RHN - Proxy, satellite etc. How do you update you servers?

Linux and Unix-Like Red Hat
1

Hi,

I'd like to know more about RHN and their RHN PROXY.

  • If I will buy PROXY, do I need to get licenses for all my RHELs to have them updated? What are benefits of proxy?

  • If I will buy (doubt it) Satellite, will I be able to connect all my boxes to Satellite and have them upgraded without licenses per box?

How do you keep your severs updated? Do you have yum repo somewhere where you dump all the updates and then you keep your boxes updated with that repo or do you pay license for every single box?

Basically speaking, I need to update (and keep updated) all my servers but at the same time I can't spend more than I really have to. I mean few hundred $.
Here it's impossible to explain why Linux is free but not free.

Thanks!
Chris

2

As far as I recall you need a license for every RHEL system you want to provision from RHN PROXY or Satellite.

3

There is always spacewalk, but it is not supported

4

Greetings,

You will definitely require licenses for each host utilizing either solution.

Proxy advantages would be (IMO):

LAN speed updates, regularly caching archives

Satellite pros/cons(IMO):

Both of the above mentioned features for 3x the money at minimum.
Honestly in my experience anything under a hundred machines and satellite can be overkill, expensive and require management overhead itself. I have never seen satellite deployed to utilize even 50% of its advertised feature set.

Aaron

5

Guys,

Thank you very much for your answers. That confirms what I thought but it's nice to know for sure.

I've looked into spacewalk last year and again yesterday. Well... time to run some tests. I might build some test machines in next few week and will decide then.

We can't buy licenses for all the redhats we have. (Sorry RedHat!) and Centos is not an option.

Many thanks again for your input.
Kind Regards
Chris

6

If Centos is not an option due to something like the oracle installer complaining/failing. You need do nothing more than drop in an /etc/redhat-release file...