Installation guide

Chapter 1. Introduction
RHN Satellite provides a solution to organizations requiring absolute control over and privacy of the
maintenance and package deployment of their servers. It allows Red Hat Network customers the
greatest flexibility and power in keeping servers secure and updated.
Two types of RHN Satellite are available: One with a stand-alone database on a separate machine and
one with an embedded database installed on the same machine as the Satellite. This guide describes
the installation of both types of Satellite.
Although the two types of RHN Satellite are functionally similar, some differences do exist. These
variations are primarily isolated to hardware requirements , installation steps, and maintenance activities.
They may also appear during troubles hooting. This guide identifies distinctions between the Satellite
types by marking the differing instructions as either Stand-Alone Database or Embedded Database.
1.1. Red Hat Network
Red Hat Network (RHN) is the environment for s ystem-level support and management of Red Hat
systems and networks of systems. Red Hat Network brings together the tools, services , and information
repositories needed to maximize the reliability, security, and performance of their systems. T o use RHN,
system administrators register the s oftware and hardware profiles, known as System Profiles , of their
client systems with Red Hat Network. When a client sys tem requests package updates, only the
applicable packages for the client are returned (based upon the software profile stored on the RHN
Servers).
Advantages of using Red Hat Network include:
Scalability — with Red Hat Network, a single system administrator can set up and maintain hundreds
or thousands of Red Hat systems more easily, accurately, and quickly than they could maintain a
single system without Red Hat Network.
Standard Protocols — s tandard protocols are used to maintain security and increase capability. For
example, XML-RPC gives Red Hat Network the ability to do much more than merely download files.
Security — all communication between registered systems and Red Hat Network takes place over
secure Internet connections.
View Errata Alerts — easily view Errata Alerts for all your client systems through one website.
Scheduled Actions — use the website to schedule actions, including Errata Updates, package
installs, and s oftware profile updates .
Simplification — maintaining Red Hat systems becomes a simple, automated process.
1.2. RHN Satellite
RHN Satellite allows organizations to utilize the benefits of Red Hat Network without having to provide
public Internet access to their servers or other client systems. System Profiles are stored locally on the
customer's RHN Satellite. The Red Hat Network website is served from a local Web server and is not
accessible from the Internet. All package management tasks, including Errata Updates, are performed
through the local area network.
Advantages of using RHN Satellite include:
Security — an end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to the RHN
Satellite without connecting to the public Internet.
Efficiency — packages are delivered significantly fas ter over a local area network.
Control — clients' System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite, not on the central Red Hat
Network Servers.
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.
Access control — system administrators can be restricted to access only those systems within their
maintenance responsibilities.
Bandwidth management — the bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and the RHN
Satellite is controlled by the organization on the local area network; RHN Satellite clients do not have
to compete with other clients accessing the central Red Hat Network file servers.
Scalability — RHN Satellite may oversee an entire organization's servers in combination with RHN
Proxy Server.
1.3. Terms to Understand
Before understanding RHN Satellite, it is important to become familiar with the following Red Hat Network
terms:
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 a specific
architecture and Red Hat release. A child channel is a channel as sociated with a base channel that
contains extra packages.
Organization Administrator — An Organization Administrator is a user role with the highest level of
control over an organization's Red Hat Network account. Members of this role can add other users,
systems, and system groups to the organization as well as remove them. A Red Hat Network
organization must have at least one Organization Administrator.
Channel Administrator — A Channel Administrator is a user role with full access to channel
management capabilities. Users with this role are capable of creating channels, assigning packages
to channels, cloning channels, and deleting channels. This role can be ass igned by an Organization
Administrator through the Users tab of the RHN website.
Certificate Authority — A Certificate Authority distributes digital signatures to users as part of public
key infrastructure for encrypted authentication and communication.
Red Hat Update Agent — The Red Hat Updat e Age nt is the Red Hat Network client application
that allows users to retrieve and install new or updated packages for the client system on which the
application is run.
Traceback — A T raceback is a detailed description of "what went wrong" that is useful for
troubleshooting the RHN Satellite. Tracebacks are automatically generated when a critical error
occurs and are mailed to the individual(s) des ignated in the RHN Satellite's configuration file.
For more detailed explanations of these terms and others, refer to the Red Hat Network Reference
Guide.
1.4. How it Works
RHN Satellite consists of the following components :
Database — for the Stand-Alone Databas e, this may be the organization's existing database or,
preferably, a separate machine. RHN Satellite supports Oracle Database 10 g Release 2, Standard or
Enterprise Edition. For the Embedded Databas e, the database comes bundled with RHN Satellite and
Chapter 1. Introduction
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