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Chapter 1. Major Features

The following are the major features released as part of Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3.0.
  • RHN Satellite includes a significant update to the Multiple Organizations feature, which allows administrators to view, create, and manage multiple organizations across the Satellite.
    • Trust relationships between organizations are now supported, allowing Satellite Administrators to establish mutual connections between two or more organizations.
    • Organizations within a trust can share their custom content channels with each other, provided that the Organization Administrator or Channel Administrator gives access to the custom channel in the channel sharing configuration.
    • Organization Administrators can now migrate systems from one trusted organization to another. The system configuration history (such as entitlements, software and configuration channels, and virtual guest associations) are preserved. The destination organization can then configure the system for their purposes.
    For more information about multiple organizations feature, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.
  • RHN Satellite now supports automated system installation via the cobbler installation server. Administrators can use Cobbler to store, manage, and automate several aspects of system installation and provisioning, from package installation and channel subscription to DHCP and DNS configuration. Administrators can also use the koan tool to re-provision existing systems and guests in a virtualized system. For more information about using Cobbler and Koan, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.

    Note

    Installation of cobbler packages overwrites existing files in the /tftpboot/ directory. If you intend to continue running PXE services on RHN Satellite 5.3.0 server, you must backup and rename the existing /tftpboot/ directory before installing or upgrading to Satellite 5.3.0.
  • RHN Satellite now features Inter-Satellite Sync support, which allows Satellite Administrators to synchronize channel content from one master Satellite server to one or more slave Satellites, regardless of location. For more information about using Inter-Satellite Sync, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Installation Guide.
  • Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3.0 now allows users to install RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server server within a VMWare guest system, in addition to support for installation on Xen guests from previous Red Hat Network Satellite releases.
  • New and updated search features are now available in RHN Satellite 5.3.0, including:
    • Improvements to the errata and system search are now available. Errata can now be queried using a Free Form search that supports using field names to restrict results to certain keywords such as package name, package description, filename, and more.
    • Search results have been improved with fuzzy string support, which will display approximate matches to find results that are spelled similarly to the queried term.
      A Documentation Search feature has been added to the Satellite Help page. You can search all of the RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server documentation, including the Reference Guide, the Installation Guide for both Satellite and Proxy, the Release Notes, and more
    For more information about using search, refer to the Red Hat Network Satellite Reference Guide.
  • The RHN Satellite Application Programming Interface (API) has been expanded and now features several new calls, including new calls for the multiple organizations feature, Cobbler installation server, and system and errata search.
  • RHN Proxy Server now supports command-line installation via the configure-proxy.sh program, which allows administrators to install RHN Proxy Server through a series of interactive prompts. For more information on using the command-line installation program, refer to the Red Hat Network Proxy Installation Guide.
  • RHN Satellite now supports multiple architectures within a single registered system that is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8.0 or later and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.0 or later. RHN Satellite now displays the architecture of installed or available packages when queried along with package names; and users have a choice to install, update, or remove packages according to architecture.
  • RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server now feature support for SELinux targeted policy in enforcing or permissive on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.0 or later. SELinux is a set of secure software policies that implement mandatory access control to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other operating systems. SELinux is activated by default on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and now users can have SELinux in enforcing or permissive mode with the targeted policy during installation of Proxy or Satellite.

    Note

    Installation on an SELinux system is only supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3.0 or later, and is not supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.
  • SELinux modules that support Monitoring of RHN Satellite and RHN Proxy Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are now available. Note that because this feature is a Technology Preview, it may not be functionally complete and is currently not supported for production use.
    For more information, refer to http://kbase.redhat.com and use the keyword "SELinux Monitoring".
  • RHN Satellite now supports Solaris for UltraSPARC T1 (sun4v) and X86_64 processors.