Red Hat Satellite 6.1 Upgrades Systems Management to Allow Users to Embrace Container-Based Deployment Strategies

Mobilk - Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Satellite 6.1, Red Hat’s systems management solution for managing Red Hat infrastructure. Since the launch of Red Hat Satellite 6.0 in September 2014, new additions to the systems management software bring upgraded security enhancements, enhanced discovery and container management capabilities across physical, virtual and cloud environments. 

Red Hat Satellite 6.1 brings users significant upgrades in three key areas: 

•Container management

•Security

•Provisioning 

Container Management

As cloud infrastructures continue to shift toward container-based deployments, customers increasingly need an agile management solution for new container setups housing sensitive applications and data. The core capabilities of Satellite 6.1 now extend to container deployments - making them more scalable, manageable and consistent - and allow Docker users to tap into its modern design as they seek more control around versioning, authentication and integration with existing platforms. A scalable on-premise registry based with Role-Based Access Controls, auditing and a robust API are now available for developers seeking to manage systems in a container-based environment. 

Security

Satellite 6.1 brings upgrades to errata management, allowing users to quickly and easily address security, bugfix and enhancement errata. Improved reporting now enables organizations to more quickly identify and respond to hosts affected by a security vulnerability, minimizing downtime and sensitive data exposure in vulnerability scenarios such as those presented by Shellshock, Heartbleed and GHOST. Additionally, OpenSCAP, a standardized approach to maintaining enterprise system security, is now available in tech preview. OpenSCAP automatically verifies the presence of patches, checks system security configuration settings and examines systems for signs of compromise in daily/weekly/monthly cadences that can be customized by end users to best fit their own internal security protocols.

Provisioning

Red Hat Satellite helps to simplify the provisioning process through new discovery processes, allowing automatic bare metal discovery of unknown nodes on the provisioning network. New nodes can self-register to Red Hat Satellite and upload their hardware facts, and this discovery allows the software to best determine the type of system to provision. 

.Other new capabilities introduced in Red Hat Satellite 6.1 include:

•Multiple Network Support for provisioning systems with complex networking requirements, including VLANs, Bonds and Aliased interfaces. Satellite 6.1 includes newer provisioning templates and workflows that enable the setup of complex interfaces as systems are initially provisioned. 

•Isolated Capsule Server, a key component of large Red Hat Satellite installations, now features a number of communication improvements. Communications between the managed host, Capsule Server and Satellite Server are now better isolated and streamlined for a more secure environment, allowing system administrators to more easily deploy Red Hat Satellite Capsule in their environments.

•Tech preview of Red Hat Access Insights is a new automated, opt-in service announced at the 2015 Red Hat Summit. Red Hat Satellite users can identify key risks to stability, performance and security through Red Hat Access Insights, which offers recommendations of how to address discovered issues.

Availability

Red Hat Satellite 6.1 is now generally available to all Red Hat Satellite customers with a valid subscription at https://access.redhat.com/products/red-hat-satellite/. 

Supporting Quotes

Joe Fitzgerald, vice president, Management Business Unit, Red Hat

“Red Hat Satellite 6.1 continues to evolve to meet ever-changing market demands, especially the growing movement we are seeing toward container-based cloud deployments. Building on the release of Red Hat Satellite 6, this newest release allows developers to more easily integrate Satellite into a hybrid cloud or container environment and utilize better reporting around their hosts during the transition.”

Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC

“The shift in enterprise infrastructure towards distributed and container-based systems means that a holistic approach is needed when it comes to managing these disparate systems. Red Hat Satellite 6.1 continues to move towards providing just such a solution, based on community innovation, to help give enterprises a level of standardization and control over these emerging technologies.”