Chapter 5. Understanding the Provisioning Workflow

The provisioning process follows a basic workflow that is outlined as the following:

This workflow differs depending on certain options, which are explored in detail in later chapters. For example:

To configure host provisioning, start with creating a host entry on Satellite Server. You can use either the Web UI or the Hammer CLI. This provides the fundamentals for host provisioning including using Config Groups, which you can use as a reference for later chapters on specific provisioning methods. For more information on Config Groups, see Using Config Groups to Manage Puppet Classes in the Puppet Guide.

In the Host tab, you define the main details about the host and its placement. The Capsule Server can be the Satellite Server’s integrated Capsule or an external Capsule Server depending on your setup.

In the Puppet Classes tab, you select which Puppet classes and Config Groups to apply to the host after provisioning. These classes are taken from the Content View and Puppet environment selected on the Hosts tab. The Included Classes section shows the classes to apply to the host and the Available Classes section shows what classes you can add to the host.

In the Interfaces tab, you define the network interface configuration for the host. Click Add Interface to create a new interface or Edit to edit a specific interface. New or modified interfaces use a form with the following fields:

In the Operating System tab, define the operating system and related aspects to install on the host. Select the host’s Architecture and then select an Operating System related to that architecture. Depending on the operating system that you select, different options are available:

In the Parameters tab, you set variable data for both the provisioning process and Puppet configuration. The Puppet class parameters section allows you to modify data sent to Puppet’s parameters. The Global parameters and Host parameters define custom parameters that you can use within the Satellite Server, such as provisioning templates.

In the Additional Information tab, you define miscellaneous data about the host including it’s owner, whether to include it in reporting, the hardware model, and any additional comments.

To save the host entry, click Submit.

# hammer host create --name "testhost" --organization "ACME" \
--location "New York" --environment "Test" --architecture "x86_64" \
--build true --domain "example.com" --enabled true \
--mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" --subnet "ACME's Internal Network" \
--managed true --medium "Red Hat Kickstart Tree" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --owner admin \
--partition-table "Kickstart Default" \
--puppet-proxy "satellite.example.com" \
--puppet-ca-proxy "satellite.example.com" --root-password "p@55w0rd!"

Use the --interface option to configure specific interface settings. See Appendix B, Additional Host Parameters for Hammer CLI for more information. You can also define specific network interface configurations with the hammer host interface create command. Use the --host or --host-id options to identify the host that receives the interface. For example:

# hammer host interface create --host "testhost" --type interface \
--mac "aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa" --identifier "eth0" --name "testhost" \
--domain "example.com" --subnet "ACME's Internal Network" \
--managed true --primary true --provision true

This procedure acts as foundation for most provisioning methods. However, the process of defining all this information for each host is time consuming. Therefore, it is recommended to create a host group to define common settings among all hosts.

Red Hat Satellite 6 uses the concept of host groups to help reduce the time to provision many hosts.

A host group acts as a template for common host settings. It contains a lot of the same details that you provide to hosts. When you provision a new host with a host group, the host inherits the defined settings from the host group. You can then provide additional details where necessary to individualize the host.

In addition, you can create a hierarchy of host groups. Typically, you will aim to have one base level host group that will represent all hosts in your organization and provide general settings, and then nested groups to provide specific settings. For example, you can have a base host level (parent) group that defines the operating system, and two nested (child) host groups that inherit the base level host group:

In this example, all provisioned hosts use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 as their operating system due to their inheritance of the Base host group. The two web server hosts inherit the settings from the Webserver host group, which includes the httpd Puppet class and the settings from the Base host group. Likewise, the two storage servers inherit the settings from the Storage host group, which includes the nfs Puppet class and the settings from the Base host group. The custom host only inherits the settings from the Base host group.

This scenario shows how to create a host group for ACME. Later chapters in this guide use this host group to help with the provisioning process.

Click Submit to save the host group.

# hammer hostgroup create --name "Base" \
--lifecycle-environment "Production" --content-view "Base" \
--environment "production" --content-source-id 1 \
--puppet-ca-proxy-id 1 --puppet-proxy-id 1 --domain "example.com" \
--subnet `ACME's Internal Network` --architecture "x86_64" \
--operatingsystem "RedHat 7.2" --medium-id 9 \
--partition-table "Kickstart default" --root-pass "p@55w0rd!" \
--locations "New York" --organizations "ACME"

The server creates the host group entry. This scenario uses this host group for provisioning examples.

This chapter showed the basic workflow for creating new hosts entries in Red Hat Satellite 6. This chapter also demonstrated how to create a host group to predefine certain parameters when creating new hosts.

The next chapter explores how to provision bare metal hosts. We use the Base host group to predefine settings for hosts in the next chapter.