Red Hat Satellite 6.3.3 and beyond

By unixsysadminRed Hat Satellite
Satellite

Red Hat Satellite 6.3.3 was released last week and you can find out all about it at the official blog post Satellite blog – Satellite 6.3.3 is now available.

The ‘foreman-maintain’ script for maintaining the upgrades is quite polished now and upgrades are more straightforward as a whole. The ‘foreman-maintain’ script handles the upgrading of the Satellite server in terms of:

  • Checking the Satellite services are running before you start
  • Asking if you want to remove old tasks
  • Checking there is sufficient space in the filesystems
  • Checking the disk speed to the pulp and mongodb disks
  • Ensuring the correct repositories are used for the upgrade
  • Pausing scheduled sync jobs before the upgrade and re-enabling them afterwards
  • Performing the upgrade itself

It’s great and I hope we see this enhanced in the future to cover Capsule upgrades.  By no means does that mean the Capsule upgrade is tricky.  Not at all, it basically consists of:

katello-service stop
yum update
satellite-installer --scenario capsule --upgrade

followed by a restart of the server or Satellite & goferd services.  The ‘foreman-maintain’ script could basically wrap this up in a tidy bow in the same way it does on the Satellite.

As always – perform a backup of Satellite before upgrading!

Satellite 6.4

Whilst browsing the Red Hat website, I found the following article which is worth highlighting if you manage a Red Hat Satellite 6 instance:

What you need to know to be ready for Satellite 6.4 and Puppet 5

A key piece to note is that the upcoming release of Red Hat Satellite – version 6.4 – will only support Puppet 5.  This change:

Affects ALL Satellite 6.3 users, even if you are not using Puppet or if you are using Puppet Enterprise

I recommend reading this document and planning according to your use case – maybe you use the Puppet that comes with Satellite or maybe you don’t – regardless you’ll still need to upgrade.

The upcoming release of Satellite 6.4 will only support Puppet 5

Here’s the Upgrading Puppet Section of the Red Hat Satellite 6.3 Upgrade Guide that will help you plan.  In the meantime, keep enjoying the Satellite 6.3 goodness!

Update 16 October 2018 – Satellite 6.4 is now available

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