Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.3.0 Deployment Manual

Also see for NETWORK SATELLITE 5.3.0 - CHANNEL MANAGEMENT: Installation guide Management guide Configuration guide Installation guide Release note

Contents

Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.3.0 Deployment Manual Manual pdf 41 page image

Chapter 5.33Provisioning with SatelliteAll organizations need simple, yet powerful tools to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Formany years, Red Hat Network Satellite has empowered companies to build repeatable, predictableand reliable deployment processes to ensure rapid repurposing of Linux servers and desktops.Whether you have 10 systems or 10,000 systems, RHN Satellite can help you achieve this goal in adisciplined fashion. Now, after significant investment, RHN Satellite 5.3 has dramatically boosted theflexibility and power of its signature provisioning capabilities.This document contains concise details and instructions for use of the kickstart provisioningfunctionality in Red Hat Network Satellite.5.1. RequirementsTo use the new provisioning functionality, you need one or more target machines — either physical,bare metal computer system(s) or virtual machine host(s). If you want to use Satellite's virtual machineprovisioning functionality, your virtual machine host(s) should be configured with either the Xen orKVM virtualization technologies. Note that RHEL 5.4 and newer support KVM virtualization at this time.5.2. Definitions and Terms• Provisioning — The process of configuring a machine (physical or virtual) to a predefined knownstate. Satellite ultimately accomplishes provisioning in all cases through the mechanism ofkickstarting.• Kickstarting — A process of installing a Red Hat based system in an automated manner requiringlittle or no user intervention. Technically, kickstart refers to a mechanism in the Anaconda installationprogram that allows you supply a concise description of the contents and configuration of a machineto the installer, which it then acts on. Such a concise system definition is referred to in Satellite 5.3.0as a Kickstart Profile.• Kickstart Profile – The kickstart file is a text file that specifies all of the options needed to kickstart amachine, including partitioning information, network configuration, and packages to install. In RHNSatellite, a Kickstart Profile is a superset of a traditional Anaconda kickstart definition, as Satellite'simplementation builds on Cobbler's enhancements to kickstarting. A Kickstart Profile presumes theexistence of a Kickstart Tree.• Kickstart Tree – The software and support files needed in order to kickstart a machine. This isalso often called an "install tree". This is usually the directory structure and files pulled from theinstallation media that ships with a particular release. In Cobbler terminology, a Kickstart Tree is partof a Distro - short for distribution.• PXE or Preboot eXecution Environment — A low-level protocol that makes it possible to kickstartbare-metal machines (usually physical, or real, machines) on power-up with no pre-configuration ofthe target machine itself. PXE relies on a DHCP server to inform clients about bootstrap servers (forpurposes of this document, Satellite 5.3.0 installations). PXE must be supported in the firmware ofthe target machine in order to be used. It is possible to use the virtualization and reinstall facilities ofSatellite without PXE, though PXE is very useful for booting new physical machines, or reinstallingmachines that are not registered to Satellite.