Chapter 6. Enabling simple content access with Red Hat Satellite

The process of enabling simple content access includes enabling simple content access for one or more allocations and refreshing the manifests those allocations. After the systems are refreshed, you then complete additional, post-enablement steps related to activation key, host group, and host configuration.

Because you enable simple content access at the Satellite allocation level, that setting applies to the entire Satellite organization that corresponds to that allocation. However, it is possible within your account (also known as your Red Hat Customer Portal organization) to have a mixed environment where some Satellite organizations are enabled for simple content access and some are not, according to your business needs.

With the impact to your existing Satellite structure and workflows, it is most efficient and least disruptive to schedule simple content access enablement during a maintenance window. During that time, you can take advantage of Satellite functionality that can streamline any repetitive processes, functionality that includes bulk host management and remote execution.

Note

The simple content access April 2021 release contains the following changes that affect the interaction between simple content access and Satellite:

  • Previous releases of simple content access required a two-stage enablement for Satellite, first at the organization level and then for individual allocations. For this release of simple content access, the organization-level enablement is removed.
  • Beginning with the release of Satellite 6.9, all new allocations and manifests for Satellite 6.9 and earlier versions will use simple content access by default. This setting can be disabled during the configuration of the new allocation.
  • For existing allocations, you must still manually enable the allocation to use simple content access and then refresh the manifest. For example, for an existing allocation and manifest, changing the Satellite version to 6.9 does not automatically enable simple content access.
  • Beginning with the release of Satellite 6.9, you can enable simple content access on manifests from the Satellite web UI, in addition to using the Red Hat Subscription Management functions in the Customer Portal.

6.1. Enabling simple content access on an existing Satellite allocation and manifest

For allocations and manifests that already exist, complete the following steps to enable simple content access.

Prerequisites

  • The organization administrator (org admin) role for the organization
  • Red Hat Satellite 6.9 or later (versions that are under full support)

Procedure

To enable simple content access on an existing allocation and manifest:

  1. Log in to the Red Hat Customer Portal.
  2. Click My Subscriptions. When the page refreshes, click Subscription Allocations.

  3. For each allocation that you want to be enabled for simple content access, click the allocation and view the Details page.

    1. In the Subscriptions section, set the Simple Content Access switch to Enabled.

      Note

      This action enables simple content access for the allocation. However, this change does not go into effect until the manifest for that allocation is refreshed in Satellite.

    2. From Satellite, refresh the manifest for the allocation by using the step that applies to a connected or disconnected Satellite configuration.

      • If your Satellite can connect to access.redhat.com, open the Satellite web UI and ensure that the correct organization is selected. Then click Content > Subscriptions in the navigation. Select the options to manage and refresh the manifest.
      • If your Satellite cannot connect to access.redhat.com, click Export Manifest to export the refreshed manifest to a location that your Satellite Server can access. Then open the Satellite web UI and ensure that the correct organization is selected. Then click Content > Subscriptions in the navigation. Select the options to manage a manifest and browse to the refreshed manifest that you exported.
  4. Repeat these steps for each allocation that you want to be enabled for simple content access.

6.2. Completing post-enablement steps for Satellite

After you enable simple content access for an allocation, the way that you interact with some subscription management tools, including Satellite, differs. You must make some changes in Satellite to accommodate these different workflows and the individual behaviors within them.

6.2.1. Creating and configuring new activation keys

When simple content access is enabled, the subscription management functions of activation keys are obsolete, but the content access functions of the keys are still valid. Creating new activation keys to use with simple content access enables you to design those keys especially for simple content access. It also allows you to preserve the old activation keys in case some business purpose creates a need to revert an allocation from using simple content access back to using the traditional subscription model.

For most use cases, when simple content access is enabled, a single activation key per system (or host) is sufficient to configure content-related attributes, such as repositories and content views. This key replaces the older configuration of activation keys for the traditional subscription model, usually three if recommended configuration steps are followed, that managed both subscription-related and content-related functions.

To create new activation keys, use the following steps, repeating them for the number of new activation keys that are required. You can also perform these steps from the hammer command line interface. The following steps summarize the actions needed to create new activation keys. For more detailed information about these steps, see the Red Hat Satellite documentation.

  1. Create a new activation key.

    1. From the Satellite UI navigation, click Content > Activation Keys and create a new activation key.
    2. In the Name field, enter a name for the activation key.
    3. Make sure that the Unlimited Hosts check box is cleared.
    4. In the Limit field, set a value for the content host limit. With the added freedom to consume content that is provided by simple content access, you might prefer to set this limitation on the number of times that an activation key can be used.
    5. Set other values as needed, such as a description, life-cycle environment, and content view for the activation key.
    6. Click Save to save the new activation key.

  2. Configure the new activation key.

    1. From the Satellite web UI navigation, click Content > Activation Keys and select the activation key that you just created.
    2. On the Details page, for Satellite 6.9 and later, set the system purpose values that will be used on hosts during registration.
    3. On the Repository Sets page, click the Show All option for the filter. In the table of repositories, select each repository that you want to enable and click Select Action > Override to Enabled.
    4. On the Host Collections page, select the host collections that you want to add and click Add Selected.
    5. Click Save to save the configuration.
Note

The new activation keys are not automatically assigned to existing hosts, but they are applied to newly provisioned hosts. You must do additional steps to reconfigure existing hosts to apply the new activation keys.

6.2.2. Updating host groups

After the new activation keys are created and configured, use the following steps to update each relevant host group to use the new activation keys. You can also perform these steps from the hammer command line interface.

  1. From the Satellite web UI navigation, click Configure > Host Groups.
  2. Click the host group that you want to update. Then click the Activation Keys tab.
  3. On the Activation Keys page, enter the new activation key for the host group, replacing the old activation keys. Click Reload data to confirm the activation key change for the host group.
  4. Click Submit to save the host group changes.

6.2.3. Reconfiguring hosts

For Red Hat Satellite 6.9 (or earlier, if you are using an earlier version that is not under full support), the new activation keys that you create for simple content access apply only to newly provisioned hosts. For existing hosts, you must do some reconfiguration and re-enable repositories.

When simple content access is enabled, all repositories are disabled by default if a host does not have a subscription attached. This default setting prevents conflicting repositories from being enabled when a host has access to repositories that span multiple operating system versions.

To do these changes, you can use the following commands as a snippet in a remote job that runs with the remote execution function of Red Hat Satellite. Comments are included in the following snippet to help you understand the series of tasks. You can also run these commands locally on each host, but using the bulk host management and remote execution capabilities of Red Hat Satellite during a maintenance window is more efficient. 

# Get a list of all the currently enabled repos
REPOS=$(subscription-manager repos --list-enabled | grep "Repo ID" | cut -f 2 -d ':' )

# (Optional) dump that list to a file in case of errors
echo $REPOS >> ENABLED_REPOS.txt

# Construct a command line to pass to 'subscription-manager repos'
# so that we call it once, instead of once per repo. This would lower the
# number of API calls and load on the Satellite.
CMDLINE=$(echo $REPOS | sed 's/ / --enable /g')

# Disable all the repos & Remove any existing entitlements
subscription-manager repos --disable '*'
subscription-manager remove --all

# Call subscription-manager fresh to ensure that we have a content access cert
# (which is the authorization method when SCA is enabled)
subscription-manager refresh

# Finally (re) enable the correct repos.
subscription-manager repos --enable $CMDLINE