Apply workspaces for structured system management

Group your systems logically and apply granular access controls to prevent unauthorized access and accidental modifications when multiple teams share the same Red Hat organization in the Hybrid Cloud Console.

Use workspaces to ensure that each team has complete and secure control over their designated environment.

Organize your systems by using workspaces, grouping your registered systems into logical units, such as department, location, or purpose. By applying custom role-based access control (User Access) policies to these workspaces, you can restrict access so that users can only view and manage the specific systems and workspaces assigned to their team.

To organize your systems in workspaces for secure team-based system management, follow these high-level steps:

  1. Navigate to the inventory workspaces page and create separate workspaces for each IT team or department.
  2. Assign your specific Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to their corresponding workspaces.
  3. Define custom roles with specific inventory permissions (such as inventory:hosts:read and inventory:groups:write) and apply those permissions directly to the newly created workspaces.
  4. Create User Access groups for your different teams, add the team members, and assign the custom workspace roles to those groups.
  5. Restrict global access by removing global inventory administrator roles (such as the inventory Hosts administrator role) from the Default Access group so that users are limited to only their assigned workspaces and systems.

Workspace characteristics

Workspaces in Red Hat Lightspeed organize systems based on criteria such as environment, application, or team ownership. You can use workspaces to streamline workflows and control user access.

In Red Hat Lightspeed, workspaces are only for systems. Each system can belong to only one workspace. Systems that are not assigned to a specific workspace are automatically grouped in the Ungrouped Hosts workspace.

Workspace limits and restrictions

Each organization can have up to 120 workspaces. Workspaces follow naming, structural, and assignment rules that help ensure efficient system organization and access control.

Organization workspace limit

  • Each organization can create up to 120 workspaces.

    This limit includes both workspaces with systems and empty workspaces.

    Tip
    If this limit is reached, delete existing workspaces to free up capacity.

    The default Ungrouped Hosts workspace does not count toward this limit.

Workspace naming restrictions

  • Workspace names must be unique within your organization.
  • Workspace names can consist of lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens (-), and underscores (_).
  • Workspace names cannot contain special symbols such as dots (.) or ampersands (&). Important
    If your RHEL machine groups include special symbols in their names, you cannot create workspaces with matching names.

Workspace structure restrictions

  • Workspaces cannot be nested.

System assignment restrictions

  • Each system can belong to only one workspace at a time.
  • Unassigned systems are automatically grouped in the Ungrouped Hosts workspace.

Create a workspace

On the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, you can create a workspace to organize systems by environment, team, application type, or location. This enables you to filter system views across applications, control user access to specific systems, and streamline operational workflows.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or who has one of the following roles:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • RHEL operator
  • You have read Workspace limits and restrictions. Important
    Each organization can create up to 120 workspaces. If you reach this limit, an error occurs, and you must delete existing workspaces before creating new ones.

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces.
  2. Click Create workspace. The Create workspace dialog box is displayed.
  3. Type a name for the workspace in the Workspace name field. Names can consist of lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens (-), and underscores (_).
  4. Click Create. The new workspace is displayed in the list of workspaces.

Create a workspace and add a system from the Inventory page

Create a new workspace and add a system to it in a single operation from the Inventory Systems page. This lets you quickly organize a specific system without creating the workspace separately first.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or is a member of a group that has one of the following roles:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • RHEL operator
    • inventory:groups:write and inventory:groups:read permissions for that particular workspace

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Systems. The list of systems in your inventory is displayed.
  2. Locate the system that you want to add.
  3. Click the options icon (⋮) on the far right side of the system listing.
  4. Select Add to workspace from the menu. The Add to workspace dialog box is displayed.
  5. Click Create a new workspace. The Create workspace dialog box is displayed.
  6. Type a name for the new workspace in the Name field and click Create. The Inventory page is displayed and shows a status message.

Add systems to an existing workspace

Add systems to an existing workspace in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to organize them by team, environment, or application. You can also use workspaces to control user access to groups of systems.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or who is a member of a group with at least one of the following role permissions:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • inventory:groups:write and inventory:groups:read permissions for that particular workspace

About this task

Important
Each system can belong to only one workspace. To move a system to a different workspace, you must first remove it from its current workspace and then assign it to the new workspace.

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces.
  2. Click the name of the group to which you want to add systems.
  3. On the Systems tab, click Add systems. The Add systems dialog box displays and shows the systems available for you to view in inventory.
  4. Select the systems you want to add to the workspace.
    Note
    Make sure that all the systems you have selected are ungrouped, or you will not be able to proceed.
  5. When you have finished selecting systems, click Add systems.

Results

The Workspaces page displays and includes the systems you added to the workspace.

Remove systems from the workspace

Remove systems from a Red Hat Lightspeed workspace when they no longer belong to maintain accurate organization and proper access control. Removed systems automatically move to the Ungrouped Hosts workspace.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or who is a member of a group with at least one of the following role permissions:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • RHEL operator
    • inventory:groups:write permissions for that particular workspace
  • Removed systems move to the Ungrouped Hosts workspace. To view them there, you need inventory:hosts:read permissions for ungrouped systems, or the Inventory Hosts administrator role. Note
    If you need to grant users these permissions, see Configure Inventory Hosts administrator access.

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces.
  2. Select the workspace that contains the systems that you want to remove.
  3. Locate the system that you want to remove from the workspace.
  4. Click the More options icon (⋮) on the far right side of the system listing.
  5. Select Remove from workspace from the menu. The Remove from workspace? dialog box is displayed.
    Note
    To remove multiple systems from the workspace at once, select each system you want to remove, and then select Remove from workspace from the More options menu (the options icon (⋮)) in the toolbar.
  6. Click Remove.

Results

The Workspaces page displays the updated workspace with a success or failure status message.

Rename a workspace

On the Hybrid Cloud Console, you can rename a workspace to better reflect its purpose. You might need to do this when team ownership changes or system groupings are reorganized.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or who has one of the following roles:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • RHEL operator
    • inventory:groups:write permissions for that particular workspace

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces.
  2. Click the Workspace actions drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the Workspaces page.
  3. Select Rename from the drop-down menu. The Rename workspace dialog box is displayed.
  4. Type the new name into the Name field, and click Save.

Results

The Workspaces page shows the renamed workspace in the list of workspaces.

Delete the workspace

On the Hybrid Cloud Console, you can delete a workspace when you no longer need it to organize systems. This helps you manage workspace capacity and stay within the organization limit.

Before you begin

  • You are logged in to the Hybrid Cloud Console as a user who is an Organization Administrator (member of the Default admin access group) or who has one of the following roles:
    • Workspace administrator
    • RHEL administrator
    • RHEL operator
    • inventory:groups:write permissions for that particular workspace

About this task

Note
Before you delete a workspace, make sure that the workspace does not contain any systems. You can only delete empty workspaces. If you attempt to delete a workspace that still contains systems, Red Hat Lightspeed returns a warning message.

Procedure

  1. On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces.
  2. Click the options icon (⋮) on the far right side of the listing for the workspace you want to delete.
  3. Select Delete from the menu. The Delete workspace dialog box is displayed.
  4. Select the checkbox to acknowledge that the delete operation cannot be undone. Click Delete.

Results

The Workspaces page shows an updated list of workspaces and a status (success or failure) message.

Note
You can also delete the workspace from within the page for the workspace itself. Navigate to the workspace and click the Actions drop-down menu and then select Delete.

Troubleshoot workspace creation errors

Diagnose and resolve workspace creation errors such as workspace limits, permission issues, or duplicate name conflicts to successfully create and manage workspaces.

About this task

Common workspace creation errors include:

  • Workspace limit reached: Your organization has reached the maximum limit of 120 workspaces. Free up capacity by deleting empty workspaces, merging similar workspaces, or removing systems before deletion.
  • Permission errors: You do not have the required permissions to view or create workspaces. Contact your organization administrator to request the Workspace administrator role.
  • Duplicate name errors: Workspace names must be unique within your organization. Choose a different name that consists of lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens (-), and underscores (_).

Procedure

  1. If you see "Failed to create workspace" or "Workspace limit reached (120/120)", free up workspace capacity by using one of the following methods:
    • Delete empty workspaces: On the Hybrid Cloud Console, navigate to Inventory > Workspaces, identify workspaces that contain no systems, and delete the ones you no longer need. For details, see Deleting workspaces.
    • Merge workspaces: Review your existing workspaces to identify those with similar user groups and role bindings. Move systems from many workspaces into a single workspace and delete the now-empty workspaces.
    • Remove systems before deleting: Before deleting a workspace that has systems, remove the systems from the workspace or move them to another workspace. Systems removed from a workspace automatically move to the Ungrouped Hosts workspace.

      After you delete one or more workspaces, retry creating the new workspace.

  2. If you see "Workspace access permissions needed", contact your organization administrator to request the Workspace administrator role. For details about workspace permissions, see User access to workspaces.
  3. If you see an error that a workspace name already exists, choose a different name for your workspace.