Chapter 1. Red Hat Network Overview4• Custom System Information — Provisioning customers may identify any type of informationthey choose about their registered systems. This differs from System Profile information, whichis generated automatically, and the Notes, which are unrestricted, in that the Custom SystemInformation allows you to develop specific keys of your choosing and assign searchable values forthat key to each Provisioning-entitled system. For instance, this feature allows you to identify thecubicle in which each system is located and search through all registered systems according to theircubicle.1.4. MonitoringMonitoring entitlements are available to RHN Satellite customers with Red Hat Enterprise Linuxsystems.Monitoring allows an organization to install probes that can immediately detect failures and identifyperformance degradation before it becomes critical. Used properly, the Monitoring entitlement canprovide insight into the applications, services, and devices on each system.Specifically, Monitoring provides:• Probes — Dozens of probes can be run against each system. These range from simple pingchecks to custom remote programs designed to return valuable data.• Notification — Alerts can be sent to email and pager addresses with contact methods identifiedby you when a probe changes state. Each probe notification can be sent to a different method, oraddress.• Central Status — The results of all probes are summarized in a single Probe Status page, with thesystems affected broken down by state.• Reporting — By selecting a probe and identifying the particular metric and a range of time, youcan generate graphs and event logs depicting precisely how the probe has performed. This can beinstrumental in predicting and preventing costly system failures.• Probe Suites — Groups of probes may be assigned to a system or set of systems at once ratherthan individually. This allows Administrators to be certain that similar systems are monitored in thesame way and saves time configuring individual probes.• Notification Filters — Probe notifications may be redirected to another recipient, halted, or sent toan additional recipient for a specified time based on probe criteria, notification method, scout ororganization.1.5. Errata Notifications and Scheduled PackageInstallationsYou can configure Red Hat Network to send you email notifications of new and updated softwarepackages as soon as the packages are available through RHN. You receive one email per Erratum,regardless of the number of affected systems. You can also schedule package installs or packageupdates. The benefits include:• Reduced time and effort required by system administrators to stay on top of the Red Hat Errata list• Minimized security vulnerabilities in your network through the application of updates as soon as RedHat releases them
