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3.3. Cloning a Red Hat Satellite with an Embedded Database

You can limit outages caused by hardware or other failures by cloning the Red Hat Satellite server with an embedded database in its entirety. The cloned server can be prepared for use if the primary server fails.

Procedure 3.4. To Clone a Satellite Server with an Embedded Database:

  1. Install Red Hat Satellite with an embedded database on a base install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a separate machine. That is, a machine separate from your primary Red Hat Satellite server. Omit the SSL Certificate generation step.
  2. Back up the primary server's database daily using the commands described in Section 3.2.2.1, “Performing an Offline Backup”. This ensures that only changes made the day of the failure are lost.
  3. Establish a mechanism to copy the backup to the secondary server. Keep these repositories synchronized using a file transfer program such as rsync. Copying is not necessary if using a Storage Area Network (SAN).
  4. Use the db-control restore command to import duplicate data.
  5. If the primary server fails, transfer the SSL key pair RPM package in /root/ssl-build from the primary to the secondary server, and install that package. This ensures that Red Hat Satellite clients can authenticate with and securely connect to the secondary server.
  6. Update your DNS to reference the secondary server, or configure your load balancer appropriately.