Appendix A. Using an NFS Share for Content Storage

Your environment requires adequate hard disk space to fulfill content storage. In some situations, it is useful to use an NFS share to store this content. This appendix shows how to mount the NFS share on your Satellite Server’s content management component.

Important

Do not mount the full /var/lib/pulp on an NFS share. Parts of Satellite Server use transient SQLite databases, which have issues over NFS. Red Hat recommends the use of high-bandwidth, low-latency storage for the /var/lib/pulp file system. Red Hat Satellite has many operations that are IO-intensive so usage of high-latency, low-bandwidth storage could potentially have issues with performance degradation. Only use the NFS share for the /var/lib/pulp/content directory.

  1. Create the NFS share. This example uses a share at nfs.example.com:/satellite/content. Ensure this share provides the appropriate permissions to Satellite Server and its apache user.

  2. Shutdown the Satellite services on the Satellite host: 

    # foreman-maintain service stop

  3. Ensure Satellite Server has the nfs-utils package installed: 

    # yum install nfs-utils

  4. You need to copy the existing contents of /var/lib/pulp/content to the NFS share. First, mount the NFS share to a temporary location: 

    # mkdir /mnt/temp
# mount -o rw nfs.example.com:/satellite/content /mnt/temp

    Copy the existing contents of /var/lib/pulp/content to the temporary location: 

    # cp -r /var/lib/pulp/content/* /mnt/temp/.
  5. Set the permissions for all files on the share to use the apache user. This ID of this user is usually 48.

  6. Unmount the temporary storage location: 

    # umount /mnt/temp

  7. Remove the existing contents of /var/lib/pulp/content: 

    # rm -rf /var/lib/pulp/content/*

  8. Edit the /etc/fstab file and add the following line: 

    nfs.example.com:/satellite/content    /var/lib/pulp/content   nfs    rw,hard,intr,context="system_u:object_r:httpd_sys_rw_content_t:s0"

    This makes the mount persistent across system reboots. Ensure to include the SELinux context.

  9. Enable the mount: 

    # mount -a

  10. Confirm the NFS share mounts to var/lib/pulp/content: 

    # df
Filesystem                         1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
...
nfs.example.com:/satellite/content 309506048 58632800 235128224  20% /var/lib/pulp/content
...

    Also confirm that the existing content exists at the mount on var/lib/pulp/content: 

    # ls /var/lib/pulp/content

  11. Start the Satellite services on the Satellite host: 

    # foreman-maintain service start

Satellite Server now uses the NFS share to store content. Run a content synchronization (see Section 5.3, “Synchronizing Content”) to ensure the NFS share works as expected.