Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.2 - CHANNEL MANAGEMENT, Reference Manual

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Provisioning
3
Hat Login
page, click
Create a new Business Login
. After creating a business 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 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
systems 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 software package to each, subscribe the systems to a new channel, or apply all
Errata to them with a single action.
• Batch Processing — Compiling a list of outdated packages for a thousand systems would take days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.
1.3. Provisioning
As the highest management service level, RHN Provisioning encompasses all of the features offered
in the RHN 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. It takes this concept a step further 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 — RHN Satellite Server Customers may use RHN to manage the configuration
files on Provisioning-entitled systems. Users can upload files to custom configurations channels on
the Satellite, verify local configuration files against those stored on the Satellite, and deploy files
from the Satellite.
• Snapshot Rollbacks — Provisioning-level users have the ability to revert the package profile and
RHN settings of systems. RHN Satellite Server customers can also roll back local configurations
files. This is possible because snapshots are captured whenever an action takes place on a system.
These snapshots identify groups, channels, packages, and configuration files.