3.3. ISS Use Cases

ISS can be used in several different ways, depending on the needs of the organization. This section provides examples of how ISS can be used and the methods for setting up and operating these cases.

Example 3.4. Staging Satellite

This example uses one Satellite as a staging Satellite to prepare content and perform quality assurance on the packages to ensure they are fit for production use. When content is approved to go to production, the production satellite can synchronize the content from the stage satellite.
  1. Run the satellite-sync command to synchronize data with rhn_parent (usually Red Hat Network Hosted): 
    satellite-sync -c your-channel
  2. Run the following command to synchronize data from the staging server: 
    satellite-sync --iss-parent=staging-satellite.example.com -c custom-channel

Example 3.5. Synchronized Slaves

In this example, the master satellite provides data directly to the slaves and changes are regularly synchronized.

Example 3.6. Slave Custom Content

This example uses the master satellite as a development channel, from which content is distributed to all production slave satellites. Some of the slave satellites have extra content that is not present in the master satellite channels. These packages are preserved, but all changes from master satellite are synchronized to the slaves.

Example 3.7. Bi-directional sync

In this environment, two RHN Satellite servers act as masters of each other and can synchronize content between them.
  1. Ensure both Satellites can share SSL certificates.
  2. On the first satellite, open the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf file and set the iss_parent option to point to the hostname of the second Satellite.
  3. On the second Satellite, open the /etc/rhn/rhn.conf file and set the iss_parent option to point to the hostname of the first Satellite.