Red Hat Satellite 6.3.5 is now generally available

Red Hat Satellite 6.3.5 is now generally available. The main driver for the 6.3.5 release is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 compatibility updates and ongoing performance and stability improvements.

There are four bugs squashed in this release - the complete list is below. The most notable issue is compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6.

There is one erratum for the server and one for the hosts. The install ISOs will be updated soon, but customers registered via Red Hat Subscription Manager can update via `foreman-maintain` as described in the upgrade guide today. 

Customers who have already upgraded to Satellite 6.3 should follow the instructions in the errata. Customers who are on older versions of Satellite should refer to the Upgrading and Updating Red Hat Satellite Guide. You may also want to consider using the Satellite Upgrade Helper if moving from Satellite 6.x to Satellite 6.3. 

Customers who have received hotfixes should check the list of bugs fixed to confirm their hotfix is contained in the release before upgrading. Please reach out to Red Hat Support if you have applied a hotfix that doesn’t correspond to one of the bugs mentioned below to verify that you can apply the hotfix to Satellite 6.3.5. 

This update fixes the following bugs:

• Capsule sync on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 fails with "Not all necessary pulp workers running at .../pulp/api/v2/." (BZ#1638731)

• Adding host parameters to an existing host was failing with an error that the name had already been taken. This is now fixed. (BZ#1639988)

• After upgrading to Satellite 6.3, the Satellite web UI window for the Activation Keys was displaying multiple copies of repositories. This is now fixed. (BZ#1575932)

• When creating a boot disk, the process was failing with the following error: Bootdisk error: Failed to render boot disk template: undefined method `bootdisk_raise'. This is now fixed. (BZ#1553535) 

Satellite Migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to 7

As a reminder, Red Hat continues to strongly recommend your Satellite and Capsule Servers only be run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. There are several reasons why you should move your Satellite environment from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, including enhanced performance and long-term supportability.

Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as the host running Red Hat Satellite was dropped with the 6.3 release. Releases of Satellite from 6.3 on will only support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and above. In preparation for newer versions of Satellite, you should start thinking about how to move from older versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

While Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 does support an in-place migration from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, this migration mechanism is not supported when running Satellite on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host. Instead, you will need to clone your Satellite environment from a host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to another host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

 Review the Satellite 6.2.13 release blog for more detailed information about moving your Satellite environment from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Red Hat Satellite 6.2.13 includes some important features for capsule backup and recovery which helps to ease the movement from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.