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.
Starting the week with a smooth upgrade to @RedHatSatellite 6.3.3. 24 bugs squashed – see what’s fixed here: https://t.co/twRpUZWQ0k pic.twitter.com/jclmHAK3xK
— Unix Sys Admin (@UnixSysAdmin) August 27, 2018
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