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8.7. Using Subscription Asset Manager to Generate Satellite Usage Reports
Red Hat Satellite 5.6 has a utility (
spacewalk-reports) to export information on the system inventory, organizations and associated subscritions, errata, and users. Subscription Asset Manager provides enhanced reporting for Satellite 5.6 through the spacewalk-splice-tool reports. The spacewalk-splice-tool utility draws on the same Satellite 5.6 data, but parses and presents it in an updated, more detailed way.
Subscription management establishes relationships between systems, organizations, and subscriptions. The types of relationships, and the ways those relationships are described, are slightly different in Satellite when compared to the new subscription services at Red Hat. (This is described more in the Subscriptions Concepts and Workflows document.) The new subscription services create a direct relationship between a subscription and the system to which it is applied. In Satellite 5.x, the concept of channels meant that a system was granted access to a content stream and the overall subscription allowed a certain number of systems to have access — but there was no direct association between a subscription and a system.
Satellite enhanced reporting allows Satellite 5.6 servers to sync their system, subscription, and channel data over to a Subscription Asset Manager server. That Subscription Asset Manager server can then take the underlying subscription information and generate a report using Red Hat Subscription Management rules, revealing the relationships between systems and subscriptions in Satellite.
This gives Satellite administrators a greater level of detail and control over the systems in their Satellite inventory.
8.7.1. About Satellite Consolidated Reports
8.7.1.1. The Advantages of Enhanced Reporting
Subscriptions are frequently predicated on attributes of the underlying physical system, such as socket count, RAM, CPU, and cores. For virtual systems, subscriptions can be based on the host/guest relationship and inherited or restricted. Subscriptions can also be related to other products installed on the system.
The reporting in Satellite is more limited; it measures the overall counts of systems and subscriptions, but it does not associate subscriptions and systems or identify required subscriptions based on system attributes.
The enhanced reporting provides more detailed reports in two ways:
- Determining actual subscription usage based on system attributes, host/guest relationships, and installed products.
- Tracking historical subcription usage based on subscription statuses at different points in time.
Important
The enhanced reporting in Subscription Asset Manager only displays data about the Satellite 5.6 systems and organizations. It does not alter, update, or manage any systems, subscription assignments, or organizations in Satellite.
Both system management and subscription management for Satellite 5.6 must be performed in Satellite.
Like the Satellite reports, all of the Subscription Asset Manager report data can be exported to a CSV, so any additional data analysis can be performed. Additionally, a Subscription Asset Manager report can be exported to a JSON file and can be rendered visually in the Subscription Asset Manager UI (including system-level details) so it can be quickly read and interpreted.
8.7.1.2. Differences in Subscription Statuses from Satellite
Because enhanced reporting uses a different set of criteria — system attributes instead of channel access — to calculate the required subscriptions for a system, there are potentially differences between how enhanced reporting reports subscription status for a system and how the same information is reported in Satellite.
For example, many Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions are for two sockets. A four-socket system, then, requires two subscriptions to cover all its socket pairs. If only one subscription is attached to that system, then the Subscription Asset Manager report shows that system as having an insufficient status. However, in Satellite, the same system only consumes a single channel entitlement, regardless of the number of sockets.
Additionally, Satellite has two different types of subscriptions: system entitlements (which are required to register a system) and software channel entitlements (which is what actually provides access to content, updates, and support). In the new subscription structure (and, thus, in Subscription Asset Manager), the system and channel entitlements are merged into a single product subscription which most closely correlates to channel entitlements.
Lastly, Satellite allows channels to be cloned. If a system is registered with a cloned channel, then no channel entitlements are used, so no entitlements are decremented from the available entitlements pool. However, when the channel information is synchronized, the cloned channel is associated with its original Red Hat channel, and subscriptions are then properly attached to the system (or its status is shown to be invalid or insufficient).
8.7.1.3. Syncing Data from Satellite 5.6 to Subscription Asset Manager
A script is run periodically to sync data from the Satellite 5.6 server to the Subscription Asset Manager database, so the data are accessible for Subscription Asset Manager reports. Only certain Satellite informtion is synced:
- System information (called system facts in Subscription Asset Manager) including the hostname, socket count, any host/guest relationships, and other relevant attributes
- Satellite organizations and associated subscriptions
- User information, including roles and administrator accounts such as Satellite Administrator and Organization Administrator
- Satellite cloned channels and their associated, originating channel.
Synchronization occurs in two phases. First, the inventory information is pulled out of Satellite as a
spacewalk-reports report, using the spacewalk-splice-checkin process. The information then is sent to the Subscription Asset Manager server. This synchronization step is run every four hours, by default.
Figure 8.14. Satellite 5.6 to Subscription Asset Manager Sync
From there, the information is collected from Subscription Asset Manager and sent to a dedicated backend database (separate from the normal Subscription Asset Manager database) and stored in the separate reporting server. This step is performed every ten minutes.
Figure 8.15. Subscription Asset Manager to Reporting Server Sync
After the second phase of synchronization, once the data are stored in the reporting database, then enhanced reports can be run, using the populated system data.
8.7.1.4. Users in Satellite 5.6 and Subscription Asset Manager
As mentioned in Section 8.7.1.3, “Syncing Data from Satellite 5.6 to Subscription Asset Manager”, Satellite are synced over to Subscription Asset Manager and added as Subscription Asset Manager users. All of their organization and role assignments are preserved.
Satellite 5.6 passwords are not synced over to Subscription Asset Manager. Satellite users must log in with their Satellite username and a default password of CHANGEME.
Note
Satellite users are added to Subscription Asset Manager if they are added to the Satellite server, but they are not deleted in Subscription Asset Manager if they are deleted on the Satellite server. If a Satellite user is deleted, then that account must be manually deleted on the Subscription Asset Manager side.
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