Red Hat Satellite 6.8 is now available with upgrade improvements and IPv6 support

Red Hat is pleased to announce that Red Hat Satellite 6.8, part of your Red Hat Smart Management Subscription, is now available. This release of Red Hat Satellite Server 6.8 focuses on Satellite Server and Capsule Server upgrade improvements, expanded provisioning options, and IPv6 support.

Red Hat Satellite is part of the Red Hat Smart Management subscription that makes it easier for enterprises to manage patching, provisioning, and subscription management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux infrastructure, Red Hat Smart Management is fully integrated with Red Hat Insights for automated identification and immediate resolution of compliance issues, misconfigurations and security risks, providing an automated solution to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments at scale, regardless of where they are running.  

What’s new in Red Hat Satellite 6.8?

Here are a few of the key benefits and features in Red Hat Satellite 6.8.

Upgrade improvements:

• You can now upgrade Satellite Server and Capsule Server independently. This allows you to spread an upgrade over multiple maintenance windows (The Satellite Server must be a newer version than the Capsule Server).

• Upgrade automation has been added for Capsule Servers, enabling you to initiate a Capsule upgrade from the Satellite Server.

• Satellite-maintain process is now included on Capsule Servers for consistency across Satellites and Capsules.

• Foreman-maintain now self-updates when running Satellite upgrade or upgrade-check commands.  This is one less step you need to take when getting ready to move to the latest version.

Provisioning enhancements:

• You can now provision systems using discovery, host create, and bootdisk when using HTTP Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

• Support for provisioning Azure shared custom images.

• Improvements to the Azure compute resource give you the ability to attach additional volumes or disks.

• The Azure compute resource now also supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bring-Your-Own-Subscription (BYOS) gold images.

IPv6 support

• IPv6 support for Satellite including but not limited to content, remote execution, container management, and provisioning.  

  • This does require IPv6 connectivity to all managed systems - you cannot mix IPv6 and IPv4 in DNS. It is also important to note that Satelite Servers connecting to the Content Delivery Network (CDN) will still need at least a IPv4 proxy as the CDN is IPv4 only.

Automation enhancements

• Support for the Satellite Ansible Collection on Ansible Automation Hub or via RPM repo on the Satellite Server. This enables you to interact with the Satellite API via Ansible automation. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Management enhancements

• Upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 using LEAPP initiated through Satellite Server.

• Support for Traces which lets you know if a patch or process requires a system reboot on a host.

Security enhancements

• Full support for Common Access Cards (this was a tech preview feature in the Satellite 6.7 release).

Performance and Scale

• Dynflow workers daemon improvements to speed up job scheduling and processing.

Usability

• Opt-in email notification of subscription expiration.

• Tasks cleanup button to clean up hung, paused, pending, and failed tasks.

• Insights inventory plugin improvements.

• Cloud Connector improvements.

• Simple Content Access improvements.

Additional Details

That's just some of the new features and benefits you'll see in Red Hat Satellite 6.8. For more details on this release, see the Release Notes.

For instructions on performing a fresh installation of Red Hat Satellite 6.8, see Installing Satellite Server from a Connected Network or Installing Satellite Server from a Disconnected Network.

For instructions on upgrading from an earlier version of Red Hat Satellite 6.x, see the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide.