Chapter 1. Introduction

Provisioning is the process of configuring a physical or virtual machine to a predefined known state. Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite provisions systems using the kickstart process. To use the provisioning functionality, one or more target machines are required. The target machines can be either physical, bare metal systems, or virtual machines. To use RHN Satellite's virtual machine provisioning functionality, create the virtual machines using either Xen or KVM.

Definitions

Some terms used throughout this book:
Kickstarting
The process of installing a Red Hat system in an automated manner requiring little or no user intervention. Technically, kickstart refers to a mechanism in the Anaconda installation program that allows concise description of the contents and configuration of a machine to be written into the installer, which it then acts on. Such a concise system definition is referred to as a Kickstart profile.
Kickstart profile
The kickstart file is a text file that specifies all of the options needed to kickstart a machine, including partitioning information, network configuration, and packages to install. In RHN Satellite, a Kickstart Profile is a superset of a traditional Anaconda kickstart definition, as Satellite's implementation builds on Cobbler's enhancements to kickstarting. A Kickstart Profile presumes the existence of a Kickstart Tree.
Kickstart Tree
The software and support files needed in order to kickstart a machine. This is also often called an "install tree". This is usually the directory structure and files pulled from the installation media that ships with a particular release. In Cobbler terminology, a Kickstart Tree is part of a distribution.
PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment)
A low-level protocol that makes it possible to kickstart bare-metal machines (usually physical, or real, machines) on power-up with no pre-configuration of the target machine itself. PXE relies on a DHCP server to inform clients about bootstrap servers (for purposes of this document, Satellite 5.5 or greater installations). PXE must be supported in the firmware of the target machine in order to be used. It is possible to use the virtualization and reinstall facilities of Satellite without PXE, though PXE is very useful for booting new physical machines, or reinstalling machines that are not registered to Satellite.

Provisioning Scenarios

The types of provisioning scenarios supported by RHN Satellite:
New installations
Provisioning a system that has not previously had an operating system installed (also known as bare metal installations).
Virtual installations
Satellite supports KVM, Xen fully-virtualized guests, and Xen para-virtualized guests.
Re-provisioning
Both physical and guest systems can be re-provisioned, provided that they have been registered to the same Satellite instance. See Section 2.5.2, “Reprovisioning”.