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Chapter 4. Content Delivery Network (CDN) Structure

The Red Hat Content Delivery Network, nominally accessed via cdn.redhat.com is a geographically distributed series of static webservers, which contain content and errata that is designed to be consumed by systems. This content can be consumed directly (such as via a system registered via Red Hat Subscription Management) or mirrored via on premise solution, such as Red Hat Satellite 6. The Red Hat Content Delivery network is protected by x.509 certificate authentication, to ensure that only valid users can access it.

In the case of a system registered to Red Hat Subscription Management, the attached subscriptions govern which subset of the CDN the system can access. In the case of Satellite 6, the subscriptions that are attached to the subscription manifest govern which subset of the CDN the system can access.

Directory Structure of the CDN.

A CDN mirror directory structure looks like: 

$ tree -d -L 11
└── content
    ├── beta
    │   └── rhel
    │       └── server
    │           └── 7
    │               └── x86_64
    │                   └── sat-tools
    │                       └── 6
    └── dist
        └── rhel
            └── server
                └── 7
                ├── 7.2
                │   └── x86_64
                │       └── kickstart
                └── 7Server
                    └── x86_64
                        └── os

This directory structure is important and has the following meaning

  • Top-level directory (always named content)
  • Second Level Directory (What is the lifecycle of this content? Common directories include beta (for Beta code), dist (for Production Bits) and eus (For Extended Update Support bits))
  • Third Level Directory (which product. Usually rhel for Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
  • Fourth Level Directory (Which Variant of the product. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux this includes server, workstation, and computenode )
  • Fifth Level Directory (Major version, such as 5,6, or 7)
  • Sixth Level Directory (Release version such as 7.0, 7.1, and 7Server)
  • Seventh Level Directory (Base architecture, such as i386 or x86_64 )
  • Eighth Level Directory (repository name such as kickstart, optional, rhscl, etc). Some components have additional subdirectories, and those may vary.

This directory structure is also used in the subscription manifest. We can look at a subscription manifest to determine which directories of the CDN each subscription has access to.