Chapter 1. Introduction to Red Hat Satellite

Red Hat Satellite is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) application that provides tools to update systems within hybrid clouds. Satellite is a systems management server that can be used to configure new systems, subscribe to updates, and maintain installations in distributed environments. It provides content, manages Red Hat entitlements, performs provisioning and configuration management of predefined standard operating environments.

1.1. The Red Hat Satellite API

Red Hat Satellite provides a Representational State Transfer (REST) API. The API provides software developers and system administrators with control over their Red Hat Satellite environment outside of the standard web interface. The REST API is useful for developers and administrators who aim to integrate the functionality of Red Hat Satellite with custom scripts or external applications that access the API over HTTP.

Note

The full API reference is available at https://satellite6.example.com/apidoc/v2.html on your Satellite 6 server. Be aware that even though versions 1 and 2 of the Satellite 6 API are available, Red Hat only supports version 2.
The benefits of the REST API are:
  • Broad client support: Any programming language, framework, or system with support for HTTP protocol can use the API;
  • Self descriptive: Client applications require minimal knowledge of the Red Hat Satellite infrastructure as many details are discovered at runtime;
  • Resource-based model: The resource-based REST model provides a natural way to manage a virtualization platform.
This provides developers and administrators the ability to:
  • integrate with enterprise IT systems;
  • integrate with third-party applications;
  • perform automated maintenance or error checking tasks; and
  • automate repetitive tasks with scripts.
This documentation aims to provide developers and administrators with instructions and examples to help harness the functionality of Red Hat Satellite through the REST APIs. The full API reference is available at https://hostname/apidoc/v2.html on your Satellite 6 server.