Best practice for a satellite backup
I am wondering what is the general consensus on coop Satellite instances, aka, a backup satellite at a different site?
Imagine you have two datacenters, and the primary satellite server is at datacenter A. Does it make sense to have a fully licensed Sat server at datacenter B as a "backup." I am not even sure how things like licensing or subscription management would work between the two, not to mention, you would have to point each client to the backup site when you wanted to use it if the sat in datacenter A goes down. There is little to no information that I can find on running an active/passive satellite scenario, so I am thinking that this is something that is not really supported.
Responses
Guru
2484 points
Not encountered active/backup Satellite servers. Also not had any luck finding documentation on implementing this. In many cases, there is a primary satellite and capsules in other locations reporting back to the primary.
Maybe primary Satellite at datacenter A and a cloning/site replication solution to datacenter B.
Red Hat
Active Contributor
324 points
Supported backup/restore procedure is documented in https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Satellite/6.1/html/User_Guide/chap-Red_Hat_Satellite-User_Guide-Backup_and_Disaster_Recovery.html but I do not think this addresses your request.
You may need a process for cloning of a satellite - we have an upstream project created for this purpose and the information is in https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2755881. But for now, this is not supported for production usage. Also at this time, I don't have an info on when this will be ready for production usage. But you are welcome to use/test this out - cloning a satellite to a new host using the backup files created from the original satellite.
Pro
482 points
I thought I heard some talk about a HA environment for Satellite 6. It was a while ago so not sure if there was any further action done.
Guru
6222 points
Hello all,
There is a reference architecture for a High Available Satellite 6.x environment. https://access.redhat.com/articles/1599663 shows you the outline. The article contains a link, stating that it is best to request a Red Hat consultant to help you design the best solution for your requirements.
HA add-on of RHEL does support Multi datacenter active/passive setups. https://access.redhat.com/articles/2800571 discusses the support requirements. I advise you to read the articles mentioned on the weblink, because there are limitiations to the type of storage solutions you can chose to name of them.
Regards,
Jan Gerrit
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