Red Hat Satellite Service

Red Hat Satellite Service is an external shared service that points to a Red Hat Satellite Server instance running inside or outside the customer environment. This service consumes no virtual machine resources and is deployed per cloud group. Red Hat Satellite Service is based on the Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.4, which provides an OS patch management solution for Red Hat client virtual machines.

Note: Customers who are already running Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.2 and want to use their existing Red Hat Satellite Server to update Cloud Pak System Software Red Hat virtual machines can do so. For customers without a Red Hat Satellite Server in their customer environment, Cloud Pak System Software also provided a pattern for deploying a Red Hat Satellite Server pattern on the rack.
Note: End of service for Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.2 is May 2019. Therefore, Cloud Pak System Software customers who are currently using Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.2, must migrate to Red Hat Subscription Manager Version 6.4 Satellite server before May 2019.
To leverage the function provided by the Red Hat Satellite Service:
  • Verify that Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.4 is installed in your customer environment. If it is not, Cloud Pak System Software also provides the Red Hat Satellite Server pattern 6.2 for deploying a Red Hat Satellite Server on the system. For more information about deploying a Red Hat Satellite Server virtual system pattern, see Deploying the Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.4 virtual system pattern.
    CAUTION:
    Do not deploy Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.2.
  • Deploy the external Red Hat Satellite Service per cloud group. The Red Hat Satellite Service expects that a real Red Hat Satellite Server is available on the system or in your customer environment. For more information about deploying the external shared service, see Deploying the external shared service.

Benefits

With the Red Hat Satellite Service, you can expect the following benefits:
  • You can leverage existing Satellite servers to manage Cloud Pak System Software virtual machines if you already have a Red Hat Satellite Server in your enterprise.
  • The Red Hat Satellite Server can patch and update Red Hat guest virtual machines for multiple systems, allowing you to share Red Hat repositories across multiple systems or enterprises. A Red Hat Satellite Server instance can be accessed by virtual machines across multiple cloud groups, provided the virtual machines have network connectivity to the Satellite server. There is no need to set up a Satellite server in each cloud group. Each cloud group has an external shared service pointing to the Red Hat Satellite Server instance either running on a system or in your customer environment.
  • You can use the Red Hat Satellite Server user interface to group virtual machines by using activation keys. Activation keys give IBM® the flexibility to configure additional client entitlements and channels dynamically, if needed.
  • You can deploy the Red Hat Satellite Service such that clients in that cloud group running with Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems can receive updates from the Red Hat Satellite Server as they become available.
  • You can easily migrate from Red Hat Satellite Service Version 6.2 to 6.4 by deploying both shared services in one cloud group and then restarting the virtual machines. The restarted virtual machines will be migrated to the Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.4 environment and subsequently registered with the 6.4 Red Hat Satellite Server. Alternatively, you can delete the 6.2 shared service, which will unregister all 6.2 virtual machines previously registered with the 6.2 shared service and migrate all of the virtual machines to the Red Hat Satellite Server Version 6.4 environment.

Architecture

The architectural design of the Red Hat Satellite Service includes the following considerations:
  • Each cloud group has a Red Hat Satellite external shared service (consumes no resources, but just metadata information of the Satellite server), which points back to the real Red Hat Satellite Server instance. The external service assumes there is direct connectivity (line of sight) from each cloud group to the network where the Red Hat Satellite Server is running. The line of sight enables you to run a single Red Hat Satellite Server per system or enterprise wide, instead of one per cloud group.
  • If the virtual machines in the cloud group do not have direct connectivity (line of sight) to either the Red Hat Satellite Server instance or the Red Hat Network, the Red Hat Satellite Service provides an option to connect through a forward proxy in the environment. You can specify the forward proxy configuration as part of the shared service configuration.

The following figure shows an architectural overview of the Red Hat Satellite Service.

Architectural overview of the Red Hat Satellite Service.