We’ve purchased a Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Virtual Datacenters license, and have deployed Foreman 1.16, Katello 3.5 and have got the licensing working on our ESX hypervisor using Virtwho (example output of a licensed guest is as below). We’re not ready to setup local repos, though - and we were wondering if it would be possible to pull updates direct from Redhat at this stage. If so, how would we go about configuring this ?
# subscription-manager list --installed
+-------------------------------------------+
Installed Product Status
+-------------------------------------------+
Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
Product ID: 69
Version: 7.4
Arch: x86_64
Status: Subscribed
Status Details:
Starts: 08/01/18
Ends: 08/01/19
I’m not sure if this answers your question, but in katello you can sync from the Red Hat CDN by importing a manifest, going to red hat repositories and enabling the ones you want, and then syncing those repositories.
Yes, Red Hat Satellite 6 is nothing more than Foreman + Katello + bunch of other plugins all in red color with many backported fixes from upstream and professional support and services. In other words, Foreman or Katello is not what I like to say cripple-ware - stripped down version of some “enterprise” software. That’s not how Red Hat delivers software and services.
In short, everything should work, but you are on your own.
I think, and @prynhart correct me if I’m wrong, that the actual question here is if they can use katello at this point without pulling down content - i.e. have the hosts subscribed to foreman but still pull content directly from the CDN.
Hi there! Yes, exactly my question . At the moment we’re not yet ready to mirror all the repos using Pulp etc., and were wondering if we could please pull errata direct from the Redhat CDN. We can’t license these VMs direct with Redhat because the license type (RHEL for Virtual Datacenters requires virt-who).
You’ll have to pull down the content to your Satellite / Katello but the “on-demand” syncing (it’s the default) uses a minimal amount of disk space. We’ll have the repo yum metadata generated, but we won’t download an RPM from the CDN until a client requests it the first time.
You can manage aspects of a host using Foreman with Katello while having that host registered to the CDN. All content host maanagement is effectively non-operational in this state. You won’t be able to do things like manage errata for your hosts. But you can manage the configuration through Ansible or Puppet of the host in Foreman while still getting content through the CDN by keeping the host registered to the portal. This would allow you a staged approach at then managing local content and swapping clients to register to the server or an external smart proxy.
If you add in your manifest, add the repos you want and use the “On-demand” option (Default in the latest version). It will only pull down metadata unless a client asks for an RPM. So the entire repo won’t be pulled down. I hardly notice the disk space for the repo’s I have in Foreman at the moment.
I’d like to define that “minimum amount” is exactly 10 GB that is configured via our installer in squid. We don’t have this a configurable option tho, I filed a ticked last year I think
I would need a tiny clarification. I remembered that in order to be in the position to create a manifest the RH customer should have bought the Management Addon. Can any Red hat fellow verify if I could create a manifest without having bought the Management Addon for my RHEL subs and actually import it that to my Katello/Foreman latest installation ?
. At the moment we’re not yet ready to mirror all the repos using Pulp etc., and were wondering if we could please pull errata direct from the Redhat CDN. We can’t license these VMs direct with Redhat because the license type (RHEL for Virtual Datacenters requires virt-who).