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The Satellite Blog is a place for the Engineering team to publish tips and tricks about how to use our products, videos which showcase new features, and to point users at new content on the Customer Portal.

Latest Posts

  • Satellite Blog move - What you need to know

    Authored by: John Spinks

    After many years of being hosted on the customer portal, the Satellite blog has been moved to the main Red Hat blog with the majority of the official blogs.

    Along with hosting on a more modern platform colocated with many of the other Red Hat blogs, this change will allow us to create more dynamic content, reach a broader audience and focus on a variety of management and automation topics and trends.

    The new blog is part of the Automation and Management channel which focuses on covering key topics across our management and automation portfolio. In the future, this channel will include blogs on all of the Management products including Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat Insights, Red Hat CloudForms, and Ansible including Ansible Engine, Ansible Tower, Ansible Networking, and Ansible Security. It will also show articles tagged about general Automation and Management topics.

    In case you want to filter and just read the Satellite blogs, you can use this link: https://satelliteblog.redhat.com

    Starting with Satellite 6.4, we include the capability to have blogs listed in the notification drawer once new blog posts are received. A future release of Satellite will have the URL updated by default, but in the meantime, you can change the location yourself by following these steps:

    1. Log into the Satellite User interface
    2. Navigate to: Administer > Settings > Notifications
    3. In the RSS URL field click the pencil icon to edit the URL.
    4. Replace the URL with: https://www.redhat.com/en/rss/blog/channel/red-hat-satellite
    5. Click the checkmark to accept the changes.
      The settings should look similar to the screenshot below:

    Satellite Blog Settings

    Note: The RSS feeds are updated twice daily, so this change will not automatically be reflected.

    If you want to update the RSS feed immediately, you can ssh into your Satellite host and run the following command as a user with sudo permissions:

    FOREMAN_RSS_LATEST_POSTS=3 foreman-rake rss:create_notifications

    As mentioned, newer releases of Satellite will have the RSS URL changed by default, but this BZ was just submitted and is not currently assigned to a release.
    As such it is suggested to make this change inside of Satellite so you can easily access the latest news and information about Satellite.

    Posted: 2018-11-08T20:35:37+00:00
  • Satellite 6.3.4 has just been released.

    Authored by: John Spinks

    The main driver for the 6.3.4 release is ongoing performance and stability improvements.
    There are 17 bugs squashed in this release - the complete list is below.

    There is one erratum for the server [1] and one for the hosts [2]. The install ISOs will be updated next week.

    Customers who have already upgraded to Satellite 6.3 should follow the instructions in the errata.
    Customers who are on older versions of Satellite should refer to the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide.

    You may also want to consider using the Satellite Upgrade Helper if moving from Satellite 6.x to Satellite 6.3

    Customers who have received hotfixes should verify the list below to ensure their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support in these cases.

    This update fixes the following bugs:

    • Candlepin throws 500 Internal Server Error for more than 40+ guests
      (BZ#1633252)
    • Deprecate katello-backup, and katello-restore in Satellite 6.3
      (BZ#1569672)
    • Sat 6.3 does not update repositories with modified data from
      RCM/Entitlement Service (BZ#1570792)
    • upgraded foreman-selinux has no label for 2375/tcp (BZ#1624026)
    • Do not prevent host discovery for existing MAC/IP addresses (BZ#1624034)
    • Cannot delete host when missing from the candlepin database (BZ#1624019)
    • Content View is not updated on Content Host when change is made via
      Hosts / All Hosts (BZ#1624020)
    • Re-add livecd-tools back to satellite repos (BZ#1624027)
    • Capsule overview page errors unable to fetch logs "ï¼¼xE1" from
      ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 (BZ#1624035)
    • Improve MonitorEventQueue performance for large workloads (BZ#1624038)
    • Satellite installation fails on rhel 7.6 Beta with
      /Stage[main]/Candlepin::Service/Exec[cpinit]/returns: change from notrun
      to 0 failed (BZ#1624022)
    • clean_backend_objects does not verify managed host status prior to
      action (BZ#1624028)
    • processing virt-who report blocks RHSM certs checks what can lead to
      503 errors (BZ#1624045)
    • On using UUID for content-host registration name, unexpected behavior
      in entitlement status (BZ#1624033)
    • org_environment content access mode - authentication error while an
      environment is updated on the client (BZ#1624036)
    • Unable to override hostgroup parameters from All hosts => edit host on
      WebUI (BZ#1624025)
    • [RFE]Disable directory listing for /pub directory on satellite 6 using
      custom-hiera. (BZ#1624021)

    [1]https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:2915

    [2] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:2914

    Satellite Migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

    As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on RHEL 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 including enhanced performance and long-term supportability.

    Future releases of Satellite (6.3 and above) will only support RHEL 7 and above. In preparation for newer versions of Satellite, you need to start thinking about how to move from older versions of RHEL to RHEL 7.
    While RHEL 6 does support an in-place migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the RHEL host. Instead, you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running RHEL 6 to another host running RHEL 7.

    Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7. 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.

    Posted: 2018-10-10T21:58:58+00:00
  • Red Hat Satellite 6.4 Beta is now available

    Authored by: John Spinks

    We are pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.4 is now available in beta to current Satellite customers.

    Red Hat Satellite is an infrastructure management platform, designed to manage system patching, provisioning, configurations and subscriptions across the entirety of a Red Hat environment. Satellite offers a lifecycle management solution to help keep your Red Hat infrastructure running efficiently and with greater security, which can reduce costs and overall environmental complexity.

    The Satellite 6.4 beta is focused on embedding Ansible Automation for remote execution and desired state management, as well as continued enhancements to the usability of the Satellite user interface.

    Major features that we are asking customers to review as they test the beta are:

    • Ansible integration for remote execution
    • Significant user interface changes
      • New vertical navigation
      • New repositories page
      • Manifest editing from within the Satellite interface
      • Notification drawer enhancements
      • Enhanced auditing of user events
    • Load balanced capsules

    Note: Puppet 5 Required

    Customers with active Red Hat Satellite subscriptions can test out the new features in Satellite 6.4 beta now by signing up for the beta.

    You can also refer to the Red Hat Satellite 6.4 Beta FAQ as well as the Satellite 6.4 Navigation Guide for additional information.

    If you would like to see Satellite 6.4 in action, check out the Find It. Fix It. Before It Breaks. video available on YouTube that shows Satellite 6.4 discovering potential risks with Red Hat Insights and fixing them with embedded Ansible Automation.

    Posted: 2018-09-05T12:55:50+00:00
  • Satellite 6.3.3 is now available

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Satellite 6.3.3 has just been released.

    The main driver for the 6.3.3 release is ongoing performance and stability improvements.
    There are 24 bugs squashed in this release - the complete list is below.

    The most notable issue is there was a critical Pulp maintenance routine that never executed that is now resolved with this update. 6.3.3 adds a weekly cron schedule to ensure execution of the maintenance job. For customers with large numbers of content hosts (10,000+) there may be a possible reduction in disk consumption in /var/lib/pulp after this maintenance task executes.

    If you wish to find out how to reclaim this space, please open a support ticket for guidance

    There is one erratum for the server [1] and one
    for the hosts [2]. The install ISOs will be updated next week.

    Customers who have already upgraded to Satellite 6.3 should follow the instructions in the errata.
    Customers who are on older versions of Satellite should refer to the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide.

    You may also want to consider using the Satellite Upgrade Helper if moving from Satellite 6.x to Satellite 6.3.

    Customers who have received hotfixes should verify the list below to ensure their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support in these cases.

    This update fixes the following bugs:

    • There was a critical Pulp maintenance routine that never executed. This update adds a weekly cron schedule to ensure execution. (BZ#1609928)
    • The Pulp regenerate applicability of consumer tasks took several minutes to complete. This update improves execution times. (BZ#1573892)
    • With a large installation of around 20,000 content hosts, the Applicable Package List froze and the action consumed more resources than was necessary. (BZ#1608597)
    • Uploading a package to a repository produced the error: NoMethodError: undefined method `to_hash'. (BZ#1583545)
    • Host registration failed with the error: "Validation failed: Host has already been taken". (BZ#1605188)
    • During a Content View publish, the Puppet module completed publishing before yum, causing provisioning problems. (BZ#1579381)
    • The foreman-rake foreman_tasks:cleanup scripts did not remove tasks from foreman_tasks_locks table. (BZ#1585890)
    • Docker registry sync did not use an HTTP proxy configuration, which left no route to the host for new Docker registries within a network. (BZ#1333595)
    • When a custom certificate had non-unicode characters, users received UnicodeEncodeError during the CapsuleGenerateAndSync task. (BZ#1449418)
    • The katello-restore script was not restoring full incremental backups. (BZ#1497858)
    • While running katello-backup with a cron job, sudo required a tty. (BZ#1540382)
    • Copying the activation key resulted in only a partial copy, the missing configuration information then caused failure with "undefined method" and Internal Server Error. (BZ#1553338)
    • Trying to update the host produced an error: ERF42-6324 [Foreman::Exception]: Could not find network dvportgroup-56 on VMWare compute resource. (BZ#1557613)
    • Running bootstrap script to migrate hosts failed with error: Content view cannot be blank. (BZ#1559703)
    • The volume canceljobjob logging was reduced. (BZ#1563225)
    • Users experienced Tomcat java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded. (BZ#1572604)
    • Cannot edit user photos when using LDAP datasource. (BZ#1573243)
    • Virtual Datacenter subscription was unavailable to hosts registering again. (BZ#1575056)
    • Failed to delete hosts when the host name was missing from the Candlepin database. (BZ#1575140)
    • The action history of Content Views was missing after upgrading to 6.3. (BZ#1575999)
    • Exclude Satellite FQDN and localhost from possible proxying when a user set the foreman http proxy. (BZ#1585069)
    • Qpidd deadlocked because of linearstore inactivity timer. (BZ#1588015)
    • The foreman-rake katello:regenerate_repo_metadata command failed with "NoMethodError: undefined method `in_default_view' for #". (BZ#1589646)
    • BZ - 1559703 - Running bootstrap fails: Content view can't be blank

    [1] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:2550

    [2] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:2551

    Satellite Migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

    As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on RHEL 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 including enhanced performance and long-term supportability.

    Future releases of Satellite (6.3 and above) will only support RHEL 7 and above. In preparation for newer versions of Satellite, you need to start thinking about how to move from older versions of RHEL to RHEL 7.
    While RHEL 6 does support an in-place migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the RHEL host. Instead, you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running RHEL 6 to another host running RHEL 7.

    Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7. 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.

    Posted: 2018-08-23T00:06:45+00:00
  • What you need to know to be ready for Satellite 6.4 and Puppet 5

    Authored by: John Spinks

    As we work towards a Satellite 6.4 release this fall there are some very important changes to Puppet that are coming that the Satellite team wants to prepare you for.

    Note: This affects ALL Satellite 6.3 users, even if you are not using Puppet or if you are using Puppet Enterprise.

    The last few releases of Satellite have supported Puppet 3.8, a version which has been end-of-life since December 31, 2016.
    Satellite 6.3 introduced support for Puppet 4, but since there were some major changes on the Puppet side between Puppet 3.8 and Puppet 4, Satellite 6.3 supported both versions.
    But Puppet 4 is also rapidly approaching its end-of-life date, expected around October 2018.

    The upcoming release of Satellite 6.4 will only support Puppet 5.
    This is because the other versions that we mentioned, Puppet 3.8 and Puppet 4, will both be end-of-life (or near end-of-life) by the time of the Satellite 6.4 release date.

    In order to upgrade to Satellite 6.4 from Satellite 6.3, you must first make sure that you have upgraded your Satellite 6.3 environment to Puppet 4.
    If you try to upgrade from Satellite 6.3 with Puppet 3.8 the installed is expected to fail in order to ensure that the Puppet upgrade is also successful.

    This is true even if you don't actively use Puppet.
    For customers that have upgraded to Satellite 6.3, Puppet is not automatically upgraded to Puppet 4. This is because of the significant changes that Puppet has made between releases.

    If you are a Puppet Enterprise user or you do not leverage the Puppet capabilities included with Satellite, this still impacts you too.
    However, it should just be a simple upgrade of Puppet that is built into
    Satellite, and should not affect your Puppet Enterprise operations.

    Once you have made sure any Puppet scripts will work as expected, the upgrade itself from Puppet 3.8 to Puppet 4 is quite easy.
    Enable the Puppet4 repos, then run the "satellite-installer" command with the "--upgrade-puppet" option. Full instructions are below.

    If you haven't already started moving to Satellite 6.3, the feedback has been fantastic. It is a great release, and if you are running an older version of Satellite 6 we would encourage you to upgrade to Satellite 6.3 soon. While you're at it, upgrade to Puppet 4.

    If you aren't leveraging Puppet in Satellite, then this shouldn't concern you much and it should be an easy upgrade (but you still need to do it).
    However, if you are a heavy Puppet user, and are using the Puppet shipped as part of Satellite, it should be noted that Puppet changed significantly between versions 3.8 and 4. As a result, you should plan to test any of your Puppet based modules to be sure that they work properly after the upgrade.
    Moving from Puppet 4 to 5 is much simpler and should require little changes to any of your modules.

    Here are some resources that we thought would be particularly helpful when planning the upgrade from Puppet 3.8 to Puppet 4.

    Hopefully, these resources will help to get your Satellite 6.3 environment updated to Puppet 4.

    Once you are at Satellite 6.3 and Puppet 4 you will be ready to upgrade to Satellite 6.4 and Puppet 5 when it is released this fall.

    Posted: 2018-06-26T22:49:49+00:00
  • Satellite 6.3.2 is now available

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Satellite 6.3.2 has just been released.
    The main driver for the 6.3.2 release is allowing customers to disable weak ciphers, but there are several other new features and fixes.
    There are two errata for the server [1][3] and one
    for the hosts [2]. The install ISOs will be updated later this week.

    Customers who have already upgraded to Satellite 6.3 should follow the instructions in the errata.
    Customers who are on older versions of Satellite should refer to the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide.

    You may also want to consider using the Satellite Upgrade Helper if moving from Satellite 6.x to Satellite 6.3

    Customers who have received hotfixes should verify the list below to ensure their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support in these cases.

    This update fixes the following bugs:

    • Users can now disable weak ciphers across Satellite 6's series of
      services and restrict to only TLS 1.2. For more information, see How to
      disable weak encryption (SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0) on Red Hat Satellite:
      https://access.redhat.com/solutions/26833 (BZ#1553875, BZ#1318973)

      NOTE: If you are still using RHEL 5 Servers note that restricting communications to only TLS 1.2 will prevent RHEL5 from communicating with Satellite. Refer to Known Issues and Attacks Against SSL/TLS in OpenSSL/NSS/gnutls on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for full details about supported TLS versions with RHEL 5.

    • The foreman-debug command now collects additional information to help
      with debugging, including passenger statistics. (BZ#1540493, BZ#1558545)

    • Satellite 6.3 could not sync containers from the Google or Quay
      registry because of differences in version 2 of the API. Satellite now
      supports these differences. (BZ#1555165)

    • Performance improvements, which arose from experiences with customer
      upgrades, are now available for the UI and CLI. (BZ#1511503, BZ#1567978,
      BZ#1553263, BZ#1560740, BZ#1563002, BZ#1575113)

    • Certain future-dated subscriptions could not be enabled based on the
      products they enable. This is now fixed. (BZ#1553264)

    • Authentication for OpenStack v3 was failing because Satellite did not
      use the domain field. This is now fixed. (BZ#1513932)

    • Problems that relate to migrating and upgrading, for example the
      content_source_id not migrating and template history disappearing, are
      now fixed. (BZ#1584874, BZ#1559108)

    • Intermittent segmentation faults in the Pulp stack are now fixed.
      (BZ#1516481)

    • Provisioning templates in RHEV 3.6 ignored the disk settings specified
      in the template. This is now fixed. (BZ#1399102)

    • The boot disk provisioning option was omitted from the hammer host
      create command. This is now fixed. (BZ#1544498)

    • Remote execution failed on host collections. This is now fixed.
      (BZ#1553017)

    • Intermittent segmentation faults in the qpid stack are now fixed.
      (BZ#1561819)

    • The initial remote execution command after a restart failed with the
      error message: "Could not use any Capsule". This is now fixed. (BZ#1558069)

    • Pulp workers became deadlocked when the PULP_MAX_TASKS_PER_CHILD setting was enabled. These workers now reconnect correctly. (BZ#1590906)

    [1] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1950

    [2] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1951

    [3]https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1956

    Satellite Migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

    As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on RHEL 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 including enhanced performance and long-term supportability.

    Future releases of Satellite (6.3 and above) will only support RHEL 7 and above. In preparation for newer versions of Satellite, you need to start thinking about how to move from older versions of RHEL to RHEL 7.
    While RHEL 6 does support an in-place migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the RHEL host. Instead, you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running RHEL 6 to another host running RHEL 7.

    Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7. 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.

    Posted: 2018-06-20T07:04:16+00:00
  • Satellite 6.2.15 is now available

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Red Hat Satellite 6.2.15 includes bug fixes for improving the performance of Satellite 6.2.x.
    There is one erratum for the server [1] and one for the hosts [2].
    ISOs should be published next week.

    Customers who have already upgraded to 6.2 should follow the instructions in the errata. Customers who are on 6.1.x should follow the upgrade instructions in the Satellite 6.2 Installation Guide. Customers who have received hotfixes should verify the list below to ensure their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support in these cases.

    Fixes included in 6.2.15

    This update fixes the following bugs:

    • TLS 1.2 is now enabled by default on Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1331041, BZ#1548093)
    • Performance problems with registration, such as concurrent registrations and task blocking have been improved based on work with larger customers. (BZ#1490019, BZ#1514508, BZ#1553845)
    • A new dispatch router has been released to fix a segmentation fault caused by long running use. (BZ#1535891)
    • Performance problems with the katello-errata query have been improved and backported to Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1518804)
    • Performance problems with memory consumption when searching for an unqualified hostgroup have been improved and backported to Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1547986)
    • Performance problems with the subscription page when the user has a large volume of hosts have been improved and backported to Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1551674)
    • Restarting a pulp worker with running tasks caused the tasks to be in a broken state. This problem has been fixed. In such cases, tasks are stopped with warning "Task cancelled". This fix has been backported to Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1526437)
    • Synchronization tasks that were interrupted by Satellite restarting were not completing. This is now fixed and has been backported to Satellite 6.2. (BZ#1548167)
    • The foreman-debug tool has been updated to collect the foreman-maintain logs. This improves the ability to analyze problems during upgrades. (BZ#1542407)
    • The katello-backup tool can now use relative paths. (BZ#1544396)
    • Users received errors when they created hosts using hammer with two network interfaces if eth0 was not the primary interface. This is now fixed. (BZ#1417053)
    • Users were not able to manage their own taxonomies. This functionality has been enabled. (BZ#1476843)
    • Custom products created for RHEL5 were not using the correct checksum type. SHA1 is now used for these repositories. (BZ#1480694)

    Users of Red Hat Satellite are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

    [1] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1672

    [2] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1673

    Satellite Migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

    As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on RHEL 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 including enhanced performance and long-term supportability.

    Future releases of Satellite (6.3 and above) will only support RHEL 7 and above.

    In preparation for newer versions of Satellite, you need to start thinking about how to move from older versions of RHEL to RHEL 7.
    While RHEL 6 does support an in-place migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the RHEL host. Instead, you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running RHEL 6 to another host running RHEL 7.
    Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7. 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.

    Posted: 2018-05-23T11:23:32+00:00
  • Go West, [not so] young Spinks: One Satellite member’s guide to Red Hat Summit 2018

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Greetings!

    I’m John Spinks, Technical Marketing Manager for Satellite.
    While I’m relatively new to Red Hat, I get to work with Red Hat Satellite engineers and customers every day. Next week is my first Red Hat Summit so I’m excited to get to see so many of both in one place.

    Not only is this my first Summit as an attendee, I’m honored to say that this will also be my first time at Summit as a speaker. Brent Midwood and I will be presenting the session: Live Demonstration: Find it. Fix it. Before it breaks. That has of course captured a lot of my interest of late, but I’m also looking forward to attending some other breakout sessions about how Satellite enables customers and businesses to meet their goals.

    Breakout Sessions

    Summit has a packed and exciting agenda, so I’ve highlighted a few of the sessions and their description from the Summit agenda that I am most interested in attending and that I think will be of great interest to users of Red Hat Satellite:

    Live demonstration: Find it. Fix it. Before it breaks.

    A common saying is, "If it ain’t broke, don't fix it." But what if it is broken and you just don't know it? Waiting for something to break means late nights, lunches at your desk, or waiting for a maintenance window to fix issues. However, there are ways for you to automate how you predict, resolve, and manage issues before they cause you headaches. Read more.

    How Walmart uses systems management tools to manage its massive IT operation at scale

    To power the largest retailer in the world, Walmart’s IT operation must manage systems at unprecedented scale. Walmart’s IT leaders will share how they use various automation tools, including Red Hat Satellite, to give them the capacity they need. Darin Lively, Staff Systems Engineer, and Brian Ameling, Staff Systems Engineer, will offer a look into Walmart’s complex architecture and… Read more.

    A problem's not a problem, until it's a problem (Red Hat Insights)

    Find out how using predictive analytics from Red Hat Insights, you can assess the impact of a potential system issue and the likelihood of it becoming a problem. Read more.

    Red Hat Management roadmap and strategy

    Attend this session to learn the latest on the strategy and roadmap for Red Hat Management, including details on Red Hat Ansible Automation, Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Insights, and Red Hat Satellite. Read more.


    If you’re going to Red Hat Summit next week, I encourage you to add these sessions to your agenda now-- before they fill up!

    Automation and Management Booth

    As much as possible I’ll be spending time in the Automation & Management pod in the Red Hat booth during the Ecosystem Expo hours. Please stop by to say “Hello” to me or to any of our Satellite experts and see some demos of Red Hat Satellite 6.3 and some sneak peeks into what’s coming next.


    For those of you fortunate enough to go - safe travels and hope to see you there!
    If you can’t make it I hear that content (slides and recordings) will be posted after Summit at http://redhat.com/summit

    John Spinks
    @jbspinks

    Posted: 2018-05-02T13:10:32+00:00
  • Satellite 5 and RHN End of Life - Making sure that you are only connected to RHSM.

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Have you completed your migration from Satellite 5 to Satellite 5.8, but you keep getting messages from us about upgrading before January 31, 2019?

    It could be that your systems are still registered with Red Hat Network (RHN), even if you have moved to a newer version.

    Let's walk through a couple steps to show you how you can check and see if you are registered with RHN or Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM).

    I moved to Satellite 6 - Does this affect me?

    If you have moved off of Satellite 5 to Satellite 6, and you have shut down all Satellite 5 systems, then this article does not impact you. Satellite 6 cannot be registered to RHN. However, if you still have Satellite 5 systems in your environment please verify that they have been upgraded to Satellite 5.8 and have moved to RHSM.

    Why are these steps important?

    As of January 31, 2019 the RHN connector that Satellite 5.7 and older uses to get content will be completely shut down. After this date NO CONTENT will be available through RHN. Both system level updates and channel syncing will be stopped as a result.

    Satellite 5.8 and Satellite 6 uses RHSM instead of RHN, so this shutdown does not impact those versions.

    What happens to my Satellite 5.7 or older server after January 31, 2019?

    Red Hat STRONGLY recommends an upgrade to Satellite 5.8 prior to 31-Jan-2019. However, if the Satellite is not upgraded,

    You WILL

    • Be able to use the Satellite 5.7 (or lower) with previously downloaded content.
    • Be able to receive updates for the underlying OS (if registered via RHSM)
    • Receive support from CEE to upgrade to 5.8.

    You WILL NOT

    • Receive updates for (and be able to synchronize) any channels previously synced via Satellite 5.
    • Receive updates for the underlying OS (if registered via RHN)
    • Receive help for anything else Satellite related other than upgrading to Satellite 5.8.

    I have not moved to Satellite 5.8 OR I have installed Satellite 5.8 but have not migrated to RHSM. What do I do?

    If you are looking to start the process of migrating from RHN to RHSM, follow the instructions in the article: "Preparing Satellite 5 systems for Red Hat Network's End of Life."

    How could I be registered to both RHN and RHSM?

    If you had a Satellite system that was registered with RHN, and you upgraded your environment to Satellite 5.8 and manually registered with RHSM, then you might be double registered.
    However, if you used the rhn-migrate-classic-to-rhsm command then you should have been properly registered with RHSM and removed from RHN.

    How can I check if I am double registered to both RHN and RHSM?

    Verify that you are connected to RHSM

    The first thing you should do if verify that your subscription-manager status is current:

    # subscription-manager status 
    +-------------------------------------------+
       System Status Details
    +-------------------------------------------+
    Overall Status: Current
    

    Next, Look at the list of consumed subscriptions to verify that you have a Red Hat Satellite subscription attached to the system:

    # subscription-manager list --consumed
    +-------------------------------------------+
       Consumed Subscriptions
    +-------------------------------------------+
    Subscription Name:   Red Hat Satellite 
    Provides:            Red Hat Satellite
                                Red Hat Satellite Capsule
    

    Verify that you are NOT connected to RHN

    To confirm that the system is not also registered to RHN as well as RHSM, use the yum repolist command to verify that the rhnplugin is NOT present:

    # yum repolist 
    Loaded plugins: product-id, search-disabled-repos, security, subscription-manager 
    repo id                                                               repo name                                                           status
    rhel-6-server-rpms                            Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Server (RPMs)                20,029
    rhel-6-server-satellite-5.7-rpms      Red Hat Satellite 5.7 (for RHEL 6 Server) (RPMs)           736
    
    1. Notice the line starting with Loaded plugins:, there should not be rhnplugin loaded in the above yum command output.
    2. RHSM repositories end with rpms, so all the repo id's listed in above yum command output should end with rpms.

    Many of these details are covered in the solution: How to verify whether Red Hat Satelite v 5.x server is successfully migrated from RHN Hosted to RHSM?

    Posted: 2018-04-30T13:00:07+00:00
  • Satellite 6.3.1 is now available

    Authored by: John Spinks

    Red Hat Satellite 6.3.1 includes packages that supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 as well as a variety of performance enhancements and general bug fixes.

    Especially notable is the improvements in the performance of content views. In our tests we've seen publishing of a single content view on RHEL7 redunce in time by 43% and publishing of composite views reduced 95%. To put numbers to this 6.3.0 took 320 seconds to publish a composite view while 6.3.1 took 14 seconds to publish the same CV.
    Promotion also was significantly improved. A group of 16 CVs were promoted in 977 seconds in 6.3.0 to 5.78 seconds in 6.3.1 - a 99% reduction in time to promote!

    There are two errata for the server [1][3] and one for the hosts [2]. The install ISOs will be updated next week.

    Customers who have already upgrade to Satellite 6.3 should follow the instructions in the errata.
    Customers who are on older versions of Satellite should refer to the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide.

    You may also want to consider using the Satellite Upgrade Helper if moving from Satellite 6.x to Satellite 6.3

    Customers who have received hotfixes should verify the list below to ensure their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support in these cases.

    Fixes included in 6.3.1

    • The performance of Content View publishing and promotion has been improved. (BZ#1522912)

    • The performance of Ansible Tower inventory collection has been improved. (BZ#1437197)

    • Various performance and scale improvements have been made. (BZ#1553881, BZ#1553879, BZ#1532348, BZ#1553871)

    • Several upgrade issues from 6.2.x to 6.3 have been resolved. (BZ#1549502, BZ#1547607, BZ#1553279)

    • The installer now allow users to configure the SSL protocols used by Tomcat. (BZ#1544995)

    • Disconnected installations no longer attempt to install the oauth gem from a remote server. (BZ#1541885)

    • Users can now configure custom products not to use an HTTP Proxy when syncing content, and to only use the proxy for Red Hat Content. (BZ#1132980)

    • Restarting a pulp worker with running tasks caused the tasks to be in a broken state. This problem has been fixed. In such cases, tasks are stopped with warning "Task cancelled". (BZ#1552118)

    • Puppet modules which were built on MacOS machines can now be imported into Satellite. (BZ#1445625)

    • Previously, an API endpoint used by the SCAP Satellite plug-in failed to provide generated guides based on the selected profile. Consequently, Red Hat Satellite was not able to get information from the plug-in, and the Satellite UI was broken. With this update, handling of the API endpoint has been updated, and it is now possible to generate guides using this API endpoint again. (BZ#1480595)

    • Backups were failing with relative paths since 6.2.13. This regression has been fixed. (BZ#1544401)

    • Pulp workers became deadlocked when the PULP_MAX_TASKS_PER_CHILD setting was enabled. These workers now reconnect correctly. (BZ#1590906)

    • When installing the katello-ca-consumer package, the script restarted Docker. Consequently, running containers where stopped. With this update, the Docker service is reloaded not restarted. (BZ#1518289)

    Users of Red Hat Satellite are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which fix these bugs.

    [1] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1126
    [2] https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1127
    [3]https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2018:1956

    Satellite Migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

    As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on RHEL 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7 including enhanced performance and long term supportability.

    Future releases of Satellite (6.3 and above) will only support RHEL 7 and above. In preparation for newer versions of Satellite you need to start thinking about how to move from older versions of RHEL to RHEL 7.
    While RHEL 6 does support an in-place migration from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the RHEL host. Instead you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running RHEL 6 to another host running RHEL 7 .

    Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7. 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7.

    Posted: 2018-04-13T14:43:30+00:00