Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 3.7 Installation Manual

Contents

Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 3.7 Installation Manual Manual pdf 6 page image

2 Chapter 1. Introduction• Security — an end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to the RHNSatellite Server without connecting to the public Internet.• Efficiency — packages are delivered significantly faster over a local area network.• Control — clients’ System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite Server, not on the centralRed Hat Network Servers.• Customized updates — create a truly automated package delivery system for custom software pack-ages required by client systems, as well as official Red Hat packages. Custom channels allow fine-grained control of the delivery of custom packages.• Access control — system administrators can be restricted to access only those systems within theirmaintenance responsibilities.• Bandwidth management — the bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and the RHNSatellite Server is controlled by the organization on the local area network; RHN Satellite Serverclients do not have to compete with other clients accessing the central Red Hat Network file servers.• Scalability — RHN Satellite Server may oversee an entire organization’s servers in combinationwith RHN Proxy Server.1.3. Terms to UnderstandBefore understanding RHN Satellite Server, it is important to become familiar with the following RedHat Network terms:• Channel — A channel is a list of software packages. There are two types of channels: base channelsand child channels. A base channel consists of a list of packages based on a specific architectureand Red Hat release. A child channel is a channel associated with a base channel but contains extrapackages.• Organization Administrator — An Organization Administrator is a user role with the highest levelof control over an organization’s Red Hat Network account. Members of this role can add otherusers, systems, and system groups to the organization as well as remove them. A Red Hat Networkorganization must have at least one Organization Administrator.• Channel Administrator — A Channel Administrator is a user role with full access to channel man-agement capabilities. Users with this role are capable of creating channels, assigning packages tochannels, cloning channels, and deleting channels. This role can be assigned by an OrganizationAdministrator through the Users tab of the RHN website.• Red Hat Update Agent — The Red Hat Update Agent is the Red Hat Network client application(up2date) that allows users to retrieve and install new or updated packages for the client systemon which the application is run.• Traceback — A traceback is a detailed description of "what went wrong" that is useful for trou-bleshooting the RHN Satellite Server. Tracebacks are automatically generated when a critical erroroccurs and are mailed to the individual(s) designated in the RHN Satellite Server’s configurationfile.For more detailed explanations of these terms and others, refer to the Red Hat Network ReferenceGuide.1.4. How it WorksRHN Satellite Server consists of the following components: