How to configure Satellite-6 to behave like RHN to content-host?

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Hello
We are in the beginning stages to deploy satellite 6.1.10. Out of our server population, we have numerous hosts that always want to see the latest RHEL updates.....just like if you registered a host directly to RHN. We are trying to do this with the least labor on our part in Satellite v6.

Doing this in Satellite 6, we thought we could do this by simply registering a content host against a key that contains the "Library" environment, and the required content-view. We believed we only needed to publish the CV once into the Library, and all the content hosts would continuously see updates in the Library. It turns out we are wrong. It seems that a CV needs to be published to a new version (from the latest sync data) into the Library for the new content to be visible.

In other words, if we were to get the same benefits that RHN provides, we would have to assume this work, and publish on a daily basis. This means we have to either do it manually, or do it via cron daily using hammer.

is there an easier, less labor-intensive way to do this?

Responses

Satellite includes the special Default Organization View, which is the Satellite's representation of the 'latest respositories as synced from the CDN'. Systems subscribed to this content view will have access to the latest packages as soon as they are synced. (With no publishing or promotion needed). I believe this is what you desire.

Hi Rich, Yes, this sounds like 'the ticket' for me, but there may be a show-stopper: We manage separate customers (customer being separate/unrelated corporations or partnerships) with a single satellite. As a result, each customer's configuration is in it's own organization. (We were trying to keep them separate). I was hoping it may be possible within an organization, but your solution is intriguing. Do you know where your recommendation may be described further? Thank you for your time. P

The instructions to register against the Library are presented in link:

https://yoursatellite.example.com/content_hosts/register

The command is

subscription-manager register --org=<orglabel> --environment="Library"

You also need to supply the --username, --password.

In your case, the orglabel will be varying for each customer. You also need to make sure that you trigger sync in each organization.

Or you can setup an activation key with environment=Library and content view = Default view of the org.

Separate Organizations are not a problem; the "Default Organization View" exists in each individual Organization (it's meant to be read as "a default View in each Organization", not "a (single) Default Organization with a View").

There are still some catches though - one being that the D.O.V. is not treated the same as other Views, and thus cannot be selected in some contexts. I think one example is in an Activation Key; once you've selected a non-Default View, you cannot select "Default Organization View" for that key without deleting and re-creating it (the D.O.V. simply doesn't exist in the pop-up menu for Content Views).

Another catch is that, unlike Satellite 5.x, you must sync the Red Hat content separately for each Organization (rather than having a single copy of the Red Hat content that is visible to all Organizations). So if you have 10 Organizations, all 10 of them will have to sync all of the RHEL 5/6/7 repos (whichever ones you use) every day. I've been told by Support that it should in theory be possible to have a single Organization's copy of the Red Hat repos shared across all Organizations, but when I press for details, I've never gotten an answer.

You are right that you need to sync the same repos in all 10 organizations in your example. But Satellite (pulp) stores only one copy of actual rpms. Say you are sycing a rhel7server repo in 10 different organizations, Satellite will pull down all rhel7server contents while you sync your first organization. When you trigger sync of the same repo in other 9 organizations - you can notice that Satellite would say No new packages but still will update symlinks for each org to point to the already downloaded content. In other words - the actual rpms are pulled down only once, but symlinks are duplicated for how many ever organizations you have.

Thanks for that info James, that's rather maddening to say the least. under 5.x it sure was better. I'm hoping that each sync for each organization (beating head against wall), at minimum will not result in paying the price for the storage for each organization. This is pretty unsatisfactory. I'm hoping this unsatisfactory situation is at least just something analogous to a database view, and not having to store an entire rpm collection.

It's bad enough for satellite 6 that there is a base channel set separating 32bit/64bit and server/workstation/desktop and each version of RHEL. (and from what I see, no hope for what was called Incremental Channel ISOS). At least with satellite 5.x, you had one set of base and incremental channels instead of dividing it up. That's pretty annoying.

Regarding your comment - I'm hoping that each sync for each organization (beating head against wall), at minimum will not result in paying the price for the storage for each organization. As I mentioned in another comment, the contents are pulled only once in a Satellite, even though you sync the same repo in multiple organizations.

For example: I synced rhel7server repo in my Satellite in Org1. This is what pulp folder looked like:

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/ --block-size=1M
17796   /var/lib/pulp/

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/published --block-size=1M
54  /var/lib/pulp/published

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/content --block-size=1M
17742   /var/lib/pulp/content

Then I synced the same rhel7server repo in Org2. This is what pulp folder looked like:

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/ --block-size=1M
17842   /var/lib/pulp/

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/published --block-size=1M
100 /var/lib/pulp/published

# du -sh /var/lib/pulp/content --block-size=1M
17742   /var/lib/pulp/content

As you can see above /var/lib/pulp/content remained the same. /var/lib/pulp/published increased by 46M which are symlinks pointing to already downloaded /var/lib/pulp/content.

Thirugnanasambandan Sureshkumar

--Thank you-- for the great info!! I sure do appreciate it.

My next dilemma, I really wish there was a set of ISO channel dumps for Satellite 6 that was newer than November 11th of 2016. The Satellite channels for Satellite version 5.x get updated rather regularly, however we're transitioning to Satellite 6. I put in tickets with Red Hat regarding availability of ISO channel dumps, and their initial reply was a CDN server that we set up, however, after much discussion and some elevation, we had an agreement from Red Hat that they'd provide ISO channel dumps for Satellite 6. I'm going to be putting in a case soon to request ISO channel dump updates that are in 2017.

Thanks again for your reply

You are very welcome. Glad that this info helps and thank you for using this community to ask questions and share ideas.

Regarding the satellite6 iso channel dumps, I brought this to the attention of Engineering team and they are following up on this issue now.

The new content ISOs are live now.

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