Now open: Red Hat Network Satellite 5.1.0

With this announcement at the Summit, Red Hat® Network® enters a new, more open era. We caught up with Mike McCune from the RHN team, and he sent us this quick run-down of the new release and the project’s decision to go open source.

Intro

Responsible for 1,000 systems? One hundred systems? Ten? If so, you likely have processes in place for maintaining these systems, if only to preserve your sanity! Perhaps you have custom ssh scripts to command the systems remotely, or maybe you have your own yum repositories to maintain software patches critical to your systems. If the burden of maintaining these systems causes you a headache or your needs go beyond the methods you use today, Red Hat has tools available to make your life as a system administrator easier.

Satellite

Red Hat Network Satellite is a systems management platform that will make the deployment of your Linux systems easier, faster, and more scalable. Satellite automates many of the day-to-day operations that would otherwise require manual script writing, remote ssh execution, and a considerable amount of human effort. Satellite can centralize the storage and deployment of Red Hat products alongside your own custom software content in one server for easy and controlled distribution to as many systems as you desire.
Users deploy Satellite in environments ranging from tens to tens of thousands of Linux systems.

If any of the features below sound useful to you, give Red Hat Network Satellite a try:

• One-click software updates in an easy-to-use web interface
• Role-based administration
• Flexible delivery architectures – Satellite, Proxy, and Hosted
• Virtual Machine Management – Provision, control, and configure virtual machines
• System grouping for easier administration
• Automation of previously manual tasks
• Life-cycle management of your entire Linux infrastructure
• Performance tracking for your Linux systems

Latest features in Satellite 5.1.0

With the latest release of Red Hat Network Satellite, 5.1.0, we introduced some excellent new features to help Satellite better integrate with your environments. The most notable feature we introduced in the release is the Multiple Organizations feature, sometimes referred to as ‘Multi-Org.’ This feature allows you to partition your servers, users, software, and configuration into separate ‘Organizations’ within the Satellite. Each organization can manage their own sets of users and systems allowing you to control access to your data without having to install and maintain separate Satellite servers.

An example usage of this feature would be a user that wants a Satellite for managing systems in a multi-departmental organization. Each department would be given its own separate Organization within the Satellite: one organization for Finance, one for IT, one for Engineering, and so on. Each organization would then be granted a set amount of licenses (‘entitlements’) to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as determined by a central Satellite administrator. Likewise, the Satellite Administrator would create administrators for each Department within the Satellite. Each department would then have rights to register and administer their
systems without fear of users in other departments seeing or manipulating their systems.

Other exciting features in 5.1.0 include:

• API Call enhancements: Vastly expanded set of XML-RPC APIs to help you better automate your experience with RHN Satellite.
• Satellite support for x86 64-bit (Intel/AMD) and z390/x (IBM) platforms. You can run your Satellite on more hardware than ever before!
• Provisioning support for Power PC (PPC) platform: Kickstart your PPC boxes from Satellite.
• Apache 2.0 support for Satellite and Proxy on RHEL4
• Exporter tool for moving RHN configuration information
• Web User Interface (UI) enhancements: Expanded CSV export support and performance enhancements.

Last but not least

Big news in the world of RHN Satellite: We are going open source! Our development, source code, and communications will all be done in the open with GPLv2 licensing. Much more information at our website:

http://spacewalk.redhat.com/

Attend one of our Satellite lab sessions to talk one-on-one with developers on our team and get the latest information.

More information

Red Hat press release webcast

Red Hat press blog announcement

Developer Blogs: Jesus Rodriguez, Devan Goodwin

Red Hat Delivers on Linux Automation with Identity Management and Open Source Systems Management Solutions

Red Hat Network to Be Open-sourced

This entry was posted by The editorial team on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under culture, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.