Red Hat Insights
Start proactively finding and fixing infrastructure risks today.
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What is Red Hat Insights?
Red Hat Insights is a proactive operational efficiency and security risk management solution in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscriptions for versions 6.4 and higher, as well as public cloud versions of RHEL. It helps identify, prioritize, and resolve risks to security, compliance, performance, availability, and stability before they become urgent issues. Insights also enables users to monitor for adherence to internal policies and understand configuration changes over time.
We have added new services within Insights. The Policies service allows you to define your own internal policies and receive alerts when environments do not align. The Patch service analyzes Red Hat product advisories that apply to your RHEL environments to help you stay up to date. Compliance, Vulnerability, and Drift services are also now included in Insights. When combined, all of these services provide a more comprehensive management solution for RHEL environments.Key Benefits
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Get Started with Red Hat Insights
Preinstallation checks:
- You must register all Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems with Red Hat Subscription Manager to receive necessary updates and to resolve software dependencies.
[root@server ~]# subscription-manager register --auto-attach- Note: If the system cannot be subscribed to RHSM, basic authentication can be configured on the client.
- Red Hat Insights can be used on all Red
Hat-supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
version 6.4 and later.
- Red Hat Insights is included free with every Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscription.
- Because RHEL8 ships with the insights-client package preinstalled, installing the client is unnecessary on RHEL8 systems.
- For RHEL8.2, Insights can be enabled at install time. Refer to the release notes for more information.
Note: The Compliance service leverages OpenSCAP for evaluating policies. Please review the Additional Information section below for details on setting up Compliance.
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Install the Red Hat Insights client and register your systems to Insights
Use the automated installation tools to install and register on many systems, or use the manual installation instructions for single-system installations.
Automated Installation
Use a configuration management tool to automate installation and registration.Manual Installation
Perform the following steps to install the client on a RHEL system and register the system to Red Hat Insights:
1. Install the client on the RHEL system.
Note: This step is not required on RHEL8 systems.[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client2. Register the system to Red Hat Insights.[root@server ~]# insights-client --registerIf you have a web-based proxy between your system and the Internet, you can configure the insights-client to connect through it. For more information, refer to How to access Red Hat Insights through a firewall/Proxy. -
View your results
After registration, the Red Hat Insights client will initiate its first upload to Insights for analysis. You can view the results for a single system, and for your infrastructure of registered systems, in the Insights dashboard.
Additional Information
The Compliance service relies on OpenSCAP scans and reporting. This
requires you to install OpenSCAP and the SCAP Security Guide, as
detailed below.
Note: Only the RHEL SCAP Security Guide (SSG) versions for RHEL
6,
7, and 8 are supported.
The upstream SSGs are not currently supported. Red Hat recommends
using the SSG version that comes preinstalled with RHEL to ensure
compatibility and accurate reporting.
Users who are new to OpenSCAP should perform the following actions, at a minimum,
in order to use the Compliance service:
1. Install the Openscap-scanner and
the SCAP security guide:
sudo yum install openscap-scanner -ysudo yum install scap-security-guide -y
Note: For more information about OpenSCAP scanner installation, see the OpenSCAP Getting Started guide.
2. Once you have policies created within Compliance, for each system, run the following command each time you wish to run a scan:
sudo insights-client --compliancePreinstallation checks:
- Satellite organizations with Red Hat Insights must be operating in Connected mode. Any firewalls or proxies through which the Satellite server communicates to Red Hat must allow https communications to https://cert-api.access.redhat.com.
- Red Hat Insights can be used on all Red Hat-supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 6.4 and later.
- Subscribe RHEL Hosts to the Satellite server. This step is typically already performed as part of Satellite host configuration. Only RHEL hosts registered to the particular Satellite server will have reports available in the Satellite UI.
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Verify connection to Red Hat Insights.
Verify that the Satellite server can successfully communicate with Red Hat Insights. In the Satellite UI, navigate to Insights > Manage. Verify under Insights Engine Connection that the status is Connected and the Account Number field displays the correct information for your organization.
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Install the Insights RPM and register your system to Red Hat Insights
There are multiple ways to automate this process. We've provided several options for popular configuration management tools below:
- Ansible
- Puppet
- If you are using Red Hat Satellite’s configuration management provided by Puppet this process can be automated by applying the preinstalled Puppet class access_insights_clients. This class can be imported from the Puppet Master into the appropriate Puppet environment and applied to hosts that you wish to subscribe to Red Hat Insights. For more information on this topic, refer to the Creating a Host Group chapter in the official Satellite 6 User Guide .
To install and register a system manually:
1. Install the client on the RHEL system.
Note: This step is not required on RHEL8 systems.[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client2. Register the system to Red Hat Insights.[root@server ~]# insights-client --register -
View your results
After registration, the Insights client will initiate its first upload to Red Hat Insights for analysis. You can view your systems and the results of the Red Hat Insights analysis via the Insights tab within Satellite or in the Insights dashboard.
Additional Information
Assign Red Hat Insights roles to users
By default, only
administrators can view Insights Report and Configuration screens. However, you
can give non-admin users access to the Insights screens by assigning them the
appropriate roles as follows:
- To give users access to all Insights screens, including the Manage screen, assign them the Insights Admin role. Users must also be granted the view_content_host permission.
- To give users Insights report and rule viewing access, assign them the Insights Viewer role. These users must also be granted the view_content_host permission.
For more information on roles, refer to the official Satellite 6 documentation.
Preinstallation checks:
- You must have a Red Hat account. If you’ve used RHEL on-demand through a public cloud marketplace but have never interacted with Red Hat directly, you can create an account by following these instructions.
- Red Hat Insights can be used on all actively supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6.4 and greater.
- If you’re using a Red Hat subscription to entitle your RHEL system, you must enable the subscription for Red Hat Cloud Access. Learn how in the Cloud Access documentation.
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Deploying Red Hat Insights on existing RHEL systems managed by Red Hat Subscription Managment or Satellite
The following guidance is for users who wish to deploy Red Hat Insights on an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system connected to Red Hat Subscription Managment or Satellite.
If you wish to deploy Insights on a RHEL system purchased through a public cloud marketplace, do not use this method. See Deploying Red Hat Insights on existing RHEL systems managed by Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI) below.
If using Red Hat Subscription Management, register all systems with Red Hat for updates and to resolve software dependencies. Satellite users may skip this step.
[root@server ~]# subscription-manager register --auto-attachNote: If the system can not be subscribed to RHSM, basic authentication may be leveraged for usage of the Insights client.
2. Install the client package on each system. If you’re using RHEL 8+, the Insights client is installed by default.[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client3. Register the system to Insights.
[root@server ~]# insights-client --register4. After registration, the Red Hat Insights client will initiate its first upload to Insights for analysis. You can view the results for a single system and for your infrastructure of registered systems in the Insights dashboard.
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Deploying Red Hat Insights on existing RHEL systems managed by Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI)
The following guidance is for users who wish to deploy Red Hat Insights on an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system managed by Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI). This includes on-demand, hourly systems purchased from CCSP marketplace, as well as systems deployed from Red Hat Gold Images in AWS. This procedure involves the following tasks:
1. You must have a Red Hat account in order to use Red Hat Insights. If you have only purchased Red Hat Enterprise Linux through a public cloud marketplace, you may not have an account yet. You may create a Red Hat account by following these instructions.2. Install the client package on each system. If you’re using RHEL 8+, the Insights client is installed by default.
[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client3. Configure basic authentication in /etc/insights-client/insights-client.conf.
- Modify the auto_config= value to FALSE.
- Add your Red Hat SSO username to username=
- Add your Red Hat SSO password to password=
- Save the configuration.
4. Register the system to Insights.
[root@server ~]# insights-client --register5. After registration, the Red Hat Insights client will initiate its first upload to Insights for analysis. You can view the results for a single system and for your infrastructure of registered systems in the Insights dashboard.
Preinstallation checks:
- Red Hat Insights is now included as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. Click here to learn more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux if you are not already using RHEL.
- Red Hat Insights can be used on all actively supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 6.4 and later.
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Create a Red Hat SSO account
In order to use Red Hat Insights, you will need to create a Red Hat SSO account if you do not already have one setup. If your organization already has a Red Hat account, you should contact your Organization Administrator to be added to the appropriate account.
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Establish your Account
Once an account has been created, the account must be initialized for use with Red Hat Insights. Please visit and complete the Red Hat Insights evaluation form.
The initialization of this account may take a couple of minutes or up to an hour before systems can be registered for use. If any errors occur during registration of the Insights client, or usage of cloud.redhat.com redirects to the evaluation form, please attempt again at a later time as account initialization may still be in progress.
Note: This form refers to this process as an “evaluation” as this step is needed to initialize the new account. Red Hat Insights is included as part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for use and will continue to be free to use after this evaluation expires.
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Verify access to cloud.redhat.com
To ensure your account has been set up correctly, log into the Red Hat Insights console.
Note: If the account is still initializing after filling out the Red Hat Insights evaluation form outlined in the previous step, you may be redirected to the evaluation form; revisit cloud.redhat.cm/insights later to verify the account has been established.
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Proceed with installation of the Red Hat Insights client
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Topics
Introduction to Red Hat Insights
Introduction
More than a monitoring system, Insights pinpoint security and configuration risks and enables security and IT teams to resolve problems before downtime results, now with the ability to define and alert for non-compliance with internal policies. Insights' updated platform provides Red Hat expertise-as-a-service across Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed to physical, virtual, containers and private and public cloud environments.