Chapter 5. Release Information

These release notes highlight technology preview items, recommended practices, known issues, and deprecated functionality to be taken into consideration when deploying this release of Red Hat Satellite 6. Notes for updates released during the support lifecycle of this Red Hat Satellite 6 release will appear in the advisory text associated with each update.

5.1. Enhancements

This release of Red Hat Satellite 6 features the following enhancements:

BZ#1160344
Red Hat Satellite users can now set up Satellite and Capsule servers in a multi-homed configuration.
BZ#1269673
Red Hat Satellite now has a single button to force stop all paused, pending, or failed tasks involved in syncing instead of resolving each task manually.
BZ#1410616

You can configure Satellite to send you email notifications about subscriptions that expire in 7, 30, 60, 90, or 120 days. You can also choose how often to send these notifications - daily, weekly, or monthly. To do this, in the Satellite web UI, in the upper-right corner, click your user name > My Account, click the Email Preferences tab, and configure the Subscriptions expiring soon notification. Each user can only get information about the subscriptions that they have permission to view.

The Entitlement report template has been renamed to Subscription - Entitlement Report. In this report template, the Name dictionary has been renamed to Host Name.

BZ#1535466

You can now upgrade and update Capsules using satellite-maintain. Refer to the documentation for more details at Upgrading Capsule Servers and Updating Capsule Server to the Next Minor Version.

The package lock feature that was added in Satellite 6.7 to Satellite Server is enabled on Capsule Servers by default too.

BZ#1571210
Support has been added for Common Access Card (CAC) authentication in Red Hat Satellite through Red Hat Single Sign-On.
BZ#1619274
Full support for UEFI HTTP boot is now available in Satellite 6.8.
BZ#1630433
You can now install foreman-ansible-modules from RPM and use them from an Ansible runtime. This install includes all necessary libraries.
BZ#1649329
The satellite-maintain package now upgrades itself automatically when you enter satellite-maintain upgrade check or satellite-maintain upgrade run commands. Optionally, you can use the --disable-self-upgrade option to skip the auto-update of the satellite-maintain package.
BZ#1718954
When you enable simple content access on a subscription allocation, automatic attachment of subscriptions is disabled in a Satellite organization that has a manifest with this subscription allocation imported. For more information about simple content access, see Setting up subscription watch and simple content access in Getting Started with Subscription Watch with Simple Content Access.
BZ#1737564
You can now create your own images and use them as a basis for hosts that you can provision in Azure.
BZ#1789924
When you enable simple content access on a subscription allocation, Satellite displays hosts' subscription status as disabled in the organization that has a manifest with this subscription allocation imported. Satellite does not calculate the subscription status of hosts as a component of their global_status. For more information about simple content access, see Setting up subscription watch and simple content access in Getting Started with Subscription Watch with Simple Content Access.
BZ#1807042

You can now attach multiple disks to the VM on Azure Compute Resource while creating it through Host form. The maximum number of disks to be attached depends on the VM size selected as suggested here: General purpose virtual machine sizes.

Based on this selection, you can create multiple disks of varying sizes and disk caching options for the VM.

BZ#1825269
You can now upgrade Satellite Server without having to upgrade Capsule Servers at the same outage window. This way you can have several smaller outage windows for Satellite and Capsules upgrades. If you have configured Capsules with a load balancer, you can have one outage window for the Satellite upgrade and then upgrade Capsules separately avoiding outage windows.
BZ#1828240
Satellite 6.8 introduces Tracer, which is an integration with the Tracer tool which monitors running processes and identifies if they need to be restarted due to package updates or similar activities. Tracer was originally introduced in Satellite 6.3 as a technology preview feature.
BZ#1881988
You can now install Satellite and Capsule servers with IPv6 networks. This only applies to new installations of Satellite and Capsule on an IPv6 stack.
BZ#1888627
You can now use a remote execution job template to automate the upgrade of your Capsule infrastructure.

5.2. Known Issues

These known issues exist in Red Hat Satellite 6 at this time:

BZ#1713401

When you apply the OSPP security policy to a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 system during provisioning, the katello-ca-consumer package cannot be installed from Satellite Server. Therefore, the system cannot be registered as a content host. As a workaround, after the system is provisioned, install the katello-ca-consumer with the following command and then register the system manually: 

# rpm -Uvh --nodigest --nofiledigest http://satellite.example.com/pub/katello-ca-consumer-latest.noarch.rpm
BZ#1856967
on_demand repos may fail to download packages during capsule sync or client request with el8 repos
BZ#1863597
Inventory plug-in configuration(--enable-foreman-plugin-inventory-upload) makes DB inconsistent

5.3. Deprecated Functionality

The items in this section are either no longer supported, or will no longer be supported in a future release.

BZ#1867772
Foreman Hooks functionality has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The functionality will be replaced by the new Foreman Webhooks feature that will be documented with its release.
BZ#1867774
The Katello agent is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Transition your workloads to using the remote execution feature.
BZ#1867775

Satellite’s support for Puppet and the ability to serve as the External Node Classifier (ENC) is being deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Consider moving to Ansible for your automation and configuration needs or moving to an external Puppet infrastructure.

Puppet will, however, continue to be utilized by the Satellite installer.

BZ#1867776
Content ISOs previously hosted at redhat.com for import into Satellite Servers has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Documentation on how to synchronize offline content will be made available upon release.
BZ#1867777
The Monitor → Statistics page in the Satellite web user interface is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
BZ#1867779
The Monitor → Trends page in the Satellite web user interface is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
BZ#1867781
The Subnet, Generic & Host minimal Bootdisk functionality is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. We will retain the Full Host Bootdisk methodology.
BZ#1867783

The following management operations of OSTree and Puppet content types are deprecated and will be removed in a future release:

  • Creating OSTree and Puppet repositories
  • Synchronizing OSTree and Puppet repositories
  • Adding repositories of OSTree and Puppet content types to Content View.
  • Publishing and promoting the Content Views containing repositories of OSTree and Puppet content types across life cycle environments.
BZ#1867784
The export-legacy command of the Inter-Satellite Synchronization (ISS) feature is being deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
BZ#1867785
The ability to export Composite Content Views as part of the Inter-Satellite Synchronization (ISS) feature is being deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For users that would like to export Content Views from a source Satellite and recreate a Composite Content View on a target Satellite, it may be possible to utilize Satellite’s hammer command-line tool or Ansible modules to do so.

5.4. Removed Functionality

BZ#1791654
The /api/config_templates/ API endpoint was deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and is now removed in Satellite 6.8. Use the /api/provisioning_templates/ API endpoint instead.
BZ#1791656
The /api/hosts/:id/status API endpoint was deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and is now removed in Satellite 6.8. To get the configuration status for hosts, use the more specific /api/hosts/:id/status/configuration API endpoint instead.
BZ#1791658
The /api/reports/ API endpoint was deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and is now removed in Satellite 6.8. Use the /api/config_reports/ API endpoint instead.
BZ#1791659
The API parameter use_puppet_default that was used with smart class parameters and overrides was deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and is now removed in Satellite 6.8. Use the omit API parameter instead.
BZ#1791663
The API parameters name and resource_type that were used with the /api/permissions/ API endpoint were deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and are now removed in Satellite 6.8. Use the the search parameter with name = my_permission_name or resource_type = my_resource_type values instead.
BZ#1791665
The uuid API parameter that was used with the /api/compute_resources/ API endpoint was deprecated in Satellite 6.7 and is now removed in Satellite 6.8. Use the datacenter API parameter instead.
BZ#1806548
The katello-remove command that uninstalled Satellite and Capsule Servers has been removed.
BZ#1873059
Smart Variables have been removed in Red Hat Satellite 6.8. Smart Variables were introduced as a workaround before parameterized Puppet classes existed. You must use Smart Class Parameters with parameterized Puppet classes to pass values from Satellite to Puppet.