Chapter 9. Monitoring Hosts Using Red Hat Insights

In this chapter, you can find information about creating host monitoring reports and monitoring your hosts using Red Hat Insights and creating an Insights plan.

9.1. Using Red Hat Insights with Hosts in Satellite

You can use Red Hat Insights to diagnose systems and downtime related to security exploits, performance degradation and stability failures. You can use the dashboard to quickly identify key risks to stability, security, and performance. You can sort by category, view details of the impact and resolution, and then determine what systems are affected.

To use Red Hat Insights to monitor hosts that you manage with Satellite, you must first install Red Hat Insights on your hosts and register your hosts with Red Hat Insights.

For new Satellite hosts, you can install and configure Satellite hosts with Insights during registration using the global registration template. For more information, see Registering a Host to Red Hat Satellite Using the Global Registration Template in Managing Hosts.

To install and register your host using Puppet, or manually, see Red Hat Insights Getting Started.

Red Hat Insights Information Available for Hosts

Additional information is available about hosts through Red Hat Insights.

You can find this information in two places:

  • In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Configure > Insights where the vertical ellipsis next to the Remediate button provides a View in Red Hat Insights link to the general recommendations page. On each recommendation line, the vertical ellipsis provide a View in Red Hat Insights link to the recommendation rule, and, if one is available for that recommendation, a Knowledgebase article link.
  • For additional information, navigate to Hosts > All hosts. If the host has recommendations listed, click on the number of recommendations. On the Insights tab, the vertical ellipsis next to the Remediate button provide a Go To Satellite Insights page link to information for the system, and a View in Red Hat Insights link to host details on the console.

Excluding hosts from rh-cloud and insights-client reports

You can set the host_registration_insights parameter to False to omit rh-cloud and insight-client reports. Satellite will exclude the hosts from rh-cloud reports and block insight-client from uploading a report to the cloud.

You can also set this parameter at the organization, hostgroup, subnet, and domain level. It automatically prevents new reports from being uploaded as long as they are associated with the entity.

If you set the parameter to false on a host that is already reported on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud, it will be still removed automatically from the inventory. However, this process can take some time to complete.

Deploying Red Hat Insights using the Ansible Role

You can automate the installation and registration of hosts with Red Hat Insights using the RedHatInsights.insights-client Ansible role. For more information about adding this role to your Satellite, see Getting Started with Ansible in Satellite in Managing Configurations Using Ansible Integration in Red Hat Satellite.

  1. Add the RedHatInsights.insights-client role to the hosts.

    For new hosts, see Section 2.1, “Creating a Host in Red Hat Satellite”.

    For existing hosts, see Using Ansible Roles to Automate Repetitive Tasks on Clients in Managing Configurations Using Ansible Integration in Red Hat Satellite.

  2. To run the RedHatInsights.insights-client role on your host, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts and click the name of the host that you want to use.
  3. Click the Run Ansible roles button.

You must set up the API token for Insights before continuing. For further information, see Red Hat API Tokens.

You can manually synchronize the recommendations using the following procedure:

  1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Configure > Insights.
  2. Click the Start Recommendations Sync button.

If you have not set up the API token, you are prompted to create one before using this page.

Additional Information

  • To view the logs for Red Hat Insights and all plug-ins, go to /var/log/foreman/production.log.
  • If you have problems connecting to Red Hat Insights, ensure that your certificates are up-to-date. Refresh your subscription manifest to update your certificates.
  • You can change the default schedule for running insights-client by configuring insights-client.timer on a host. For more information, see Changing the insights-client schedule in the Client Configuration Guide for Red Hat Insights.

9.2. Creating an Insights Plan for Hosts

With Satellite, you can create a Red Hat Insights remediation plan and run the plan on Satellite hosts.

Procedure

  1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Configure > Insights.

  2. On the Red Hat Insights page, select the number of recommendations that you want to include in an Insights plan.

    You can only select the recommendations that have an associated playbook.

  3. Click Remediate.
  4. In the Remediation Summary window, you can select the Resolutions to apply. Use the Filter field to search for specific keywords.
  5. Click Remediate.
  6. In the Job Invocation page, do not change the contents of precompleted fields.
  7. Optional. For more advanced configuration of the Remote Execution Job, click Show Advanced Fields.
  8. Select the Type of query you require.
  9. Select the Schedule you require.
  10. Click Submit.

Alternatively:

  1. In the Satellite web UI, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts.
  2. Select a host.
  3. On the Host details page, click Recommendations.
  4. On the Red Hat Insights page, select the number of recommendations you want to include in an Insights plan and proceed as before.

In the Jobs window, you can view the progress of your plan.