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.

Answer 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/

Answer 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.

Answer 3

Spacewalk free upstream community project of the Red Hat Satellite.

You may use it to manage CentOS servers.

Answer 4

I Did as DFerguson and Jaypers, setup centos 7.5 as a product (Sat 6.3.2), then register with the centos activation-key pointing to all centos-repos etc. But funny after a while, the operating system shows as redhat 7.5, still subscription from my centos-key. Anyone got an idea whats happening?

Answer 5

RHEL

eg: subscription-manager register --activationkey=rhel7-production --org 'Default_Organisation'

subscription-manager register --activationkey=OSVersion-Environment --org 'Default_Organisation'
subscription-manager attach --auto
subscription-manager repos --enable=*

CentOS

subscription-manager register --activationkey=OSVersion-Environment --org 'Default_Organisation'
subscription-manager list --available | egrep 'Subscription Name:|Pool ID' | egrep 'CentOS|Xymon|EPEL|Puppet' -A1
subscription-manager attach  $(subscription-manager list --available | egrep 'Subscription Name:|Pool ID' | egrep 'CentOS|Xymon|EPEL|Puppet' -A1 | grep ID | awk '{print "--pool=" $3}'  )