第2章 Capsule Server Overview

Capsule Servers provide content federation and run localized services to discover, provision, control, and configure hosts. You can use Capsules to extend the Satellite deployment to various geographical locations. This section contains an overview of features that can be enabled on Capsules as well as their simple classification.

For more information about Capsule requirements, installation process, and scalability considerations, see Installing Capsule Server.

2.1. Capsule Features

There are two sets of features provided by Capsule Servers. You can use Capsule to run services required for host management. You can also configure Capsule to mirror content from Satellite Server.

Infrastructure and host management services:

  • DHCP – Capsule can act as a DHCP server or it can integrate with an existing solution, including ISC DHCP servers, Active Directory, and Libvirt instances.
  • DNS – Capsule can act as a DNS server or it can integrate with an existing solution, including ISC BIND and Active Directory.
  • TFTP – Capsule can act as a TFTP server or integrate with any UNIX-based TFTP server.
  • Realm – Capsule can manage Kerberos realms or domains so that hosts can join them automatically during provisioning. Capsule can integrate with an existing infrastructure, including Red Hat Identity Management and Active Directory.
  • Puppet Master – Capsule can act as a configuration management server by running Puppet Master.
  • Puppet Certificate Authority – Capsule can act as a Puppet CA to provide certificates to hosts.
  • Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) – Capsule can provide power management for hosts.
  • Provisioning template proxy – Capsule can serve provisioning templates to hosts.
  • OpenSCAP – Capsule can perform security compliance scans on hosts.

Content related features:

  • Repository synchronization – the content from the Satellite Server (more precisely from selected life cycle environments) is pulled to the Capsule Server for content delivery (enabled by Pulp).
  • Content delivery – hosts configured to use the Capsule Server download content from that Capsule rather than from the central Satellite Server (enabled by Pulp).
  • Host action delivery – Capsule Server executes scheduled actions on hosts.
  • Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) proxy – hosts are registered to their associated Capsule Servers rather than to the central Satellite Server or the Red Hat Customer Portal (provided by Candlepin).