Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 4.1.0, Installation Manual

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2 Chapter 1. Introduction
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Scheduled Actions — use the website to schedule actions, including Errata Updates,
package installs, and software profile updates.
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Simplification — maintaining Red Hat systems becomes a simple, automated process.
1.2. RHN Satellite Server
RHN Satellite Server allows organizations to utilize the benefits of Red Hat Network with-
out having to provide public Internet access to their servers or other client systems. System
Profiles are stored locally on the customer’s RHN Satellite Server. The Red Hat Network
website is served from a local Web server and is not accessible from the Internet. All pack-
age management tasks, including Errata Updates, are performed through the local area
network.
Advantages of using RHN Satellite Server include:
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Security — an end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to
the RHN Satellite Server without connecting to the public Internet.
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Efficiency — packages are delivered significantly faster over a local area network.
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Control — clients’ System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite Server, not on
the central Red Hat Network Servers.
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Customized updates — create a truly automated package delivery system for custom
software packages required by client systems, as well as Red Hat packages. Custom
channels allow fine-grained control of the delivery of custom packages.
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Access control — system administrators can be restricted to access only those systems
within their maintenance responsibilities.
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Bandwidth management — the bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and
the RHN Satellite Server is controlled by the organization on the local area network;
RHN Satellite Server clients do not have to compete with other clients accessing the
central Red Hat Network file servers.
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Scalability — RHN Satellite Server may oversee an entire organization’s servers in com-
bination with RHN Proxy Server.
1.3. Terms to Understand
Before understanding RHN Satellite Server, it is important to become familiar with the
following Red Hat Network terms:
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Channel — A channel is a list of software packages. There are two types of channels:
base channels and child channels. A base channel consists of a list of packages based on