So with the current solution without SCA and a setup, where multiple OS and OS-Versions need to be maintained, often Composite Content Views are used to have different sets of custom repos in separate Content Views to update them without having to update all repositories.
In this case I often use Content Views to combine multiple products offering the same repo for different operating systems. With the SCA approach that would not work any more, meaning to have the same functionality I would end up with around 10 times more content views like currently.
To have an example:
Maintaining different OS:
- RedHat 7
- RedHat 8
- RedHat 9
- Ubuntu 18
- Ubuntu 20
- Ubuntu 22
- Rockylinux 8
- Rockylinux 9
And to simplify the amount of Custom Repositories, I have separate Content Views for:
- Base-Repositories (OS, subscription-manager) - one for each OS major-release
- EPEL - one CV combining EPEL for 7 and 8 (which are separate products)
- Puppet 7 - one CV combining all Puppet 7 - repos (which are separate products)
- Puppet 4 (because there is an legacy environment, where the modules are not yet updated to work with Puppet 7) - one CV combining all Puppet 7 - repos (which are separate products)
- Docker-Repositories - one CV combining all Puppet 7 - repos (which are separate products)
Now I combine one composite Content View for each operating system with each CV → 8 composite Content Views and 12 “normal” content views.
Since I do not add the subscription for all the unwanted products in my activation keys, this is easy to maintain.
If SCA now means I have to separate those Content Views, I would still have 8 composite content views but to achieve the same functionality I end up with around 40 normal content views - and in this example there are not very many custom repos included.
So in the end it will be difficult to maintain all content views to have the correct patching states - which will only work, when automating it with Ansible or something.
So I can image that the overhead is somehow “acceptable” if I only have to use RHEL in 2-3 major releases but in the end I have the impression that SCA will make everything much more complex for every repository not provided by RedHat.