Application life cycles are divided into life cycle environments, which represent each stage of the application life cycle. Life cycle environments are linked to form an environment path. You can promote content along the environment path to the next life cycle environment when required. For example, if development ends on a particular version of an application, you can promote this version to the testing environment and start development on the next version.
We add a lifecycle to our environment by going to Content > Lifecycle Environments.
Creating the lifecycle environment
On a new Satellite server, you will only see Library in your Lifecycle path. By default, this is created, and all hosts registered to Satellite will have access to it. Smaller environments may be able to get away with keeping it this way, however, it is recommended to build out an environment based on your own development lifecycle. For example: DEV > QA > PROD. To get started, just click on Create Environment Path.
You will begin by adding your first environment in which you wish to promote content . Generally, this is a TEST or DEV environment. You will send your new ERATTA, REPOS, and the like first into DEV, in which servers that are in this DEV lifecycle can then best tested with these patches, and software that is installed. Once everything checks out you know it is safe to promote to the next lifecycle, which could be QA, or end PROD in some environments. You are then assured you will not have adverse effects from a patch cycle in PROD as it was previously tested while in DEV and even QA.
Adding configuration details to the enviornment
Continuing on in our example, we fill in the details of our environment. Whatever makes sense for your organization. Once you are done, click on Save.
You will then see your first lifecycle, it currently holds 0 content views and content hosts. Those will be added later.
Finish your lifecycle path by repeating the previous steps, adding QA, and PROD.
Ivan Windon is a Site Reliability Engineer at IBM. Ivan is actively engaged in Cloud Technologies with AWS, Google, and Azure. Ivan has extensive experience with Linux and Windows administration, DNS, Networking, IDM, and Security. In his free time, he enjoys being with his wife and two children. The family enjoys hiking, and traveling when able. His favorite locations are Yosemite NPS, and San Francisco, California.
Thanks for the post, I have some questions please :
I still don’t understand the Entitlements part:
Next, we need to attach our entitlements to this AK, this will hand out the required number for each server that uses this activation key. So, select the subscription tab, choose the Add sub tab, then choose the entitlements that are needed. Then choose Add Selected.
Because I found it in every tutorial about Foreman/Satellite Activation_Key for CentOS/Red Hat.
Example in CLI:
hammer subscription list –organization myorg.lan
Why we have to do those steps ?
If we don’t do that. the Activation Key could not be used for registering client to Foreman/Satellite ? Or we could use it but if we open the redhat.repo file, it will be blank (without any repo) or something else ?
And what does the option –quantity ‘1’ mean ?
Does this mean that we can register one client only even if we used this option during Activation Key creation : –unlimited-hosts or something else ?
2nd question: Let’s say that we have Products, Repos, CV, AK and everything is configured, but after a while we decide to add another repo :
After doing all th necessary steps and adding a repo to a CV and publish/promote it, how it will appear on already registered client (normally added to redhat.repo file in every client machine) (should we reexecute subscription-manager or something else ?)
Hello Ivan,
I hope you’re doing well
Thanks for the post, I have some questions please :
I still don’t understand the Entitlements part:
Next, we need to attach our entitlements to this AK, this will hand out the required number for each server that uses this activation key. So, select the subscription tab, choose the Add sub tab, then choose the entitlements that are needed. Then choose Add Selected.
Because I found it in every tutorial about Foreman/Satellite Activation_Key for CentOS/Red Hat.
Example in CLI:
hammer subscription list –organization myorg.lan
hammer activation-key add-subscription –organization myorg.lan –name ‘CentOS8_Key’ \
–quantity ‘1’ –subscription-id 1
Why we have to do those steps ?
If we don’t do that. the Activation Key could not be used for registering client to Foreman/Satellite ? Or we could use it but if we open the redhat.repo file, it will be blank (without any repo) or something else ?
And what does the option –quantity ‘1’ mean ?
Does this mean that we can register one client only even if we used this option during Activation Key creation : –unlimited-hosts or something else ?
2nd question: Let’s say that we have Products, Repos, CV, AK and everything is configured, but after a while we decide to add another repo :
After doing all th necessary steps and adding a repo to a CV and publish/promote it, how it will appear on already registered client (normally added to redhat.repo file in every client machine) (should we reexecute subscription-manager or something else ?)
Thanks in advance !