The Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite team is pleased to announce the general availability of RHN Satellite and Proxy version 5.2 today. Though 5.2 is an incremental release for Satellite, it marks an important update for highlights including expanded platform and database support.

Primarily a platform update, the major highlights of this release include:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform support
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is now supported as a base operating system for RHN Satellite Server and RHN Proxy installation, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Every Satellite subscription includes a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription, so now you have the option of running Satellite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. For customers who are looking to standardize their Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment on one version, they now have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as an added option.
• Oracle 10g support
  Satellite now supports Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Standard and Enterprise Edition. Oracle 10g provides better performance, especially on 64-bit platforms and is one of the most popular database versions in the world. Most Satellite subscriptions include an embedded Oracle database for Satellite to use, or you can choose to use an external copy of Oracle as well. Support for Oracle 10g gives customers more choice and flexibility in regards to how they deploy Satellite.

Since these are major platform releases, be sure to review the system requirements section of the Satellite documentation.

Other Satellite 5.2 highlights include:

• RHN Proxy Server command line installer in Technology Preview
  A Technology Preview feature is one that is currently not supported under the RHN Proxy Server subscription service, may not be functionally complete and is generally not suitable for production use. However, this feature is included as a customer convenience and to provide the feature with wider exposure. Customers may find this feature useful in a non-production environment. Customers are also free to provide feedback and functionality suggestions for this feature before it becomes fully supported in the RHN Proxy Server 5.3 release. Errata may be provided for high-severity issues.
• db-control improvements:
  • gather-stats – Gather statistics on RHN Oracle database objects
  • report-stats – Show tables with stale or empty statistics
  • shrink-segments – Shrink RHN Oracle database segments
• Bug fixes and documentation updates

For more details on the features and fixes included in this release, you may view the release notes here. Other documentation is also available.

In addition to the new release, Satellite customers are finding success with the reliable management platform. See recent Satellite customer successes.

If you have any questions, feedback, or comments, as always we invite you to participate in the RHN Satellite and Proxy community by subscribing to the rhn-satellite-users mailing list.

If you are interested in following the future direction of the products, we also encourage you to participate in the Spacewalk community.

Or, download Satellite (and all other) ISOs using your Red Hat Network account.