The application life cycle defines how a particular system and its software are provisioned at a particular stage. For example, an application life cycle might be simple, and only contain two stages, such as the following:

However, a more complex application life cycle might have further stages, such as a phase for testing or a beta release. This adds extra stages to the application life cycle:

The Satellite Server allows you to provision new hosts at any stage of the application life cycle. For example, to create a set of hosts for product development, you provision a set of hosts within the Development environment. Likewise, to create a set of hosts for product testing, you provision a set of hosts within the Testing environments.

Red Hat Satellite 6 provides different methods for provisioning hosts. This includes:

This guide follows on from the scenario in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide. In this guide, a software development company called ACME aims to use Red Hat Satellite 6 to provision new systems using a variety of provisioning types. The goal is to provide multiple use case scenarios that ACME can follow to achieve their provisioning purpose.

At this point, ACME has a Satellite Server synchronized with content from Red Hat’s Content Delivery Network and other sources. Likewise, your own Satellite Server should contain synchronized content before any provisioning attempts, which is why it is recommended to follow the scenario in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide before following this guide.

This guide provides steps for using either the Red Hat Satellite 6 Web UI or its CLI tool (hammer). Use either depending on your preferred method of interacting with Red Hat Satellite 6. If you are using the CLI and you do not want to include authentication details each time you run the hammer command, create a CLI configuration file for the local user:

mkdir ~/.hammer
cat > .hammer/cli_config.yml <<EOF
:foreman:
    :host: 'https://satellite.example.com/'
    :username: 'admin'
    :password: 'p@55w0rd!'

EOF

In this chapter, we explored the concept of provisioning in the context of Red Hat Satellite 6. This included discussing how provisioning fits into the Red Hat Satellite 6 application life cycle. This chapter also provided a brief summary of different provisioning types in Red Hat Satellite 6. This provides multiple provisioning scenarios that this guide explores in future chapters.

The next chapter looks at defining our provisioning context, which you define using organizations and locations.

A provisioning context defines the organization and location to use for a host and its associated resources. In other words, the combination of organization and location defines who owns the system and where it is located.

Organizations divide Red Hat Satellite 6 resources into logical groups based on ownership, purpose, content, security level, or other divisions. You can create and manage multiple organizations through Red Hat Satellite 6 and assign resources to each individual organization. This ensures the Satellite Server provisions hosts within a certain organization and only uses resources assigned to that organization. For more information about organizations, see Creating Organizations in the Content Management Guide.

Locations function similar to organizations in that they provide a method to group resources and assign hosts. The difference is that locations are based on physical or geographical setting. In addition, users can nest locations in a hierarchy. For example, consider the following location map:

This example uses nine data centers spread across three cities. The Satellite Server manages resources and provisions hosts in each data center.

This scenario uses a simple provisioning context. The Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide shows how to create an organization for ACME, which we also use for scenarios in this guide. This guide also shows how to create a location.

This procedure shows how to create an organization. This procedure is also contained in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide. If you followed the organization creation scenario in that guide and already have an organization, you do not need to follow this procedure. Note that some modifications to the organization are required, which require you to edit the organization’s properties.

Click New Organization.

A creation wizard appears with three sections:

After completing your organization creation, click Submit.

# hammer organization create --name "ACME" --label "ACME" \
--description "Our example organization"

This creates our example organization.

This procedure shows how to create a location, which helps define the provisioning context for new hosts and their resources.

Click New Location.

A creation wizard appears with three sections:

After completing your location creation, click Submit.

# hammer location create --name "New York" \
--description "Our example location"

This creates our example location.

Before provisioning in Red Hat Satellite 6, we must set the context. A context defines which organization and location to use for provisioning new systems. In addition, any new infrastructure resources are added to this context.

# hammer host list --organization "ACME" --location "New York"

This sets the context for each interaction through the CLI.

This chapter showed how to create new organizations and locations, and set them as our context for provisioning.

The next chapter explores some of the resources that compose the Red Hat Satellite 6 provisioning infrastructure.

Installation media are sources of files the Satellite Server uses to install the base operating system on a machine. Installation media must be in the format of an operating system installation tree, and must be accessible to the machine hosting the installer through a HTTP URL. Available installation media appears in the Hosts > Installation Media menu.

Importing kickstart trees from Red Hat’s CDN creates new entries in the Installation Media page. This process is described in Selecting Red Hat Repositories to Synchronize in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide. For installation media that has been synchronized from a repository, there is no need to define it manually. The installation media will be available as Synced content in the Operating System tab when creating a host or a host group.

For other installation media, for example, a locally mounted ISO image, users can add their own custom media paths using the following procedure:

The Satellite Server adds the installation medium to the current provisioning context. You can choose additional contexts from the Organizations and Locations tabs, which will help with future debugging.

Click Submit to save your installation medium.

# hammer medium create --name "CustomOS" --os-family "Redhat" \
--path 'http://download.example.com/rhel/$version/Server/$arch/os/' \
--organizations "ACME" --locations "New York"

A partition table is a set of directives that defines the way the Satellite Server configures the disks available on a new host. Red Hat Satellite 6 contains a set of default partition tables to use, including a Kickstart default. You can also edit partition table entries to configure the preferred partitioning scheme, or create a new partition table entry and add it to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system entry.

Satellite adds the partition table to the current provisioning context. You can choose additional contexts from the Organizations and Locations tabs.

Click Submit to save your partition table.

# hammer partition-table create --name "My Partition" --snippet false \
--os-family Redhat --file ~/my-partition --organizations "ACME" \
--locations "New York"

A provisioning template defines the way the Satellite Server installs an operating system on a host. There are various types of provisioning templates, including:

Red Hat Satellite includes many template examples. Navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates to view them. You can clone and adjust any of them, or create your own. Templates accept the Embedded Ruby (ERB) syntax, for more information see Template Writing Reference in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Host Configuration Guide.

Provisioning templates can be downloaded. In order to be allowed to do that, you will need to create a debug certificate first, see Creating an Organization Debug Certificate in the Red Hat Satellite 6 Server Administration Guide.

Satellite adds the provisioning template to the current provisioning context. You can choose additional contexts from the Organizations and Locations tabs.

Click Submit to save your provisioning template.

# hammer template create --name "My Provisioning Template" \
--file ~/my-template --type provision --organizations "ACME" \
--locations "New York"

An operating system is a collection of resources that define how the Satellite Server installs a base operating system on a host. Operating system entries combine previously defined resources, such as installation media, partition tables, provisioning templates, and others.

Importing operating systems from Red Hat’s CDN creates new entries in the Hosts > Operating Systems page. Users can also add custom operating systems using the following procedure:

Click Submit to save your provisioning template.

# hammer os create --name "MyOS" \
--description "My custom operating system" \
--major 7 --minor 3 --family "Redhat" --architectures "x86_64" \
--partition-tables "My Partition" --media "Red Hat" \
--provisioning-templates "My Provisioning Template"

Note the following:

Compute profiles are used in conjunction with compute resources, such as virtualization infrastructure and cloud providers. Compute profiles allow users to predefine hardware such as CPUs, memory, and storage. A default installation of Red Hat Satellite 6 contains three predefined profiles:

For our example, we create a fourth profile called 4-Example.

Enter the Name of the profile (for example 4-Example) and click Submit.

Before creating new hosts, it is recommended to have an activation key. This activation key is used to register systems in the provisioning scenarios. For the scenarios in this guide, the aim is to create an example activation key to attach subscriptions and repositories from the Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide.

Click Save. The activation key details screen displays.

Now we must define which products to attach and repositories to enable upon registration. Navigate to the Subscriptions tab. An empty subscription listing appears. Click Add, select both the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, and click Add Selected.

Navigate to the Product Content page. This displays all the repositories associated with the activation key’s products. As default, the Satellite Server only enables:

Our scenario should have the following defaults set:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server:

Enable the Red Hat Satellite Tools repository because that contains the configuration tools (such as katello-agent and puppet). Change it to the following:

Click Save

# hammer activation-key create --name "example" \
--unlimited-content-hosts true --description "Example activation key" \
--lifecycle-environment "Production" --content-view "Base"  \
--organization "ACME"

Obtain a list of your subscription IDs:

# hammer subscription list --organization "ACME"

Attach the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription UUID to the activation key:

# hammer activation-key add-subscription --name "example" \
--subscription-id ff808181533518d50152354246e901aa \
--organization "ACME"

List the product content associated with the activation key:

# hammer activation-key product-content --name "example" \
--organization "ACME"

Override the default auto-enable status for the Red Hat Satellite Tools 6.2 repository. The default status is set to disabled. This command enables it:

# hammer activation-key content-override --name "example" \
--content-label rhel-7-server-satellite-tools-6.2-rpms \
--value 1 --organization "ACME"

The example activation key is ready for registering our provisioned systems.

In this chapter, we examined the resources used for provisioning new hosts. This includes installation media, partition tables, provisioning templates, compute profiles, and activation keys. Future scenarios in this guide show how to apply these resources to the host provisioning process.

The next chapter looks at configuring our network infrastructures for provisioning.

The following items should be checked when troubleshooting a virtual machine booted from an image that depends on post-configuration scripts:

The following items should be checked when troubleshooting a virtual machine booted from an image that depends on initialization scripts included in the image:

For information on the differing levels of support for finish and cloud-init scripts in virtual-machine images, see the Red Hat Knowledgebase Solution What are the supported compute resources for the finish and cloud-init scripts on the Red Hat Customer Portal.

Some of our provisioning methods use Capsule Server services for various purposes. For example, a network might require the Capsule Server to act as a DHCP server. A network might also require PXE boot services as a means to install the operating system to new hosts. This requires configuring the Capsule Server to use the main PXE boot services: DHCP, DNS, and TFTP. To accomplish this, we run the satellite-installer script with the options to configure these services.

In this example, ACME aims to connect the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule to a provisioning network to provide PXE boot services. The Satellite Server uses the following NIC configuration:

# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:33:e3:1c brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.125.35/24 brd 192.168.125.255 scope global dynamic ens3
       valid_lft 3042sec preferred_lft 3042sec
    inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fe33:e31c/64 scope link
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: eth1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
   link/ether 52:54:00:fd:24:ae brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
   inet 192.168.140.2/24 brd 192.168.140.255 scope global ens8
      valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
   inet6 fe80::5054:ff:fefd:24ae/64 scope link
      valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

The Satellite Server uses eth0 for external communication, such as connection to Red Hat’s CDN. ACME aims to use the eth1 interface to connect to a private provisioning network for hosts using the 192.168.140.0/24 subnet. The goal is for the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule to act as a DHCP, DNS, and TFTP server for new hosts on this network.

For this example, the satellite-installer script uses the following options to configure these services:

The following is an example configuration command:

# satellite-installer --foreman-proxy-dhcp true \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-gateway "192.168.140.1" \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-interface "eth1" \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-nameservers "192.168.140.2" \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-range "192.168.140.10 192.168.140.110" \
--foreman-proxy-dhcp-server "192.168.140.2" \
--foreman-proxy-dns true \
--foreman-proxy-dns-forwarders "8.8.8.8; 4.4.4.4" \
--foreman-proxy-dns-interface "eth1" \
--foreman-proxy-dns-reverse "140.168.192.in-addr.arpa" \
--foreman-proxy-dns-server "192.168.140.2" \
--foreman-proxy-dns-zone "example.com" \
--foreman-proxy-tftp true

The satellite-installer script applies these configuration options and sets up the required network services. After the configuration completes, use the hammer proxy info command to verify these services on the chosen Capsule Server. In this example, we use satellite.example.com as the domain name of the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule:

# hammer proxy info --name "satellite.example.com"

The output shows a list of enabled features, including DNS, DHCP, and TFTP:

Features:
    Pulp
    TFTP
    DNS
    DHCP
    Puppet
    Puppet CA
    Dynflow
    SSH

The Satellite Server defines domain names for each host on the network. This means the Satellite Server needs to know about the domain and the Capsule Server responsible for domain name assignment. For this example, we create the example.com domain for ACME’s internal network.

# hammer domain create --name "example.com" \
--description "ACME's example domain" --dns_id 1 \
--locations "New York" --organizations "ACME"

The Satellite Server configures interfaces for new hosts. This is why the Satellite Server needs to know about the network that connects these interfaces. This means you must add information for each of your subnets into the Satellite Server. This includes information such as the gateway, DHCP, and DNS. For this example, we create a subnet mapping for the ‘192.168.140.0/24’ network, which the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule manages.

Click Submit to save the subnet information.

# hammer subnet create --name "ACME's Internal Network" \
--network "192.168.140.0" --mask "255.255.255.0" \
--gateway "192.168.140.1" --dns-primary "192.168.140.2" \
--dns-secondary "8.8.8.8" --ipam "DHCP" \
--from "192.168.140.111" --to "192.168.140.250" --boot-mode "DHCP" \
--domains "example.com" --dhcp-id 1 --dns-id 1 --tftp-id 1 \
--locations "New York" --organizations "ACME"

In this chapter, we examined how to configure certain network services on the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule and map the domain and subnet details of the network that the Satellite Server controls. This provides a network for our new hosts and provides the hosts with key services, such as PXE booting and network configuration.

The next chapter looks at the basic provisioning workflow, which includes how to create new hosts and host groups.

The provisioning process follows a basic workflow that is outlined as the following:

This workflow differs depending on certain options, which are explored in detail in later chapters. For example:

To configure host provisioning, start with creating a host entry on Satellite Server. You can achieve this through either the Web UI or the Hammer CLI. This provides the fundamentals for host provisioning, which you can use as a reference for later chapters on specific provisioning methods.

In the Host tab, you define the main details about the host and its placement.

In the Puppet Classes tab, you select which Puppet classes to apply to the host after provisioning. These classes are taken from the Content View and Puppet environment selected on the Hosts tab. The Included Classes section shows the classes to apply to the host and the Available Classes section shows what classes you can add to the host.

In the Interfaces tab, you define the network interface configuration for the host. Click Add Interface to create a new interface or Edit to edit a specific interface. New or modified interfaces use a form with the following fields:

In the Operating System tab, you define the operating system and related aspects to install on the host. You select the host’s Architecture and then choose an Operating System related to that architecture. The form provides further options based on the chosen operating system:

In the Parameters tab, you set variable data for both the provisioning process and Puppet configuration. The Puppet class parameters section allows you to modify data sent to Puppet’s parameters. The Global parameters and Host parameters define custom parameters that you can use within the Satellite Server, such as provisioning templates.

In the Additional Information tab, you define miscellaneous data about the host including it’s owner, whether to include it in reporting, the hardware model, and any additional comments.

To save the host entry, click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "testhost" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --environment "Test" --architecture "x86_64" \
--build true --domain "example.com" --enabled true \
--mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" --subnet "ACME's Internal Network" \
--managed true --medium "Red Hat Kickstart Tree" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --owner admin \
--partition-table "Kickstart Default" \
--puppet-proxy "satellite.example.com" \
--puppet-ca-proxy "satellite.example.com" --root-password "p@55w0rd!"

Use the --interface option to configure specific interface settings. See Appendix B, Additional Host Parameters for Hammer CLI for more information. You can also define specific network interface configurations with the hammer host interface create command. Use the --host or --host-id options to choose the host that receives the interface. For example:

# hammer host interface create --host "testhost" --type interface \
--mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" --identifier "eth0" --name "testhost" \
--domain "example.com" --subnet "ACME's Internal Network" \
--managed true --primary true --provision true

This procedure acts as foundation for most provisioning methods. However, the process of defining all this information for each host is time consuming. Therefore, it is recommended to create a host group to define common settings among all hosts.

If provisioning many hosts, it is time consuming to enter all host details each time. However, Red Hat Satellite 6 uses the concept of host groups to help reduce the time to provision a host.

A host group acts as a template for common host settings. It contains a lot of the same details that you provide to hosts. When you provision a new host with a host group, the host inherits the defined settings from the host group. You can then provide additional details where necessary to individualize the host.

In addition, you can create a hierarchy of host groups. Typically, you will aim to have one base level host group that will represent all hosts in your organization and provide general settings, and then nested groups to provide specific settings. For example, you can have a base host level (parent) group that defines the operating system, and two nested (child) host groups that inherit the base level host group:

In this example, all provisioned hosts use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 as their operating system due to their inheritance of the Base host group. The two web server hosts inherit the settings from the Webserver host group, which includes the httpd Puppet class and the settings from the Base host group. Likewise, the two storage servers inherit the settings from the Storage host group, which includes the nfs Puppet class and the settings from the Base host group. The custom host only inherits the settings from the Base host group.

This scenario shows how to create a host group for ACME. Later chapters in this guide use this host group to help with the provisioning process.

Click Submit to save the host group.

# hammer hostgroup create --name "Base" \
--lifecycle-environment "Production" --content-view "Base" \
--environment "production" --content-source-id 1 \
--puppet-ca-proxy-id 1 --puppet-proxy-id 1 --domain "example.com" \
--subnet `ACME's Internal Network` --architecture "x86_64" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --medium-id 9 \
--partition-table "Kickstart default" --root-pass "p@55w0rd!" \
--locations "New York" --organizations "ACME"

The server creates the host group entry. This scenario uses this host group for provisioning examples.

This chapter showed the basic workflow for creating new hosts entries in Red Hat Satellite 6. This chapter also demonstrated how to create a host group to predefine certain parameters when creating new hosts.

The next chapter explores how to provision bare metal hosts. We use the Base host group to predefine settings for hosts in the next chapter.

The requirements for bare metal provisioning include:

Unattended provisioning is the simplest form of host provisioning. This method requires you to enter the host details on the Satellite Server and boot your host. The Satellite Server automatically manages the PXE configuration, organizes networking services, and provides the operating system and configuration for the host. This method of provisioning hosts uses minimal interaction during the process.

This scenario demonstrates how to provision a host on ACME’s private network. In this example, the bare metal host connects to ACME’s private network at 192.168.140.0/24 and uses an interface with aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa as the MAC address.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "baremetal-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" --mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" \
--build true --enabled true --managed true

Ensure our network interface options are set using the hammer host interface update command. For example:

# hammer host interface update --host "test1" --managed true \
--primary true --provision true

This creates the host entry and the relevant provisioning settings. This also includes creating the necessary directories and files for PXE booting the bare metal host. If you power the physical host and set its boot mode to PXE, the host detects the DHCP service of the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule and starts installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 from its kickstart tree. When installation completes, the host also registers to the Satellite Server using the example activation key and installs the necessary configuration and management tools from the Red Hat Satellite Tools repository.

Red Hat Satellite provides a Discovery feature. This provides a method to automatically detect blank hosts on a network. These hosts boot a special image that performs hardware detection and relays this information back to the Satellite Server. This provides a method to create a pool of ready-to-provision hosts on the Satellite Server and without needing to enter the MAC address of each host.

Enable the plugin using the --enable-foreman-plugin-discovery option with the satellite-installer command:

# satellite-installer --enable-foreman-plugin-discovery

This installs and enables the Discovery service plugin on the Satellite Server. After installation completes, install the following packages:

# yum install foreman-discovery-image rubygem-smart_proxy_discovery

After installation completes, a new menu option appears in the Satellite Server’s Web UI under Hosts > Discovered hosts.

LABEL discovery
   MENU LABEL (discovery)
   KERNEL boot/fdi-image-rhel_7-vmlinuz
   APPEND initrd=boot/fdi-image-rhel_7-img rootflags=loop root=live:/fdi.iso rootfstype=auto ro rd.live.image acpi=force rd.luks=0 rd.md=0 rd.dm=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.bootif=0 rd.neednet=0 nomodeset proxy.url=https://SATELLITE_CAPSULE_URL:9090 proxy.type=proxy
   IPAPPEND 2

The KERNEL and APPEND options boot the Discovery image and ramdisk. Also note the APPEND option contains a proxy.url parameter, which specifies the URL of the Capsule Server to use for provisioning. Edit the SATELLITE_CAPSULE_URL to the name of the provisioning capsule that you want. In this scenario, it is the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule:

proxy.url=https://satellite.example.com:9090

ONTIMEOUT discovery

You need to push the changes from the PXELinux global default template to the Satellite Server’s default PXE template. Navigate to Hosts > Provisioning templates and click Build PXE Default. This refreshes the default PXE template on the Satellite Server.

Navigate to Infrastructure > Subnets, select a subnet, click the Capsules tab, and select the Discovery Proxy that you want to use. Perform this for each appropriate subnet.

Select (discovery) to boot the Discovery image. After a few minutes, the Discovery image completes booting and shows a status screen.

Navigate to Hosts > Discovered hosts and the list includes the newly discovered host. The discovered hosts automatically define their host name based on their MAC address. For example, Satellite sets a discovered host with a MAC address of ab:cd:ef:12:34:56 to have macabcdef123456 as the host name. You can change this host name when provisioning the host.

Provisioning discovered hosts follows the same basic provisioning process. The difference is we identify the host to provision from the list of discovered hosts instead of manually entering the host’s MAC address.

Click Submit.

# hammer discovery list

Select a host and provision it using the Base host group. Set a new host name with the --new-name options:

# hammer host create --name "macaaaaaaaaaaaa" \
--new-name "baremetal-test2" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" --build true \
--enabled true --managed true

This removes the host from the discovered host listing and creates a host entry with the relevant provisioning settings. The Discovery image automatically resets the host so that it can boot to PXE. The host detects the DHCP service on the Satellite Server’s Integrated Capsule and starts installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 from its kickstart tree. When installation completes, the host also registers to the Satellite Server using the example activation key and installs the necessary configuration and management tools from the Red Hat Satellite Tools repository.

As a method of automating the provisioning process for discovered hosts, Red Hat Satellite 6 provides a feature to create discovery rules. These rules define how discovered hosts automatically provision themselves, based on the assigned host group. For example, you might aim to automatically provision hosts with a high CPU count as hypervisors. Likewise, you might aim to provision hosts with large hard disks as storage servers.

The Satellite Server uses current provisioning context for the rule. You can choose additional contexts from the Organizations and Locations tabs.

Click Submit to save your rule.

Navigate to Hosts > Discovered host and select either:

# hammer discovery_rule create --name "Hypervisor" \
--search "cpu_count  > 8" --hostgroup "Base" \
--hostname "hypervisor-<%= rand(99999) %>" \
--hosts-limit 5 --priority 5 --enabled true

Automatically provision a host with the hammer discovery auto-provision command:

# hammer discovery auto-provision --name "macabcdef123456"

Some hardware does not provide a PXE boot interface. However, it is possible to provision a new host in Red Hat Satellite 6 without the need for PXE boot. This involves generating a boot ISO that hosts can use. This ISO enables the host to connect to the Satellite Server, boot the installation media, and install the operating system. The process for creating a boot ISO for a host follows the same basic provisioning process. The difference is you generate an ISO file from the new host entry.

Click Submit.

This creates a host entry and the host details page appears. The options on the top-right of the page show a Boot disk menu, which provides:

# hammer host create --name "baremetal-test3" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" --mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" \
--build true --enabled true --managed true

Ensure our network interface options are set using the hammer host interface update command. For example:

# hammer host interface update --host "test3" --managed true \
--primary true --provision true

Download the boot disk from Satellite Server with the hammer bootdisk host command:

# hammer bootdisk host --host test3.example.com

Use the --full option to download the full host image.

# hammer bootdisk host --host test3.example.com --full true

Download the generic image with the hammer bootdisk generic command:

# hammer bootdisk generic

This creates a boot ISO for your host to use. If you power the physical host and boot from the ISO, the host connects to the Satellite Server and starts installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 from its kickstart tree. When installation completes, the host also registers to the Satellite Server using the example activation key and installs the necessary configuration and management tools from the Red Hat Satellite Tools repository.

Red Hat Satellite 6 also provides a PXE-less Discovery service that operates without the need for PXE-based services (DHCP and TFTP). You accomplish this using the Satellite Server’s Discovery image.

If you have not yet installed the Discovery service or image, follow the "Installation" section in Section 6.3, “Configuring Red Hat Satellite’s Discovery Service”.

The ISO for the Discovery service resides at /usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/ and is installed using the foreman-discover-image package.

# dd bs=4M \
if=/usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/foreman-discovery-image-3.1.1-10.iso \
of=/dev/sdb

Insert the Discovery boot media into a bare metal host, start the host, and boot from the media. The Discovery Image displays an option for either Manual network setup or Discovery with DHCP:

After the primary interface configuration, the Discovery image requests the Server URL, which is the URL of the Satellite Server or Capsule Server offering the Discovery service. For example, to use the integrated Capsule on ACME’s Satellite Server, use the following URL:

https://satellite.example.com:9090

And set the Connection type to Proxy. When ready, select Next.

The Discovery image also provides a set of fields to input Custom facts for the Facter tool to relay back to the Satellite Server. These are entered in a name-value format. Provide any custom facts you require and select Confirm to continue.

The Satellite reports a successful communication with the Satellite Server’s Discovery service. Navigate to Hosts > Discovered hosts and the list includes the newly discovered host.

To provision discovered hosts, see Section 6.4, “Creating New Hosts from Discovered Hosts”.

The Satellite Server also provides a tool (discovery-remaster) in the foreman-discovery-image package. This tool remasters the image to include these kernel parameters. To remaster the image, run the discovery-remaster tool. For example:

# discovery-remaster ~/iso/foreman-discovery-image-3.1.1-10.iso \
"fdi.pxip=192.168.140.20/24 fdi.pxgw=192.168.140.1 \
fdi.pxdns=192.168.140.2 proxy.url=https://satellite.example.com:9090 \
proxy.type=proxy fdi.pxfactname1=customhostname \
fdi.pxfactvalue1=myhost fdi.pxmac=52:54:00:be:8e:8c fdi.pxauto=1"

The tool creates a new ISO file in the same directory as the original discovery image. In this scenario, it saves under /usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/.

Copy this media to either a CD, DVD, or a USB stick. For example, to copy to a USB stick at /dev/sdb:

# dd bs=4M \
if=/usr/share/foreman-discovery-image/foreman-discovery-image-3.1.1-10.iso \
of=/dev/sdb

Insert the Discovery boot media into a bare metal host, start the host, and boot from the media.

To provision discovered hosts, see Section 6.4, “Creating New Hosts from Discovered Hosts”.

For instructions on associating provisioning templates, see Section 3.3, “Creating Provisioning Templates”.

This chapter explored bare metal host provisioning, which includes several different methods such as unattended provisioning, discovery-based provisioning, and PXE-less provisioning. You can use some of these same methods when provisioning hosts from virtualization infrastructure, such as Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) servers, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and VMware vSphere.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning from a KVM server using libvirt virtualization.

The requirements for KVM provisioning include:

Before adding the KVM connection, the Satellite Server requires some configuration to ensure a secure connection. This means creating an SSH key pair for the user that performs the connection, which is the foreman user.

On the Satellite Server, switch to the foreman user:

# su foreman -s /bin/bash

Generate the key pair:

$ ssh-keygen

Copy the public key to the KVM server. For example:

$ ssh-copy-id root@kvm.example.com

Use the following command to test the connection to the KVM server:

$ virsh -c qemu+ssh://root@kvm.example.com/system list

When you add the KVM connection in Satellite Server, use the qemu+ssh protocol and the address to the server. For example, qemu+ssh://root@kvm.example.com/system.

This process adds the KVM connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

Click Test Connection to make sure the Satellite Server connects to the KVM server without fault.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the KVM connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --name "ACME's KVM Server" \
--provider "Libvirt" --description "KVM server at kvm.example.com" \
--url "qemu+ssh://root@kvm.example.com/system" --locations "New York" \
--organizations "ACME"

If using image-based provisioning to create new hosts, you need to add image details to your Satellite Server. This includes access details and image location.

Click Submit to save the image details.

# hammer compute-resource image create --name "Test KVM Image" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --architecture "x86_64" --username root \
--user-data false --uuid "/var/lib/libvirt/images/TestImage.qcow2" \
--compute-resource "ACME's KVM Server"

We can predefine certain hardware settings for KVM-based virtual machines. You achieve this through adding these hardware settings to a compute profile. For this example, we aim to include some basic hardware settings to the 4-Example profile you created in Section 3.5, “Creating Compute Profiles”.

The UI provides a set of fields where you can input KVM-specific details for the profile. This includes:

Click Submit to save the compute profile.

The KVM provisioning process provides the option to create new hosts over a network connection. This requires the new host to access either the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule or an external Capsule Server on a KVM virtual network. This is so the host has access to PXE provisioning services.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "kvm-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's KVM Server" --provision-method build \
--build true --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_type=network,compute_network=acmenetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cpus=1,memory=1073741824" \
--volume="pool_name=default,capacity=20G,format_type=qcow2"

This new host entry triggers the KVM server to create the virtual machine and start it. If the virtual machine detects the defined Capsule Server through the virtual network, the virtual machine boots to PXE and begins to install the chosen operating system.

The KVM provisioning process also provides the option to create new hosts from existing images on the KVM server.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "kvm-test2" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's KVM Server" --provision-method image \
--image "Test KVM Image" --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_type=network,compute_network=acmenetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cpus=1,memory=1073741824" \
--volume="pool_name=default,capacity=20G,format_type=qcow2"

This new host entry triggers the KVM server to create the virtual machine, using the pre-existing image as a basis for the new volume.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to use a KVM server and how to provision new hosts through a KVM server. This included both network-based hosts and image-based hosts.

If you have no further compute resources to configure with Red Hat Satellite 6, see Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning from a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization environment.

The requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provisioning include:

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server requires an administration-like user for Satellite Server communication. For security reasons, Red Hat advises against using the admin@internal user for such communication. Instead, create a new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization user with the following permissions:

For information on how to create a new user and add permissions in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, see Adding Users and Assigning User Portal Permissions in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Administration Guide.

This process adds a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --name "ACME's RHEV" \
--provider "Ovirt" --description "RHEV-M server at rhevm.example.com" \
--url "https://rhevm.example.com/api" --user "satellite@internal" \
--password "p@55w0rd!" --locations "New York" --organizations "ACME" \
--uuid 72cb9454-81cd-4231-a863-d9baf0f399f8

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization uses templates as images for creating new virtual machines. If using image-based provisioning to create new hosts, you need to add Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization template details to your Satellite Server. This includes access details and the template name.

Click Submit to save the image details.

# hammer compute-resource image create --name "Test RHEV Image" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --architecture "x86_64" --username root \
--uuid "9788910c-4030-4ae0-bad7-603375dd72b1" \
--compute-resource "ACME's RHEV"

You can predefine certain hardware settings for virtual machines on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. You achieve this through adding these hardware settings to a compute profile. For this example, the aim is to include some basic hardware settings to the 4-Example profile.

The UI provides a set of fields where you can input Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-specific details for the profile. This includes:

Click Submit to save the compute profile.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provisioning process provides the option to create new hosts over a network connection. This requires the new host to access either the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule or an external Capsule Server on a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization virtual network. This is so the host has access to PXE provisioning services.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "rhev-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's RHEV" --provision-method build \
--build true --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_name=eth0,compute_network=satnetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cluster=Default,cores=1,memory=1073741824,start=true" \
--volume="size_gb=20G,storage_domain=Data,bootable=true"

This new host entry triggers the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server to create the virtual machine. If the virtual machine detects the defined Capsule Server through the virtual network, the virtual machine boots to PXE and begins to install the chosen operating system.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provisioning process also provides the option to create new hosts from existing images on the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "rhev-test2" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's RHEV" --provision-method image \
--image "Test RHEV Image" --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_name=eth0,compute_network=satnetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cluster=Default,cores=1,memory=1073741824,start=true" \
--volume="size_gb=20G,storage_domain=Data,bootable=true"

This new host entry triggers the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server to create the virtual machine, using the pre-existing image as a basis for the new volume.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to use a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server and how to provision new hosts through a Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization server. This included both network-based hosts and image-based hosts.

If you have no further compute resources to configure with Red Hat Satellite 6, see Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning from a VMware vSphere platform.

The requirements for VMware vSphere provisioning include:

The VMware vSphere server requires an administration-like user for Satellite Server communication. For security reasons, Red Hat advises against using the administrator user for such communication. Instead, create a new user with the following permissions:

This process adds a VMware vSphere connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --name "ACME's vSphere" \
--provider "Vmware" \
--description "vSphere server at vsphere.example.com" \
--server "vsphere.example.com" --user "SatelliteUser" \
--password "p@55w0rd!" --locations "New York" --organizations "ACME" \
--uuid 72cb9454-81cd-4231-a863-d9baf0f399f8

VMware vSphere uses templates as images for creating new virtual machines. If using image-based provisioning to create new hosts, you need to add VMware template details to your Satellite Server. This includes access details and the template name.

Click Submit to save the image details.

# hammer compute-resource image create --name "Test vSphere Image" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --architecture "x86_64" \
--username root --uuid "Templates/RHEL72" \
--compute-resource "ACME's vSphere"

You can predefine certain hardware settings for virtual machines on VMware vSphere. You achieve this through adding these hardware settings to a compute profile. For this example, the aim is to include some basic hardware settings to the 4-Example profile.

The UI provides a set of fields where you can input VMware-specific details for the profile. This includes:

Click Submit to save the compute profile.

The VMware vSphere provisioning process provides the option to create new hosts over a network connection. This requires the new host to access either the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule or an external Capsule Server on a VMware vSphere virtual network. This is so the host has access to PXE provisioning services.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "vmware-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's vSphere" --provision-method build \
--build true --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_type=VirtualE1000,compute_network=mynetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cpus=1,corespersocket=2,memory_mb=1024,cluster=MyCluster,path=MyVMs,start=true" \
--volume="size_gb=20G,datastore=Data,name=myharddisk,thin=true"

This new host entry triggers the VMware vSphere server to create the virtual machine. If the virtual machine detects the defined Capsule Server through the virtual network, the virtual machine boots to PXE and begins to install the chosen operating system.

The VMware vSphere provisioning process also provides the option to create new hosts from existing images on the VMware vSphere server.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "vmware-test2" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's RHEV" --provision-method image \
--image "Test RHEV Image" --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,compute_type=VirtualE1000,compute_network=mynetwork" \
--compute-attributes="cpus=1,corespersocket=2,memory_mb=1024,cluster=MyCluster,path=MyVMs,start=true" \
--volume="size_gb=20G,datastore=Data,name=myharddisk,thin=true"

This new host entry triggers the VMware vSphere server to create the virtual machine, using the pre-existing image as a basis for the new volume.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to use a VMware vSphere server and how to provision new hosts through a VMware vSphere server. This included both network-based hosts and image-based hosts.

If you have no further compute resources to configure with Red Hat Satellite 6, see Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning from a Red Hat OpenStack Platform environment.

The requirements for Red Hat OpenStack Platform provisioning include:

This process adds the Red Hat OpenStack Platform connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the Red Hat OpenStack Platform connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --name "ACME's OpenStack" \
--provider "OpenStack" \
--description "ACME's OpenStack environment at openstack.example.com" \
--url "http://openstack.example.com:5000/v2.0/tokens" --user "admin" \
--password "p@55w0rd!" --tenant "openstack" --locations "New York" \
--organizations "ACME"

Red Hat OpenStack Platform uses image-based provisioning to create new hosts. This means you need to add image details to your Satellite Server. This includes access details and image location.

Click Submit to save the image details.

# hammer compute-resource image create --name "Test OpenStack Image" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --architecture "x86_64" \
--username root --user-data true \
--compute-resource "ACME's OpenStack Platform"

You can predefine certain hardware settings for instances on Red Hat OpenStack Platform. You achieve this through adding these hardware settings to a compute profile. For this example, the aim is to include some basic hardware settings to the 4-Example profile.

The UI provides a set of fields where you can input Amazon-specific details for the profile. This includes:

Click Submit to save the compute profile.

The Red Hat OpenStack Platform provisioning process creates new hosts from existing images on the Red Hat OpenStack Platform server.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "openstack-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's OpenStack Platform" --provision-method image \
--image "Test OpenStack Image" --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true" \
--compute-attributes="flavor_ref=m1.small,tenant_id=openstack,security_groups=default,network=mynetwork"

This new host entry triggers the Red Hat OpenStack Platform server to create the instance, using the pre-existing image as a basis for the new volume.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to use a Red Hat OpenStack Platform server and how to provision new hosts through a Red Hat OpenStack Platform server. This included both network-based hosts and image-based hosts.

If you have no further compute resources to configure with Red Hat Satellite 6, see Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning from Amazon’s EC2 public cloud service.

The requirements for Amazon EC2 provisioning include:

This process adds the Amazon EC2 connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the Amazon EC2 connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --name "ACME's EC2" --provider "EC2" \
--description "Amazon EC2 Public Cloud` --user "ABCDEFGHIJ1234567" \
--password "*********" --region "us-east-1" --locations "New York" \
--organizations "ACME"

Amazon EC2 uses image-based provisioning to create new hosts. This means you need to add image details to your Satellite Server. This includes access details and image location.

Click Submit to save the image details.

# hammer compute-resource image create --name "Test Amazon EC2 Image" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --architecture "x86_64" --username root \
--user-data true --uuid "ami-b32c14ad" --compute-resource "ACME's EC2"

We can predefine certain hardware settings for instances on Amazon EC2. You achieve this through adding these hardware settings to a compute profile. For this example, we aim to include some basic hardware settings to the 4-Example profile.

The UI provides a set of fields where you can input Amazon-specific details for the profile. This includes:

Click Submit to save the compute profile.

The Amazon EC2 provisioning process creates new hosts from existing images on the Amazon EC2 server.

Click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "ec2-test1" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --hostgroup "Base" \
--compute-resource "ACME's EC2" --provision-method image \
--image "Test Amazon EC2 Image" --enabled true --managed true \
--interface "managed=true,primary=true,provision=true,subnet_id=EC2" \
--compute-attributes="flavor_id=m1.small,image_id=TestImage,availability_zones=us-east-1a,security_group_ids=Default,managed_ip=Public"

This new host entry triggers the Amazon EC2 server to create the instance, using the pre-existing image as a basis for the new volume.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to use a Amazon EC2 server and how to provision new hosts through a Amazon EC2 server. This included both network-based hosts and image-based hosts.

If you have no further compute resources to configure with Red Hat Satellite 6, see Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

The next chapter explores methods of provisioning containers on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Server.

The requirements for provisioning on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host include:

The Atomic Host requires some configuration before adding it to Satellite. This includes exposing the Docker API to the Satellite Server.

Log into the Atomic Host and edit the /etc/sysconfig/docker file:

$ vi /etc/sysconfig/docker

Find the OPTIONS parameter and modify it to expose the API:

OPTIONS='--selinux-enabled -H unix:///var/run/docker.sock -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2375'

Import the Satellite Server certificate:

$ curl http://satellite.example.com/pub/katello-server-ca.crt \
-o /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/katello-server-ca.crt
$ update-ca-trust

Restart the docker service:

$ systemctl restart docker

Check the port is exposed:

$ netstat -tulnp | grep 2375

This process adds the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic connection in the Satellite Server’s compute resources.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the Red Hat OpenStack Platform connection.

# hammer compute-resource create --provider docker \
--name "ACME's Atomic" --url "http://atomic.example.com:2375" \
--organizations 'Default Organization' --locations 'Default Location'

The Red Hat Satellite 6 Content Management Guide discusses how Red Hat Satellite 6 can synchronize Docker images and manage them through Content Views. However, in others circumstances, you might only require access to an external registry without needing to synchronize the content. Red Hat Satellite 6 provides the ability to add an external Docker registry.

The Locations and Organizations tabs are automatically set to your current context. Add additional contexts to these tabs.

Click Submit to save the external registry.

# hammer docker registry create --name "Red Hat" \
--url "https://registry.access.redhat.com" \
--description "Red Hat Docker Image Registry"

The container provisioning process differs from the standard host creation process. Instead of creating containers through the Hosts > New host menu, you use the Containers > New container option.

After completing all options in the wizard, click Submit.

# hammer docker container create --compute-resource "ACME's Atomic" \
--repository-name "rhel7" --tag "latest" --name "docker-test1" \
--command "bash" --organizations "ACME" --locations "New York"

Next, provisioning from the Docker hub:

# hammer docker container create --compute-resource "ACME's Atomic" \
--repository-name "docker.io/fedora" --tag latest \
--name "docker-test2" --command bash --organizations "ACME" \
--locations "New York"

And finally, provisioning from an external registry:

# hammer docker container create --compute-resource "ACME's Atomic" \
--registry-id 1 --repository-name "rhel" --tag latest \
--name "docker-test3 --command bash --organizations "ACME" \
--locations "New York"

This creates a new container from the chosen image and runs it on the chosen Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host.

This chapter showed how to configure Red Hat Satellite 6 to add and manage a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host and how to provision containers on the Atomic host.

This guide has no further provisioning scenarios. See Chapter 13, Finalizing Provisioning for some final notes on provisioning.

This guide presented multiple provisioning scenarios involving a fictional company called ACME. Through this scenario, this guide has demonstrated how to achieve the following:

Red Hat Satellite 6 extends the provisioning process with the following applications:

The following guides provide information on related aspects of Red Hat Satellite 6 and provide further examples: