(bright music)
- Hi, I'm Matthew Yee,
and I'm a technical marketing manager at Red Hat,
and I'd like to tell you
about what's new in Satellite 6.12.
I'm really excited about Satellite 6.12
because numerous UI changes and improvements have been made.
As well, there's a significant performance improvement
in 6.12 because we've improved the handling
of concurrent web server connections.
You'll also see that we've created a couple new tricks
for you to synchronize content
to your Satellite and to your Capsules.
All of these improvements make Satellite easier
to use and customize
to meet your organization's system management needs.
The Host Details web interface
has undergone an exciting transformation.
We've updated the Host Details menu
and made it easier to perform host-related tasks.
This menu was actually introduced in Satellite 6.11
as a technology preview feature.
The improvements range from usability to new features,
to reduce the amount of menu hopping and loading
in order to get things done.
Diving right in, there's a brand new context tab
in the Host Details menu for installing new packages.
Here, I am installing the Vim Enhanced Editor.
The animation shows me searching
for the Vim package that I want to install
right through to the installation job itself.
We've updated Errata installation as well.
You can view the applicable Errata to a specific host
and apply them straight from the menu.
Satellite 6.12 has a brand new Insights menu
accessible from the Host Details menu.
Here you can harness the power of Red Hat Insights,
including its capability of recommending remediations,
as well as enabling you to apply that remediation
directly to your host
through the power of Ansible in Satellite.
This feature requires that Cloud Connector is configured
so that information about the hosts
registered with Satellite can be analyzed
by the Insight service.
This is pretty basic,
but you can switch between hosts and search for hosts
with this new breadcrumb switcher.
This reduces the amount of hitting on the back button
in order to go back to a list of all the hosts.
We've also updated repository management.
From here, you can view the repos accessible by your host,
as well as enable or disable them.
There are lots of new UI features,
and some of these were technology preview in 6.11.
However, they're now officially released in 6.12.
Satellite 6.12 runs faster
and consumes less resources than previous versions.
Web server performance is improved
through the update of modules in the Apache Web server.
As well, in previous versions of Satellite,
a lot of unnecessary Apache modules were installed
by default because of Puppet requirements.
Unnecessary modules have been removed.
In general, these improvements will speed up API calls
between hosts in Capsules.
Satellite now has the ability to run remote execution jobs
through a new poll mode.
In older versions of Satellites such as 6.11,
remote execution was a push process.
If you were using Katello agent,
you could run remote execution through a poll process,
but Katello agent has been deprecated
to modernize the host registration process.
In Satellite 6.12,
you can now configure remote execution in a poll mode.
This works through the use of message-based notifications
from the Satellite server to hosts
that there is a remote execution job to be performed.
The hosts will then securely pull the job payload
from the Capsule service
and then run the remote execution payload.
We have some little bites or small improvements
that we think will make a big difference to customers.
Those small improvements include,
active directory support for the web user interface,
as well as the CLI tool that many of you know of as Hammer.
The template editor now has auto-completion built into it
to make it easier to author templates.
Playbooks can be imported from collections
that are already installed on Capsules.
This increases the flexibility of storing playbooks
in your Satellite infrastructure.
And finally, API documentation
is now automatically generated.
This ensures that API documentation is always up-to-date.
Now, talk a little about a feature we have
in technology preview for Satellite 6.12.
In 6.12, we have a feature in technology preview
called Alternate Content Source Synchronization.
The use case for this feature
is to enable fast Capsule synchronization.
For example, an organization may have a Satellite server
that synchronizes content over a fast internet connection.
However, the Capsule is located on a remote network
and the Satellite and Capsule are connected to each other
over a virtual private network with a slower connection.
If the amount of content synchronized
between Satellite and Capsule is large,
the process will take longer
than the synchronization of content between the Satellite
and the Red Hat Content Delivery Network.
If the Capsule server can connect directly to the internet,
then it will likely synchronize content quicker,
as well as save on network bandwidth costs.
This could create significant cost savings
on public cloud infrastructure.
Here's a diagram to demonstrate a use-case
for alternate content sources.
Here, we have a Satellite server situated
in availability zone one
and a Capsule in availability zone two.
In AZ1, we'll synchronize content
between the Satellite server
and the Red Hat Content Delivery Network.
We'll then synchronize content and metadata
with the Capsule server in availability zone two.
Data transmission between availability zones
results in ingress and egress data transfer charges.
This diagram shows what you can do
with alternate content sources.
In this design, only metadata is synchronized
between Satellite and Capsule.
Capsule content can be downloaded
from the Red Hat Update Infrastructure
in availability zone two.
Here's a few notes about alternate content sources
while it is in tech preview in 6.12.
It only works with custom sources
and Red Hat Update Infrastructure version 4+.
In Satellite 6.13, we are planning to enable
alternate content sources for any product,
as well as the Red Hat Content Delivery Network.
Thanks for listening.
(bright music)