Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat Satellite

1.4. Summary of Steps

A functional Red Hat Satellite requires more than installing software and a database. Client systems require configuration to use the Red Hat Satellite. Creation of custom channels for custom packages is also recommended. Since these tasks extend beyond the basic installation, they are covered in greater detail in other guides of the Red Hat Satellite documentation suite.
This section provides a list of all required and recommended steps, from evaluation through custom package deployment. They should take place in the following order:
  1. Obtaining Red Hat Satellite

    1. After an evaluation, contact your Red Hat sales representative to purchase Red Hat Satellite.
    2. Receive a Red Hat Network Entitlement Certificate and login information for Red Hat Network from your sales representative.
    3. Log into the Red Hat Customer Portal website (access.redhat.com) and download the distribution ISOs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Satellite. These can be found on the Download Software page under DownloadsRed Hat Enterprise LinuxDownloads.
    4. While still logged into the Customer Portal, download the Channel Content ISOs to be served by your Red hat Satellite. These are also available through the Download Software page under DownloadsRed Hat Enterprise LinuxDownloads. These Channel Content ISOs differ from the distribution ISOs previously mentioned in that they contain metadata necessary for parsing and serving packages by Red Hat Satellite.
  2. Preparing Red Hat Satellite

    1. Check your software requirements. See Section 2.1, “Software Requirements”.
    2. If installing Red Hat Satellite with an Embedded Database:
    3. If installing Red Hat Satellite with a Managed Database:
    4. If installing Red Hat Satellite with an External Database:
  3. Installing Red Hat Satellite

    1. Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the host.
    2. Check any pre-installation steps before installing Red Hat Satellite.
    3. Mount the Red Hat Satellite installation media to the host and run the Red Hat Satellite Installation Script.
    4. Follow the prompts as outlined in the installation instructions.
    5. Open Red Hat Satellite's web interface in a web browser and create the first user account. This is the Administrator account (also referred to as the Organization Administrator).
    6. Finalize Red Hat Satellite with any post-installation steps.
  4. Initial Use

    1. Use the Red Hat Satellite Synchronization Tool to import the channels and associated packages into the Red Hat Satellite.
    2. Register a representative machine for each distribution type or channel (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or 6) to the Red Hat Satellite.
    3. Copy (using scp) rhn_register configuration files from the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/ directory of each machine individually to the /pub/ directory on the Red Hat Satellite. The rhn-org-trusted-ssl-cert-*.noarch.rpm will already be there.
    4. Download and install from the Red Hat Satellite the configuration files and rhn-org-trusted-ssl-cert-*.noarch.rpm on the remaining client systems of the same distribution type. Repeat this and the previous step until all distribution types are complete.
    5. Through the Red Hat Satellite's web interface, create an Activation Key for each distribution aligned to the appropriate base channel. At this point, system groups and child channels may also be predefined.
    6. Run the Activation Key from the command line (rhnreg_ks) of each client system. Note that this step can be scripted to batch register and reconfigure all remaining client systems in a distribution.
    7. Record all relevant usernames, passwords and other login information and store in multiple secure places.
    8. Now that the Red Hat Satellite is populated with standard Red Hat channels and packages and all clients are connected to it, begin creating and serving custom channels and packages. Import these custom RPMs into the Red Hat Satellite using Red Hat Network Push and add custom channels in which to store them through the Red Hat Satellite web interface. See the Red Hat Satellite Channel Management Guide for details.