GL650 · 5 days · 16+ hrs hands-on labs

Red Hat Satellite v6 Administration (Foreman/Katello)

Available for RHEL

Red Hat Satellite is the systems management server for RHEL: it delivers content to hosts, provisions them, runs jobs on them and keeps their configuration in line. This course teaches students to install, run and scale Satellite 6.19 for a fleet of RHEL 10 hosts. Satellite is built from the open source Foreman and Katello projects. The labs run on Foreman 3.18 and Katello 4.20, the upstream releases behind Satellite 6.19, and the courseware calls out each place where Satellite command names and menus differ.

The curriculum starts with Satellite architecture, Capsules, installer scenarios, tuning profiles and plugins, then covers daily administration with hammer and satellite-maintain, backups, role-based access control, organizations, locations and parameter inheritance. Content management covers manifests and Simple Content Access, products, sync plans, alternate content sources, lifecycle environments and content views with filters, dependency solving, composite and rolling views, multiple content view environments per host, errata and incremental updates, and container and bootable container images. Host topics include activation keys, global registration, remote execution in SSH and pull mode, job templates and webhooks. Configuration management uses Ansible roles and variable overrides, with an overview of Puppet integration through OpenVox. Later chapters integrate Red Hat Identity Management for realm enrollment and DNS, provision hosts with PXE, UEFI HTTP boot, Discovery, Kickstart templates and host groups, manage image mode hosts with bootc, and scale out with Capsule Servers, Inter-Satellite Sync for disconnected sites, Leapp upgrades, Satellite upgrades and Red Hat Lightspeed.

With 31 lab exercises across ten chapters, students build a working Satellite and use it the way production teams do. They install an Identity Management server, provision a discovered machine that enrolls in IdM and runs its Ansible roles, build an image mode host and roll its image forward and back, deploy a Capsule for a remote site and provision through it, export content to a disconnected organization, and upgrade a RHEL 9 host to RHEL 10 with Leapp.

Who Should Attend

Linux system administrators and infrastructure engineers who build, run or take over a Red Hat Satellite or Foreman/Katello deployment for RHEL hosts. The course suits staff responsible for patch and errata management, host provisioning, configuration management with Ansible and identity integration, and those planning Capsules for remote sites, disconnected networks or major release upgrades of a RHEL fleet.

Skills You'll Gain

Plan and install a Satellite Server with satellite-installer, choosing scenarios, tuning profiles and plugins, and rerun the installer to change its configuration
Administer Satellite with hammer and satellite-maintain, including health checks, online and offline backups, restore checks and upgrades
Control access with organizations, locations, roles and filters, user groups, LDAP or IdM authentication and personal access tokens
Synchronize repositories and manage content with lifecycle environments, content views, filters, composite and rolling content views and incremental errata updates
Register RHEL hosts with global registration and activation keys, and manage their packages, errata and traces
Run remote execution jobs over SSH or pull mode, write ERB job templates, and send events to other systems with webhooks
Manage host configuration with Ansible roles assigned to host groups and hosts, and override role variables with matchers
Integrate Satellite with Red Hat Identity Management for automatic realm enrollment and DNS updates
Provision hosts with PXE, Discovery, Kickstart provisioning templates, custom snippets and nested host groups
Build bootable container images and manage image mode hosts with Bootc upgrade, rollback and switch jobs
Deploy Capsule Servers for remote sites, and move content to disconnected Satellites with Inter-Satellite Sync exports and imports
Upgrade RHEL 9 hosts to RHEL 10 with Leapp jobs, and plan Satellite upgrades one minor release at a time

Chapters & Labs

31 labs · 16+ hours hands-on
  1. Satellite and Foreman/Katello 3 labs · 75 min
  2. Administration 3 labs · 55 min
  3. Content Management 4 labs · 120 min
  4. Registering and Managing Hosts 3 labs · 70 min
  5. Remote Execution and Integration 4 labs · 95 min
  6. Configuration Management with Ansible 2 labs · 40 min
  7. Authentication Realms and IdM 3 labs · 90 min
  8. Provisioning 4 labs · 130 min
  9. Image Mode Hosts 1 lab · 60 min
  10. Scaling and Lifecycle 4 labs · 200 min

Prerequisites

Solid RHEL system administration skills, including package management with dnf, systemd services, networking, firewalld, DNS and LVM storage. GL250 (Enterprise Linux Systems Administration) or equivalent experience. Basic familiarity with Ansible, such as GL294 provides, and with containers and podman is helpful but not required.