Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite is Red Hat’s on-premises systems management solution that provides software updates, configuration management, provisioning and monitoring across both physical and virtual Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. It offers customers opportunities to gain enhanced performance, centralized control and higher scalability for their systems, while deployed on a management server located inside the customer’s datacenter and firewall.

In September 2009, Red Hat released RHN Satellite 5.3, the first fully open source version of the product. This latest version offers opportunities for increased flexibility and faster provisioning setups for customers with the incorporation of open source Cobbler technology in its provisioning architecture. The 5.3 release is also designed to allow customers to better scale with server growth, offering the ability to manage large numbers of systems with comparable ease to managing one.

Recently, IDC also published a Red Hat-sponsored paper featuring the systems management benefits that customers have experienced with RHN Satellite. After interviewing 10 RHN Satellite customers in depth – crossing geographies and industry verticals - IDC reported significant return on investment (ROI) and productivity results for customers. Here are some of the highlights from the customer testimonials:

  • Average of 338% ROI
  • Average payback period of 4.8 months
  • A doubled increase in the number of Linux servers managed per system administrator
  • Average annual benefit of $82,521 per 100 Linux servers
  • Average of $23,207 in annual user productivity increase

In their own words, customers quoted in the paper showed that RHN Satellite helped them achieve:

  • Enhanced productivity
    “If RHN Satellite Server didn’t exist, I would need another person or more.”
  • Scalability
    “…with Satellite Server, once things are set up and it is in place, managing 200 servers is as easy as managing one.”
  • Reduced costs
    “For an OS install, we used to hire someone outside to do the work. We would buy the hardware, then we pay them to come on site, answer questions. So now, we are completely avoiding that cost.”
  • Faster server setup and management
    “As far as time saving goes, I would say we are easily saving 20 hours per month because we aren’t doing things manually.”
  • Business growth
    “In terms of the impact, I always count what we can sell in an hour. If the system is down, we can’t sell and that’s a revenue impact. In just one hour, we might lose millions of euros, so the impact is huge.”

To read the full IDC paper on RHN Satellite, visit here.

To learn more about RHN Satellite, visit here.

Or, to read more about what customers have to say about RHN Satellite, visit here.