CentOS 7 with Red Hat Satellite 6

Question

We're using Satellite 6 to manage our RHEL servers. For some side projects, we'll be using CentOS 7 to limit the costs. Of course we'd like to use Satellite 6 as well to centrally manage these CentOS servers.

I was already able to create a custom product with the CentOS repos; syncing succeeds. Now I need to add those CentOS servers to Satellite (content host & host). For this I'd like to use activation keys, but this requires subscription-manager, so I was able to install subscription-manager on the CentOS server. Now the last issue I have is Katello. What repository contains the katello-agent and puppet agent?

Did anyone else already try to manage CentOS systems with Satellite? Are there other aspects I need to pay attention to?

Official Red Hat support does not want to help us, because this concerns CentOS, not RHEL.

Solution 1

RedHat doesn't officially support any of this yet, but they did mostly support CentOS in Satellite 5 and most of this is adapted from that version. It's just modified to work with the new way of doing things in Satellite 6. I do have this working in a production environment; and hopefully this will help other people get there.

Once you have the repositories, it basically works just like RedHat, but with different subscriptions. You call subscription manager to get the system connected, and from there it's just a matter of setting up puppet, etc. to get everything managed. Since CentOS is direct copy of RedHat for most packages; you can even use the same puppet modules, etc. as your RedHat machines. Although, for sanity, I did put my CentOS machines in their own groups; since there are a few minor things that are different.

Here's the list of repositories you will need for your client machines:

1) CentOS base repositories, plus "update" and "extras". Extras is required for some of the subscription-manager dependencies. It's also required if you need EPEL in CentOS.

2) EPEL repositories, because again subscription-manager dependencies. This will also end up providing katello-agent and puppet when all is said and done.

3) subscription-manager. If you want to actually subscribe your client system properly. RedHat doesn't provide a new version through their repositories yet, at least not that I have found, and the Satellite 5 version doesn't work. However, someone was nice enough to publish a repository with working versions here. Just choose the OS version and arch that you need. https://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/candlepin/subscription-manager/

Solution 2

I know this is an older thread, but the magic is in creating the CentOS repo in Satellite 6. This can be done by creating a 'new product'. Fill in the input fields with the url for the CentOS pkgs, and the CentOS GPG key. I have done this several times. I have EPEL6/EPEL7, CentOS base/extras/updates for el6 and el7. I even created a repo/"product" for the katello-agent and one for subscription-manager rpms. FWIW, you will not see counters for errata on a CentOS system, as this only caters to official RHEL. You can still update them by going to packages, and update packages.

Solution 3

Spacewalk free upstream community project of the Red Hat Satellite.

You may use it to manage CentOS servers.

Comments

[EsTeGe]

Unfortunately, we already invested in RH Satellite, and using 2 separate systems to manage (almost) the same kind of systems is a no-go for us. We want everything centralized, that's why we purchased Satellite in the first place.

[Kelly Shutt]

OH, and here's the real irony for you. I was able to get CentOS systems working faster and more reliably than I am able to do with actual RedHat systems. I'm still fighting the stupid VM subscription model, and virt-who crap, that you have to do to get RedHat subscriptions working properly.

[lzap]

Spacewalk is only upstream for Satellite 5. Its Foreman with Katello plugin for version 6.

[MadHatter]

Continuing to register new users with the same username, and re-posting identical copies of extremely terse answers that have already been deleted by a moderator, probably isn't going to endear you to the SF community, and you should probably stop doing it!

[Jeter-work]

I'm not 100% sure this is still true. We are preparing to deploy satellite, and one of the questions we got was, "How many servers do you need to manage, including RHEL, CentOS, and SL?" I think they may have changed their stance so that they can sell SM subscriptions to CentOS and SL users. (And Oracle)

[bgtvfr]

Hi, welcome on serverfault, this a question rather than an answer

[user2066657]

Same here, Kelly -- the same virt-who crap, the same subscription pain, all of it. I'm going through the motions with a nightmarish tier-1 support rep, daily. Sat6 will join systemd as the reason why my redhat journey will end after 24 years.