I'm a new user of TheForeman and Puppet and I'm trying to determine that
best course of action to keep my systems up to date. The systems are a mix
of RHEL and CentOS. The RHEL systems use an internal private mirror (not
Satellite) for updates and the CentOS systems also use a private mirror.
Is deploying Katello the recommended method to keep RHEL and CentOS systems
up-to-date? Or is there a simple Puppet module I could install if I only
wanted to push certain RPMs to my hosts?
For example, if I just wanted to push the latest flash-plugin to my hosts
(where it's already installed), I assume I could use the Puppet module
(https://forge.puppet.com/puppet/yum) or I could install Katello, configure
it, etc.
Could you help me understand the pros and cons of using one or the other?
Thanks.
The benefits of using Katello/TFM to provision and manage hosts include full lifecycle management. From a content (RPM) point of view what that means to me is the ability to maintain a consistent version number of all installed software in a given environment and to ensure those versions are baked before they progress to the next environment.
For example, without content management if you build two production servers days apart they may have different versions of OpenSSL, the kernel, etc. With Katello you choose when packages are made available to logical groupings of systems.
If all you want to do is manage content and not use the configuration management or provisioning features Katello/TFM may be overkill. IMO, though, standing it up may help open doors that seemed like stretch goals in the past. TFM integrates with many other platforms (VMware, libvirt, ovirt, FreeIPA/RH IDM, etc) and can stand up a Puppet infrastructure for you (or integrate with an existing). It currently has basic remote execution capabilities as well.
HTH,
j
···
From: "Brian Long"
To: "Foreman Users"
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 10:55:09 AM
Subject: [foreman-users] RPM management recommendations
I’m a new user of TheForeman and Puppet and I’m trying to determine that best course of action to keep my systems up to date. The systems are a mix of RHEL and CentOS. The RHEL systems use an internal private mirror (not Satellite) for updates and the CentOS systems also use a private mirror.
Is deploying Katello the recommended method to keep RHEL and CentOS systems up-to-date? Or is there a simple Puppet module I could install if I only wanted to push certain RPMs to my hosts?
For example, if I just wanted to push the latest flash-plugin to my hosts (where it’s already installed), I assume I could use the Puppet module (https://forge.puppet.com/puppet/yum) or I could install Katello, configure it, etc.
Could you help me understand the pros and cons of using one or the other? Thanks.
If you don't need a full blown Katello installation, you could look at
using a Pulp (and the consumer client if you desire) standalone
installation which is what we do.
···
On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 8:15 AM, 'Jason B. Nance' via Foreman users < foreman-users@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Hi Brian,
The benefits of using Katello/TFM to provision and manage hosts include
full lifecycle management. From a content (RPM) point of view what that
means to me is the ability to maintain a consistent version number of all
installed software in a given environment and to ensure those versions are
baked before they progress to the next environment.
For example, without content management if you build two production
servers days apart they may have different versions of OpenSSL, the kernel,
etc. With Katello you choose when packages are made available to logical
groupings of systems.
If all you want to do is manage content and not use the configuration
management or provisioning features Katello/TFM may be overkill. IMO,
though, standing it up may help open doors that seemed like stretch goals
in the past. TFM integrates with many other platforms (VMware, libvirt,
ovirt, FreeIPA/RH IDM, etc) and can stand up a Puppet infrastructure for
you (or integrate with an existing). It currently has basic remote
execution capabilities as well.
HTH,
j
*From: *“Brian Long” briandlong@gmail.com
*To: *“Foreman Users” foreman-users@googlegroups.com
*Sent: *Wednesday, January 11, 2017 10:55:09 AM
*Subject: *[foreman-users] RPM management recommendations
I’m a new user of TheForeman and Puppet and I’m trying to determine that
best course of action to keep my systems up to date. The systems are a mix
of RHEL and CentOS. The RHEL systems use an internal private mirror (not
Satellite) for updates and the CentOS systems also use a private mirror.
Is deploying Katello the recommended method to keep RHEL and CentOS
systems up-to-date? Or is there a simple Puppet module I could install if
I only wanted to push certain RPMs to my hosts?
For example, if I just wanted to push the latest flash-plugin to my hosts
(where it’s already installed), I assume I could use the Puppet module ( https://forge.puppet.com/puppet/yum) or I could install Katello,
configure it, etc.
Could you help me understand the pros and cons of using one or the other?
Thanks.
