Chapter 5. Tools for administration of Red Hat Satellite
You can use multiple tools to manage Red Hat Satellite.
5.1. Satellite web UI overview
You can manage and monitor your Satellite infrastructure from a browser with the Satellite web UI. For example, you can use the following navigation features in the Satellite web UI:
| Navigation feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Organization dropdown | Choose the organization you want to manage. |
| Location dropdown | Choose the location you want to manage. |
| Monitor | Provides summary dashboards and reports. |
| Content | Provides content management tools. This includes content views, activation keys, and lifecycle environments. |
| Hosts | Provides host inventory and provisioning configuration tools. |
| Configure | Provides general configuration tools and data, including host groups and Ansible content. |
| Infrastructure | Provides tools on configuring how Satellite interacts with the environment. |
|
| Provides event notifications to keep administrators informed of important environment changes. |
| Administer | Provides advanced configuration for settings such as users, role-based access control (RBAC), and general settings. |
Additional resources
- See Administering Red Hat Satellite for details on using the Satellite web UI.
5.2. Hammer CLI overview
You can configure and manage your Satellite Server with CLI commands by using Hammer.
Using Hammer has the following benefits:
- Create shell scripts based on Hammer commands for basic task automation.
- Redirect output from Hammer to other tools.
-
Use the
--debugoption with Hammer to test responses to API calls before applying the API calls in a script. For example:hammer --debug organization list.
To issue Hammer commands, a user must have access to your Satellite Server.
To ensure a user-friendly and intuitive experience, the Satellite web UI takes priority when developing new functionality. Therefore, some features that are available in the Satellite web UI might not yet be available for Hammer.
In the background, each Hammer command first establishes a binding to the API, then sends a request. This can have performance implications when executing a large number of Hammer commands in sequence. In contrast, scripts that use API commands communicate directly with the Satellite API and they establish the binding only once.
Additional resources
- See Hammer CLI guide for details on using Hammer CLI.
5.3. Satellite API overview
You can write custom scripts and external applications that access the Satellite API over HTTP with the Representational State Transfer (REST) API provided by Satellite Server. Use the REST API to integrate with enterprise IT systems and third-party applications, perform automated maintenance or error checking tasks, and automate repetitive tasks with scripts.
Using the REST API has the following benefits:
- Configure any programming language, framework, or system with support for HTTP protocol to use the API.
- Create client applications that require minimal knowledge of the Satellite infrastructure because users discover many details at runtime.
- Adopt the resource-based REST model for intuitively managing a virtualization platform.
Scripts based on API commands communicate directly with the Satellite API, which makes them faster than scripts based on Hammer commands or Ansible playbooks relying on modules within redhat.satellite.
API commands differ between versions of Satellite. When you prepare to upgrade Satellite Server, update all the scripts that contain Satellite API commands.
Additional resources
- See API guide for details on using the Satellite API.
5.4. Remote execution in Red Hat Satellite
With remote execution, you can run jobs on hosts remotely from Capsules using shell scripts or Ansible tasks and playbooks.
Use remote execution for the following benefits in Satellite:
- Run jobs on multiple hosts at once.
- Use variables in your commands for more granular control over the jobs you run.
- Use host facts and parameters to populate the variable values.
- Specify custom values for templates when you run the command.
Communication for remote execution occurs through Capsule Server, which means that Satellite Server does not require direct access to the target host, and can scale to manage many hosts.
To use remote execution, you must define a job template. A job template is a command that you want to apply to remote hosts. You can execute a job template multiple times.
Satellite uses ERB syntax job templates. For more information, see Template Writing Reference in Managing hosts.
By default, Satellite includes several job templates for shell scripts and Ansible. For more information, see Setting up Job Templates in Managing hosts.
Additional resources
- See Executing a Remote Job in Managing hosts.
- See Configuring and Setting Up Remote Jobs in Managing configurations using Ansible integration.
5.5. Managing Satellite with Ansible collections
Satellite Ansible Collections is a set of Ansible modules that interact with the Satellite API. You can manage and automate many aspects of Satellite with Satellite Ansible collections.
Additional resources
5.6. Kickstart workflow
You can automate the installation process of a Satellite Server or Capsule Server by creating a Kickstart file that contains all the information that is required for the installation.
When you run a Red Hat Satellite Kickstart script, the script performs the following actions:
- It specifies the installation location of a Satellite Server or a Capsule Server.
- It installs the predefined packages.
- It installs Subscription Manager.
- It uses Activation Keys to subscribe the hosts to Red Hat Satellite.
-
It installs Puppet, and configures a
puppet.conffile to indicate the Red Hat Satellite or Capsule instance. - It enables Puppet to run and request a certificate.
- It runs user defined snippets.
Additional resources
For more information about Kickstart, see Performing an automated installation using Kickstart in Performing an advanced RHEL 8 installation.
