Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.1.1 - RELEASE NOTES, Reference Manual

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Chapter 1. Red Hat Network Overview
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• Custom System Information — Provisioning customers may identify any type of information
they choose about their registered systems. This differs from System Profile information, which
is generated automatically, and the Notes, which are unrestricted, in that the Custom System
Information allows you to develop specific keys of your choosing and assign searchable values for
that key to each Provisioning-entitled system. For instance, this feature allows you to identify the
cubicle in which each system is located and search through all registered systems according to their
cubicle.
1.4. Monitoring
Monitoring entitlements are available to RHN Satellite Server customers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
systems.
Monitoring allows an organization to install probes that can immediately detect failures and identify
performance degradation before it becomes critical. Used properly, the Monitoring entitlement can
provide 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
ping
checks to custom remote programs designed to return valuable data.
• Notification — Alerts can be sent to email and pager addresses with contact methods identified
by you when a probe changes state. Each probe notification can be sent to a different method, or
address.
• Central Status — The results of all probes are summarized in a single
Probe Status
page, with the
systems affected broken down by state.
• Reporting — By selecting a probe and identifying the particular metric and a range of time, you
can generate graphs and event logs depicting precisely how the probe has performed. This can be
instrumental in predicting and preventing costly system failures.
• Probe Suites — Groups of probes may be assigned to a system or set of systems at once rather
than individually. This allows Administrators to be certain that similar systems are monitored in the
same way and saves time configuring individual probes.
• Notification Filters — Probe notifications may be redirected to another recipient, halted, or sent to
an additional recipient for a specified time based on probe criteria, notification method, scout or
organization.
1.5. Errata Notifications and Scheduled Package
Installations
You can configure Red Hat Network to send you email notifications of new and updated software
packages 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 package
updates. 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 Red
Hat releases them