Satellite (software)
Encyclopedia
Redhat Satellite is an open source system management system. Satellite allows system's administrators to deploy, manage and monitor Redhat Linux and Solaris hosts.
Satellite can be thought of as a local version of Red Hat Network
.
An organisations Satellite server registers with Redhat Network and downloads relevant software into Satellites software channels. The organisations hosts then register against the local Satellite server, instead of directly against Red Hat Network.
This allows the organisation to control versions of software which are available for its hosts as well as making additional software available to their hosts.
Recent edition's of Satellite place considerable emphasis on virtualisation and add features, particularly XML-RPC API features for deploying and managing virtual hosts.
Current versions of Satellite support kickstart using the Cobbler as an underlying framework. PXEboot, and Koan are methods that can be used to implement bare metal installs and re-imaging of hosts.
The 3 main mechanisms for managing hosts are:
. Features that are contributed to Spacewalk may be incorporated into Satellite though this is not always the case or guaranteed.
Spacewalk supports the management of CentOS
servers but it does not support the management of RHEL servers.
Satellite can be thought of as a local version of Red Hat Network
Red Hat Network
Red Hat Network is a family of systems management services operated by Red Hat that makes updates, patches, and bug fixes of packages included within Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux available to subscribers...
.
An organisations Satellite server registers with Redhat Network and downloads relevant software into Satellites software channels. The organisations hosts then register against the local Satellite server, instead of directly against Red Hat Network.
This allows the organisation to control versions of software which are available for its hosts as well as making additional software available to their hosts.
Recent edition's of Satellite place considerable emphasis on virtualisation and add features, particularly XML-RPC API features for deploying and managing virtual hosts.
Deploy
Satellite has numerous methods for deploying new hosts, including simple kickstart, bare metal install and re-images.Current versions of Satellite support kickstart using the Cobbler as an underlying framework. PXEboot, and Koan are methods that can be used to implement bare metal installs and re-imaging of hosts.
Manage
Satellite assists in managing hosts in two main areas, software and configuration.The 3 main mechanisms for managing hosts are:
- Software Channels
- Configuration Channels
- Activation Keys
Monitor
Satellite can provide monitoring of software and systems via probes. These probes are periodically run against the target host and fire alerts if the probes fail (i.e. do not get the correct replies, or the replies fall outside of some specified range).Relationship to Spacewalk
Satellite is a supported version of Spacewalk. As such it only supports Redhat Linux and Solaris. Redhat has released an open source version of Satellite called SpacewalkSpacewalk (software)
Spacewalk is open source systems management software developed by Red Hat. It is the upstream version of the RHN Satellite Server, which was open sourced in 2008. Spacewalk includes the web interface and back-end, as well as RHN Proxy Server and associated client software of Satellite and makes...
. Features that are contributed to Spacewalk may be incorporated into Satellite though this is not always the case or guaranteed.
Spacewalk supports the management of CentOS
CentOS
CentOS is a free operating system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux . It exists to provide a free enterprise class computing platform and strives to maintain 100% binary compatibility with its upstream distribution...
servers but it does not support the management of RHEL servers.