Managing RHEL 7.x hosts from Satellite 5.x

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I am interested to hear of experiences from anyone currently managing their fleet of RHEL 7.x hosts with Satellite 5.x.
Have you found any limitations / issues with this configuration?
When do you plan on upgrading/migrating to Satellite 6?

PS
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Responses

Robert Krátký's picture Red Hat Guru 3240 points
9 July 2015 3:04 PM

Hi,

I believe two of the main disadvantages are that you'd need to use RHN Classic (not Subscription Manager) and the end-of-life, which is less than two years away for Satellite 5.7 (the last minor 5.x version to be released).

The upgrade (transition, in fact) process is well documented:

os-unix's picture Active Contributor 146 points
9 July 2015 3:41 PM

Robert,

My experience with the Transitioning is very bad.
I get stuck in chapter 1: Sales does not respond to a request for an evaluation subscription.
So we do a "cold turkey" rebuild, so we only need one subscription.

Kind regards,

Jan Gerrit

KH Newbie 17 points
4 August 2015 7:26 AM

All features of Satellite 5 are not yet available in Satellite 6. In particular, errata management is lacking and has issues, e.g. 1397413. I'm waiting for 6.1.

CY Newbie 15 points
25 August 2015 6:16 PM

I tried Satellite 6.0 and found errata management lacking also, I don't know how Red Hat could release 6.0 with so many features missing.

James Nauer's picture Expert 823 points
17 December 2015 8:59 PM

Update: Satellite 6.1.x (x=0-4) has much improved Errata management, BUT also has a fundamentally broken security model - errata cannot be managed via the web GUI except by Satelilte "administrator"-level users, so there can be no security isolation between different sysadmins (or groups). OR those users are relegated to using command-line tools only ("yum" commands), with no way to see the Errata advisory text via the web GUI.

A private Bugzilla has been open on this issue since August 2015.

PS Guru 6494 points
17 December 2015 10:30 PM

Satellite 6 definitely provides an alternate approach, but it also has it's own set of new problems/issues that make developing work processes tedious.

Thanks for mentioning the above issues with security isolation (it's something we haven't hit yet). I started a thread here for my own Satellite 6.x issues https://access.redhat.com/discussions/2092611

BK Active Contributor 188 points
17 December 2015 9:55 PM

well I can tell you first hand that the 6.x install was painful for sure , stay with 5 if you can

Bryan Kearney's picture Red Hat Pro 755 points
18 December 2015 1:44 PM

Brian:

What were your major issues with the install?

-- bk

ES Community Member 39 points
21 December 2015 7:21 AM

We have been managing our RHEL 7.x servers with Satellite 5.7 for the last six months, with no limitations or issues encountered.

We will be looking at Satellite 6.1 in early 2016.

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