Chapter 1. Satellite overview and concepts

Content flow in Red Hat Satellite involves management and distribution of content from external sources to hosts.

Content in Satellite flows from external content sources to Satellite Server. Capsule Servers mirror the content from Satellite Server to hosts.

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A content view is a deliberately curated subset of content that your hosts can access. By creating a content view, you can define the software versions used by a particular environment or Capsule Server.

Each content view creates a set of repositories across each environment. Your Satellite Server stores and manages these repositories. For example, you can create content views in the following ways:

Application lifecycles are divided into lifecycle environments which represent each stage of the application lifecycle. By linking lifecycle environments, you create an environment path.

You can promote content along the environment path to the next lifecycle environment when required. When you promote a content view from one environment to the next environment in the application lifecycle, Satellite updates the repository and publishes the packages. For example, if development ends on a particular version of an application, you can promote this version to the testing environment and start development on the next version.

Figure 1.1. An environment path containing four environments

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With Red Hat Satellite, you can import and manage many content types. You can use Red Hat content as well as custom content and organize it into Satellite products.

For example, Satellite supports the following content types:

With Red Hat Satellite, you can provision hosts by using the following methods.

Satellite Server is the central component of a Satellite deployment where you plan and manage the content lifecycle.

A typical Satellite deployment includes one Satellite Server on which you perform the following operations:

Satellite Server delegates content distribution, host provisioning, and communication to Capsule Servers. Satellite Server itself also includes a Capsule.

Satellite Server also contains a fine-grained authentication system. You can grant Satellite users permissions to access precisely the parts of the infrastructure for which they are responsible.

With Capsule Servers, you can extend the reach and scalability of your Satellite deployment. Capsule Servers provide the following functionalities in a Red Hat Satellite deployment:

By using content views, you can specify the exact subset of content that Capsule Server makes available to hosts. For more information, see Section 1.1, “Content and patch management with Red Hat Satellite”.

A host is any Linux client that Red Hat Satellite manages. Hosts can be physical or virtual.

You can deploy virtual hosts on any platform supported by Red Hat Satellite, such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, KVM, libvirt, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, Red Hat Virtualization, Rackspace Cloud Services, or VMware vSphere.

With Satellite, you can manage hosts at scale, including monitoring, provisioning, remote execution, configuration management, software management, and subscription management.

Satellite consists of several open source projects integrated with each other, such as the following:

Capsule Servers provide local host management services and can mirror content from Satellite Server.

To mirror content from Satellite Server, Capsule provides the following functionalities:

You can use Capsule to run the following services for infrastructure and host management:

You can configure a Capsule Server for a specific limited purpose by enabling only selected features on that Capsule. Common configurations include the following:

The communication between Satellite Server and hosts registered to a Capsule Server is routed through that Capsule Server. Capsule Server also provides Satellite services to hosts.

Many of the services that Capsule Server manages use dedicated network ports. However, Capsule Server ensures that all communications from the host to Satellite Server use a single source IP address, which simplifies firewall administration.

Figure 1.2. How Satellite components interact when hosts connect to a Capsule

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Figure 1.3. How Satellite components interact when hosts connect directly to Satellite Server

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On your Satellite Server, you can define organizations and locations to help organize content, hosts, and configurations. Organizations and locations enable you to arrange Satellite resources into logically structured groups. For example, you can create groups based on ownership, purpose, content, or security level. You can create and manage multiple organizations through Red Hat Satellite, then divide and assign your Red Hat subscriptions to each individual organization.

Satellite Server defines all locations and organizations. Each Capsule Server synchronizes content and handles configuration of hosts in a different location.

Your Satellite Server retains the management function, while the content and configuration is synchronized between your Satellite Server and Capsule Servers assigned to certain locations.

A host group acts as a template for common host settings.

With host groups, you can define many settings for hosts, such as lifecycle environment, content view, or Ansible roles that are available to the hosts. Instead of defining the settings individually for each host, you can use host groups to define common settings once and apply them to multiple hosts.

You can create nested host groups.

A host collection is a group of content hosts.

With host collections, you can perform the same action on multiple hosts at once. These actions include installing, removing, and updating packages and errata, and assigning content view environments.

For example, you can use host collections to group hosts by function, department, or business unit.

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:

You can configure and manage your Satellite Server with CLI commands by using Hammer.

Using Hammer has the following benefits:

To issue Hammer commands, a user must have access to your Satellite Server.

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.

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:

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.

With remote execution, you can run jobs on hosts from Capsules by using shell scripts or Ansible roles and playbooks.

Use remote execution for the following benefits in Satellite:

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.

Satellite Ansible Collection is a set of Ansible modules that interact with the Satellite API. You can use these modules to automate many aspects of Satellite administration.

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:

Usage of all Red Hat Satellite components is supported within the context of Red Hat Satellite only as described below.

You can use the following combinations of major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hardware architectures for registering and managing hosts with Satellite. The Red Hat Satellite Client 6 repositories are also available for these combinations.

You can use the following combinations of major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hardware architectures for host provisioning with Satellite.

You can use the following combinations of major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hardware architectures for configuration management with Satellite.

Note that Puppet agent is currently unavailable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.