Streamline and scale your Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure with Red Hat Satellite

Even with strict governance, Linux® environments can take on a high level of complexity as they grow, creating a dense web of management issues. Resource-strained teams can find themselves mired in manual processes and duplicative work, leaving more room for errors to creep in. Standardizing on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux can help you simplify many of these processes, making them the same on premise, in the cloud, on bare metal, on virtual machines, or any combination of these.

There are two primary management solutions that help users get the most out of their Red Hat subscriptions, and they are often used in tandem: Red Hat Insights is a suite of hosted services that continuously analyzes Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. It minimizes risks by identifying and addressing potential issues and streamlining remediation. But Insights alone doesn’t meet every need for every user. For more demanding Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure, Red Hat Satellite helps increase efficiency and reduce your total cost of ownership for on-premises or hybrid environments.

Red Hat Satellite is Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s end-to-end infrastructure management solution built for more complex deployments and unique challenges. Unlike Red Hat Insights, which is included with every Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, Satellite is an add-on feature. It is a dedicated server used to organize and distribute content to hosts, and can be used in organizations with specific security requirements that include disconnected systems. Satellite can be integrated with Insights so that Insights services can be used with hosts located on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments.

Satellite is built for Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure at scale, able to manage even tens of thousands of systems wherever they live – physical, virtual, in the cloud or at the edge. It is ideal for advanced tasks like content management and provisioning. Satellite’s control plane lets you delegate user access, schedule jobs to minimize disruptions, and control releases and versioning for all applications. Crucially, it also integrates with Red Hat Insights to help you detect and remediate threats to system security.

Satellite is not exclusive to larger environments, but it is more commonly found in organizations running more than 1000 systems. Red Hat subscriptions can be centrally managed with Satellite, making it easier to consume and distribute content.

Red Hat Satellite manages your hosts transparently on-premise or in a public cloud, centralizing critical functions and processes, regardless of where your systems are deployed. Here are a few key benefits and use cases:

Simplify Linux patch management and secure your standard operating environment

Satellite helps you build and deploy your standard operating environment (SOE) and bulk apply patches to maintain it, improving your security posture and performance for thousands of systems at once. You can manage both Red Hat and third party software from within Satellite, giving you a comprehensive view of what is deployed in each system and what updates are available. Connecting Red Hat Insights (console.redhat.com) to Satellite will also give you deeper analytics and contextual guidance to help you prioritize those updates.

Manage disconnected hosts

Satellite can operate in completely or periodically disconnected environments to deliver content and perform actions in remote locations, or high security environments. In these cases, content can be delivered via ISO image, or synced with a dedicated, connected server.

Provision bare metal, virtual, and cloud systems

Satellite helps streamline host provisioning tasks from a centralized console, offering different methods across bare metal, public cloud, and virtualized infrastructures. You can also import hosts that you don’t provision in Satellite, giving you a global view of your systems, and address repetitive post-provisioning tasks by adding Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

Organize and distribute content

Collect content from any source – Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) files, ISO images, binaries, containers, and more – into Satellite’s content repository, then curate and distribute widely across your network via capsule servers, which provide localized services and help decrease load on your central server. Satellite can manage both Red Hat and non-Red Hat content in this way.

Manage multiple configurations

Satellite can help you manage different system configurations across development, test, and production environments to ensure you’re delivering content to the appropriate place. Define your desired state of systems, then use Satellite or Ansible Automation Platform to apply it..

Meet compliance standards

Satellite allows you to define multiple security policies, and supports proactive audits against those policies to help you verify compliance. It also offers automated remediation through its security content automation protocol (SCAP), which helps organizations working in regulated industries keep up with disparate requirements across markets.

Red Hat Satellite enables granular management across your entire footprint, but it’s not the right tool for every situation. Satellite offers capabilities in areas critical to managing large environments, and requires dedicated hardware and staff with the expertise to maintain it. Here are some use cases that customers commonly address with Satellite:

• Running air gapped or disconnected infrastructure management
• Applying granular content and software curation
• Defining and enforcing a standard operating environment (SOE)

Satellite increases the value of your Red Hat subscription by helping you create and maintain efficiency across thousands of systems with varying requirements, including disconnected systems. Combined with Red Hat Insights, it enables visibility, threat remediation, and enterprise management in the most demanding environments. A Red Hat sales representative can help you determine if Satellite is the right fit for your organization.