Chapter 2. Creating Organizations
Organizations divide Red Hat Satellite 6 resources into logical groups based on ownership, purpose, content, security level, or other divisions. You can create and manage multiple organizations through Red Hat Satellite 6, then divide and assign your Red Hat subscriptions to each individual organization. This provides a method of managing the content of several individual organizations under one management system. Here are some examples of organization management:
- Single Organization
- A small business with a simple system administration chain. In this case, we create a single organization for the business and assign content to it.
- Multiple Organizations
- A large company that owns several smaller business units. For example, a company with separate system administration and software development groups. In this case, we create organizations for the company and each of the business units it owns. This keeps the system infrastructure for each separate. We then assign content to each organization based on their needs.
- External Organizations
- A company that manages external systems for other organizations. For example, a company offering cloud computing and web hosting resources to customers. In this case, we might create an organization for the company’s own system infrastructure and then an organization for each external business. We then assign content to each organization where necessary.
For our scenario, ACME acts as a single entity organization so the aim is to create and manage the organization for it. A default installation of Red Hat Satellite 6 provides a default organization called Default_Organization. However, this scenario steps through the creation and configuration of a custom organization for ACME.
If a new user is not assigned a default organization their access will be limited. To grant systems rights to users, assign them to a default organization and have them log out and log back in again.
2.1. Creating an Organization
For Web UI Users
Navigate to Administer > Organizations. This displays the list of organizations that your Satellite Server currently manages.
Click New Organization.
A creation wizard appears with three sections:
- Create Organization
Provide the base details for the organization. This includes:
-
Name - A plain text name for the organization. For our scenario, use
ACME. -
Label - A unique identifier for the organization. This is used for creating and mapping certain assets, such as directories for content storage. Use letters, numbers, underscores, and dashes, but no spaces. For our scenario, use
ACMEtoo. -
Description - An optional plain text description for our organization. For our scenario, use
Our example organization.
-
Name - A plain text name for the organization. For our scenario, use
- Select Hosts
- All hosts should have an organization. However, in some circumstances, hosts might become orphaned. For example, deleting an old organization might orphan its hosts. In these situations, you can assign orphaned hosts to your newly created organization if necessary. Choose Assign All to assign all orphaned hosts or Manually Assign to select which orphaned hosts to assign. In our scenario for ACME, no orphaned hosts should exist yet, so click Proceed to Edit to move to the Edit Properties section.
- Edit Properties
- This section allows us to assign certain infrastructure resources to our organization. This includes networking resources, installation media, kickstart templates, and other parameters. You can return to this screen at any time by navigating to Administer > Organization and then selecting an organization to edit. In terms of our scenario, no further configuration is required. However, we will return to this section later in this guide after we synchronize a kickstart tree.
After completing your organization creation, click Submit.
For CLI Users
# hammer organization create \ --name "ACME" \ --label "ACME" \ --description "Our example organization for managing content."
This creates your first organization.
2.2. Setting the Context
Before managing content in Red Hat Satellite 6, we must set the context. A context defines which organization to use for our content.
For Web UI Users
The Context menu is in the top-left corner of the screen. If you have not selected a context, the menu will say "Any Context". Hover over this menu, then select ACME for the Organization selector. This changes the context to our ACME organization.
For CLI Users
If using the CLI, ensure to include either --organization "ACME" or --organization-label "ACME" as an option at the end of your command. For example:
# hammer subscription list --organization "ACME"
This sets the context for each interaction through the CLI.
2.3. Chapter Summary
This chapter showed how to create new organizations and set one as our context for content management.
The next chapter explores how Red Hat Satellite 6 imports your subscriptions into your organization. After the subscriptions are imported, so you can start managing Red Hat content.
