[Spacewalk-list] Best practices for channel management and updates

[Musayev, Ilya]

I was actually searching for additional documentation (month+) on RHN Satellite/Spacewalk and specifically best practices on how to maintain channels for updates. As of now, as hard as I tried, I could not find a best practices guides. Would you be able to suggest on how to properly maintain channels for dev/qa/prod hosts?

For example, I currently have a clone of entire rhel- x86_64-server-5 as rhel- x86_64-server-5-latest (which is updated daily with packages and erratas). I was thinking of cloning this base channel as rhel- x86_64-server-5-testing and rhel- x86_64-server-5-prod (all clones as base channels) and assign test and prod hosts respectively.

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Example 1 (all channels are base channels): 

rhel- x86_64-server-5-latest (daily updates of packages/errata)
rhel-x86_64-server-5-testing (clone of latest at point in time)
rhel- x86_64-server-5-prod (clone of testing, once certified)
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Example 2 

I also had an original design where I would create a base channel, with several child channels for testing and updates 

rhel-x86_64-server-5 (constantly updated) 
   rhel-x86_64-server-5-testing (clone of the base as point in time)
   rhel-x86_64-server-5-prod (clone of testing channel once approved)
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Example 3 

rhel-x86_64-server-5 (blank - no packages or errata)
  rhel-x86_64-server-5-updates (daily updates and errata)
  rhel-x86_64-server-5-testing (clone of the updates as point in time)
  rhel-x86_64-server-5-prod (clone of testing channel once approved)
-------------------------------------

As you can see, each design has a flaw and it gets complicated.

The channel assign will happen based on activation keys. 

Would you clone the channels or copy packages to channels?
What setup do you have and  what   issues do you foresee (or have seen) for any of these setups?

If there are any suggestion you can help with I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you