Red Hat NETWORK 3.5 - PROVISIONING, Reference Manual

Page: 13 / 136

Chapter 1. What is Red Hat Network? 3
To create an account that can be used to entitle systems to RHN Management, go to
https://rhn.redhat.com/ and click on the
Create Account
link under the
Sign In
fields. On the Sign
Up for Red Hat Network page, click Create a new corporate account . After creating a corporate
account, you may add users within your organization to it.
The Red Hat Network features available to you depend on the subscription level for each Red Hat
Enterprise Linux system. With each Management subscription, you receive the functionality provided
to Demo and Update users, plus:
•
Package Profile Comparison — Compare the package set on a system with the package sets of
similar systems with one click.
•
Search Systems — Search through systems based on a number of criteria: packages, networking
information, even hardware asset tags.
•
System Grouping — Web servers, database servers, workstations and other workload-focused sys-
tems may be grouped so that each set can be administered in common ways.
•
Multiple Administrators — Administrators may be given rights to particular system groups, easing
the burden of system management over very large organizations.
•
System Set Manager — You may now apply actions to sets of systems instead of single systems.
Work with members of a predefined system group, or work with an ad-hoc collection of systems.
Install a single package to each, subscribe them all to a new channel, or apply all errata to them
with a single action.
•
Massive Scalability — Figuring out a list of outdated packages for a thousand systems would take
days for a dedicated sysadmin. Red Hat Network Management service can do it for you in seconds.
1.4. Provisioning
As the highest service level, RHN Provisioning encompasses all of the features offered in the RHN
Demo, Update, and Management subscription levels. It is designed to allow you to deploy and manage
your network of Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, users, and system groups.
Like, Management, Provisioning is based upon an organization. But it takes this concept a step fur-
ther by enabling customers with Provisioning entitlements to kickstart, reconfigure, track, and revert
systems on the fly.
In addition to all of the features mentioned in lower service levels, Provisioning provides:
•
Kickstarting — Systems with Provisioning entitlements may be re-installed through RHN with a
whole host of options established in kickstart profiles. Options include everything from the type of
bootloader and time zone to packages included/excluded and IP address ranges allowed. Even GPG
and SSL keys can be pre-configured.
•
Client Configuration — Customers may use RHN to manage the configuration files on
Provisioning-entitled systems. Users can upload files to RHN’s central configuration manager,
verify local configuration files against those stored by RHN, and deploy files from RHN. Further,
custom configuration channels can be created to help manage this process.
•
Snapshot Rollbacks — Provisioning-level users have the ability to revert the package profile, con-
figuration files, and RHN settings of systems. This is possible because snapshots are captured when-
ever an action takes place on a system. These snapshots identify groups, channels, packages, and
configuration files.
•
Custom System Information — Provisioning customers may identify any type of information they
choose about their systems. This differs from the more rigorous System Profile information and the
completely arbitrary Notes in that it allows you to develop specific keys of your choosing and then