Host (/hosts)). Same with hammer. The new host status indicator becomes a lot easily to implement (as well as any other feature that does interesting things with the system itself). And lastly, 'All Hosts' finally means 'All Hosts' :)
I have a customer that gets the following message via email when attempting to access the 6.2 Beta
They have a valid Satellite subscription and under the same account (logged in) they can access and download the 6.1.8 release without issue.
I have raised it with support. Interested to know if anyone else had issues accessing the 6.2 Beta download.
Can you PM me the account information? We have one other report about this.
I'm not sure how to PM on here...
Either email myself / Bryan (I am rwj AT redhat DOT com, Bryan is bkearney AT redhat DOT com) OR open a support ticket via the normal process. Use whatever you prefer.
I'm having the same issues as well.
I noticed if you click the "Sign Up" on this page https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-satellite/beta to get the beta, more than once, it will send a 2nd email that will show 'not eligilble'
Possibly someone in your org already 'signed up' and the original email was missed?
I suspect this may also be the case if you have previously signed up for the 6.1 Beta (which this customer had).
Anyone else worked through configuring virt-who + VMware vSphere with the 6.2 Beta? Finding that it is not correctly populating Satellite (didn't have the issue in 6.1), but appears the be returning correct information in the logs.
Not sure if you are getting the same error or not, but I'm having the same issue. My Virtual Datacenter licenses are basically useless at this point for testing. I found this BZ that might be useful.
Look for Beta 2 Announcement. It will have fixes to the virt-who issues.
Bryan, is it an in-place upgrade? or do we have to go through and re-install?
"Satellite 6.2 introduces remote execution, automating workflows and enabling users to take multiple actions against groups of systems. Now Satellite 6.2 can automatically reboot a system after a patch install or conduct rolling upgrades across hundreds of systems as easily as one."
Is there a document that explains how to setup this patching/reboot scenario? I'm trying to work through is on my own by going through the Host Configuration Guide. What is described in that statement is exactly what I want so I'm hoping there's a solution published for this specifically that I'm just having issues finding.