Chapter 28. Red Hat Customer Portal Labs Relevant to System Administration

Red Hat Customer Portal Labs are tools designed to help you improve performance, troubleshoot issues, identify security problems, and optimize configuration. This appendix provides an overview of Red Hat Customer Portal relevant to system administration. All Red Hat Customer Portal Labs are available at Customer Portal Labs.

iSCSI Helper

The iSCSI Helper provides a block-level storage over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, and enables the use of storage pools within server virtualization.

Use the iSCSI Helper to generate a script that prepares the system for its role of an iSCSI target (server) or an iSCSI initiator (client) configured according to the settings that you provide.

NTP Configuration

Use the NTP (Network Time Protocol) Configuration to set up:

servers running the NTP service
clients synchronized with NTP servers

Samba Configuration Helper

The Samba Configuration Helper creates a configuration that provides basic file and printer sharing through Samba:

Click Server to specify basic server settings.
Click Shares to add the directories that you want to share
Click Server to add attached printers individually.

VNC Configurator

The VNC Configurator is designed to install and configure VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

Use the VNC Configurator to generate all-in-one script optimized to install and configure the VNC service on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux server.

Bridge Configuration

The Bridge Configuration is designed to configure a bridged network interface for applications such as KVM using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 or later.

Network Bonding Helper

The Network Bonding Helper allows administrators to bind multiple Network Interface Controllers together into a single channel using the bonding kernel module and the bonding network interface.

Use the Network Bonding Helper to enable two or more network interfaces to act as one bonding interface.

LVM RAID Calculator

The LVM RAID Calculator determines the optimal parameters for creating logical volumes (LVMs) on a given RAID storage after you specify storage options.

Use the LVM RAID Calculator to generate a sequence of commands that create LVMs on a given RAID storage.

NFS Helper

The NFS Helper simplifies configuring a new NFS server or client. Follow the steps to specify the export and mount options. Then, generate a downloadable NFS configuration script.

Load Balancer Configuration Tool

The Load Balancer Configuration Tool creates an optimal balance between apache-based load balancers and JBoss/Tomcat application servers.

Use the Load Balancer Configuration Tool to generate a configuration file and advice about how you can increase the performance of your environment.

Yum Repository Configuration Helper

The Yum Repository Configuration Helper is designed to set up a simple Yum repository.

Use the Yum Repository Configuration Helper to set up:

a local Yum repository
a HTTP/FTP-based Yum repository

File System Layout Calculator

The File System Layout Calculator determines the optimal parameters for creating ext3, ext4, and xfs file systems, after you provide storage options that describe your current or planned storage.

Use the File System Layout Calculator to generate a command that creates a file system with provided parameters on the specified RAID storage.

RHEL Backup and Restore Assistant

The RHEL Backup and Restore Assistant provides information on back-up and restore tools, and common scenarios of Linux usage.

Described tools:

dump and restore: for backing up the ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems.
tar and cpio: for archiving or restoring files and folders, especially when backing up the tape drives.
rsync: for performing back-up operations and synchronizing files and directories between locations.
dd: for copying files from a source to a destination block by block independently of the file systems or operating systems involved.

Described scenarios:

Disaster recovery
Hardware migration
Partition table backup
Important folder backup
Incremental backup
Differential backup

DNS Helper

The DNS Helper provides assistance with configuring different types of DNS servers.

Use the DNS Helper to generate a bash script to automatically create and configure the DNS server.

AD Integration Helper (Samba FS - winbind)

The AD Integration Helperr is used for connecting Samba File System server to an Active Directory (AD) server.

Use AD Integration Helper to generate a script based on basic AD server information supplied by the user. The generated script configures Samba, Name Service Switch (NSS) and Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM).

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Upgrade Helper

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Upgrade Helper is designed to help you with upgrading Red Hat Enterprise Linux from version 6.5/6.6/6.7/6.8 to version 7.x.

Registration Assistant

The Registration Assistant is designed to help you choose the most suitable registration option for your Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment.

Rescue Mode Assistant

The Rescue Mode Assistant is designed to help you solve the following problems in the rescue mode of Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

Reset root password
Generate a SOS report
Perform a Filesystem Check(fsck)
Reinstall GRUB
Rebuild the Initial Ramdisk Image
Reduce the size of the root file system

Kernel Oops Analyzer

The Kernel Oops Analyzer is designed to help you with solving a kernel crash.

Use the Kernel Oops Analyzer to input a text or a file including one or more kernel oops messages and find a solution suitable for your case.

Kdump Helper

The Kdump Helper is designed to set up the Kdump mechanism.

Use the Kdump Helper to generate a script to set up Kdump to dump data in memory into a dump file called a vmcore.

SCSI decoder

The SCSI decoder is designed to decode SCSI error messages in the /log/* files or log file snippets, as these error messages can be hard to understand for the user.

Use the SCSI decoder to individually diagnose each SCSI error message and get solutions to resolve problems efficiently.

Red Hat Memory Analyzer

The Red Hat Memory Analyzer visualizes memory usage on your system based on information captured by the SAR utility.

Multipath Helper

The Multipath Helper creates an optimal configuration for multipath devices on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, and 7.

Use the Multipath Helper to create advanced multipath configurations, such as custom aliases or device blacklists.

The Multipath Helper also provides the multipath.conf file for a review. When you achieve the required configuration, download the installation script to run on your server.

Multipath Configuration Visualizer

The Multipath Configuration Visualizer analyzes the files in a SOS report and provides a diagram that visualizes the multipath configuration. Use the Multipath Configuration Visualizer to display:

Hosts components including Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), local devices, and iSCSI devices on the server side
Storage components on the storage side
Fabric or Ethernet components between the server and the storage
Paths to all mentioned components

You can either upload a SOS report compressed in the .xz, .gz, or .bz2 format, or extract a SOS report in a directory that you then select as the source for a client-side analysis.

Red Hat I/O Usage Visualizer

The Red Hat I/O Usage Visualizer displays a visualization of the I/O device usage statistics captured by the SAR utility.

Storage / LVM configuration viewer

The Storage / LVM configuration viewer analyzes the files included in a SOS report and creates a diagram to visualize the Storage/LVM configuration.