Red Hat Satellite 6 Administration

A content view is a customized content repository to offer only the software that a group of content hosts require. You can apply filters to content views to curate content. These filters include package filters, package group filters, errata filters, and module stream filters. Managing Satellite Server content views requires administrative privileges. To create a content view, follow these steps:

Figure 2.7: Create a content view

Add a repository to a content view:

• Ensure that the correct organization and location context are set for this task.

• Click Content → Content Views and then click the name of the content view.

• Click Repositories tab.

• Select the checkboxes for the repositories to add, and then click Add Repositories.

• Check the status column to see the current state of the repository.

Figure 2.8: Add a repository to the content view

Remove a Repository from a Content View

The Repositories tab lists the repositories that are available with the content view. Select the checkbox for the repository to remove. Next to the Add Repositories, click the vertical ellipsis menu and then click Remove.

Figure 2.9: Remove a repository from a content view

Use filters to refine the repository content of the content view. Filter rules include target packages, package groups, and errata. The filter rules can define which package versions to include in the content view. Filtering content views is discussed later in this course.

Customizing the content view repositories or filters requires publishing a new version of the content view. When the new content view version is promoted to a lifecycle environment, the new content becomes available to managed hosts that are assigned to that environment. For example, hosts in the Production environment are using the tested and released package versions in the previous version of a content view, while hosts in the Development environment have access to later package versions that are published in the latest version of that content view. The impact of publishing and promoting content views to environments and registered hosts is discussed later in the course.

Publish a Content View

You can publish a content view to the library to make it available. When you publish a new or modified content view, you create a sequentially numbered version of that content view. This sequence is created automatically for identification and version control.

To publish a content view:

• Ensure that the correct organization context is set for this task.

• Click Content → Content Views, and then click the name of the content view to publish.

• After you make changes such as updating packages in the content view, click Publish New Version.

• Observe that the content version increases, and add a meaningful description.

  Red Hat recommends to use the content view description field to describe the difference between this content version and the previous version, because the version number itself provides no information. With a meaningful description, you can later identify more easily the purpose of a specific version among many.

• Enter a detailed description, and click Next to see the Review details page.

• After reviewing the changes for the content view, click Finish.

Figure 2.10: Publish a content view

Promote a Content View

After publishing a content view version to the library, you can promote the content view to the first lifecycle environment in the environment path. After you promote the content view to the first environment, the content view can be promoted to additional path environments, to provide the content to content hosts in each environment. Content views are promoted sequentially through the environments in an environment path. Satellite Server maintains separate repositories for each content view in each environment. When a content view is promoted to an environment, the relevant repository updates and publishes the packages.

To promote a content view:

• Ensure that the correct organization context is set for this task.

• Click Content → Content Views, and then click the name of the content view to promote.

• The Versions tab lists the published versions of the content view. Each row in this tab represents a specific content view version.

• Click the vertical ellipsis menu at the end of the row, and then click Promote to display the Promotion page.

• Enter a detailed description.

• Select the lifecycle environment to promote to, and click Promote.

Figure 2.11: Promote a content view

In an all-in-one content view scenario, the content view contains all the needed content for all of your hosts. In this scenario, having fewer content views is easier to manage for an environment with uniform host types, or for common resource constraints, such as storage space. However, with the limited filtering for this scenario, all hosts have access to all content and versions.

In the host-specific content view scenario, dedicated content views exist for each host type. This scenario is useful with a limited number of host types, and prevents sharing unnecessary content across host types.

Use a content view scenario based on your host environment and application lifecycles. Avoid creating many content views, which can be difficult to manage. The size of a content view affects the speed of publish and promote operations. When creating a filtered view of packages in a content view, verify that all package dependencies are included in the content view. Never include kickstart repositories in content views, because kickstart content is used only for initial host provisioning.