2.4. Subscription Asset Manager: Organzational Usage Reports (TECH PREVIEW)

Important

Running reports for Subscription Asset Manager organizations is tech preview.
Organizations in Subscription Asset Manager are discrete and separate. Cumulative information in areas such as the Dashboard are for the organization being viewed only. Even if multiple organizations are configured on a single Subscription Asset Manager server, only one organization is viewable at a time.
It can be useful or even necessary to have a cross-organization or cross-distributor view of subscription allocation and status in order to maintain regulatory and policy compliance. Subscription Asset Manager reports can be configured to return information for multiple organizations, which allows that kind of cross-organizational data to be compiled.

2.4.1. Prerequisites

When using enhanced reporting, there are some additional system requirements:
  • All of the other Subscription Asset Manager installation prerequisites
  • The cron service must be running.
  • An additional 4 GB of disk space for the reporting database.
  • Additional packages for the reporting server
    • splice
    • ruby193-rubygem-splice_reports
    • spacewalk-splice-tool

2.4.2. Setting up Reporting

Subscription Asset Manager reporting is an additional module that requires additional packages to be installed.
If a Subscription Asset Manager instance is already configured, then the additional packages can be pulled in. For example, using yum: 
[root@server ~]# yum install splice ruby193-rubygem-splice_reports spacewalk-splice-tool
When the reporting packages are installed, there is an additional item in the administration menu to create and run reports.
The Reports Menu Item

Figure 22. The Reports Menu Item

2.4.3. Creating Report Filters

The Subscription Asset Manager report is actually a collection of filters that collect and structure data for different organizations.
There is one default report that checks for subscriptions for all statuses, in all organizations, in all Satellite servers (if configured), over the past 24 hours.
There is a lot more flexibility possible with the report form, however. In particular, there are three versatile settings:
  • The organizations to check for the report
  • The subscription statuses to include
  • The date range to check; this looks for systems which had the status within the given range, which may not necessarily be the current status for the system

Note

Here are some good reports for tracking infrastructure status and for compliance audits:
  • All systems that have changed to invalid or insufficient (status) in the past 24 hours.
  • All systems that will have invalid or insufficient subscriptions (meaning, the existing subscriptions will expire) within the next three months.
To create a new report filter:
  1. Click the Reports item in the administration menu.
  2. In the left column, click the New Filter link.
  3. Fill in the required information for the report, including the organizations, statuses, date range, and active states.
  4. Click the Save Filter button.

Note

The data within the Subscription Asset Manager database includes historic subscription statuses. This allows reports to be generated to track subscriptions at a given point in time, not just the current date.
For example, if purchasing occurs in July, then a report can be configured to search for insufficient or invalid systems from April through June, to influence purchasing decisions.
The time filter also allows very short windows of time — the previous 24 or 48 hours — to be able to identify and remediate suscription issues immediately.

2.4.4. Running Reports

  1. Click the Reports item in the administration menu.
  2. In the left column, click the name of the report filter to run.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the report page, and click the Run Report button.
    Alternatively, the report results can be exported to a CSV file instead of being rendered in the Subscription Asset Manager UI. To export the data, click the Export Report button.
    The data are exported to a CSV file and, optionally, a JSON file which contains the system details. These files are contained in a ZIP archive named report-YEAR-MONTH-DAY-TIMESTAMPZ.zip.

    Note

    Selecting the Encrypt export checkbox means that the exported CSV and JSON files are encrypted and can only be accessed by a private key used by Red Hat support.

2.4.5. Subscription Asset Manager Reports Results and Data

The Subscription Asset Manager report returns a chart of all registered systems for all selected organizations, similar to the Dashboard.
The Reports Results

Figure 23. The Reports Results

There is also a list of all included systems. The list itself contains summary information such as the Subscription Asset Manager or Satellite server to which the system is registered, its status, its organization, and its most recent checkin time.
Clicking the name of any system pulls up more details subscription data for the system. The details page includes a history of subscription status changes for the given report period, the list of installed products and subscription information for each, and system facts (attributes about the physical machine and operating system, such as CPU, socket count, RAM, and cores).
The Reports Results: System Details

Figure 24. The Reports Results: System Details

When the report results are exported, the same information is included in the export files.
The CSV report contains the summary information in the initial reports page: organization, registered subscription server, hostname, and subscription state, among others. 
_id, record, CHECK-IN TIME, STATUS, DB ID, SATELLITE SERVER, HOSTNAME, ORGANIZATION, LIFECYCLE STATE, 
{"ident"=>"072c8bdd-ca00-43d4-a000-0887c75b90c8"}, 522e0970af5d242094000002, 2013-09-09T14:23:27Z, "Current", "072c8bdd-ca00-43d4-a000-0887c75b90c8", "sam-server.example.com", "server.example.com", "ACME_Corporation", "Active",
The (optional) JSON file contains the same summary information, as well as the complete list of system facts and product information that is available on the details page. 
[{"_id":{"$oid":"522e0970af5d242094000002"},"_types":["MarketingProductUsage"],"instance_identifier":"072c8bdd-ca00-43d4-a000-0887c75b90c8","updated":"2013-09-09T17:46:24Z","splice_server":"sam13-dlackey-demo","name":"server.example.com","facts":{"memory_dot_memtotal":"3780964", ...

2.4.6. Enhanced Reporting Logs

Reporting Log Sizes

By default, enhanced reporting takes up to 200 MB of additional log space on a system. Logs grow at roughly 750 KB per system per month.

If this log size needs to be changed, it can be edited in the log configuration file in /etc/splice/logging/basic.log.
Sync Log

All of the errors, messages, and operations for the sync tool are recorded in a specific tool log at /var/log/splice/spacewalk_splice_tool.log