A special note for Red Hat Network Satellite users
by the editorial team
Hello, Red Hat Network Satellite users! We hope you’re excited about the recent release of Red Hat Network Satellite 5.1. Earlier, we gave you some details about the new Satellite exporter tool that allows you to easily populate content on disconnected RHN Satellites.
Another new feature introduced by Satellite 5.1 is multiple organization support. This feature allows you to partition your Satellite into different organizations, each with their own subscriptions, systems, and content. It provides Satellite administrators with a new way to control user and system access to resources on a Satellite server. For more details on multiple organization support, please refer to our whitepaper: RHN Satellite 5.1 Best Practices for Multiple Organizations (PDF download, ~700KB).
The Satellite Team would like to learn how we can improve this feature to better suit your needs–and we need your help.
We’ve put together a survey to figure out how we could make the multiple organization support feature more useful for you. You do not need to have made use of the multiple organization support feature in order to fill out this survey; all you need is experience working with a Satellite. The survey presents some details about how the new feature works and asks for you to talk about how different parts of it may or may not fit your organization’s needs.
The survey also has a lot of free-form questions. Depending on how many questions you choose to answer, it may take between 15-40 minutes. The Red Hat Network Satellite Team will use the information collected in this survey for future improvements of the Satellite product. We won’t share this information with any third parties without your consent.
We would really appreciate any feedback you might have time to give. Your feedback will have a direct impact on the future development of this feature. Here is a link to the survey:
RHN Satellite Multiple Organization Support Survey
Thanks for helping us make Satellite a better product!
The Red Hat Network Satellite Team
May 7th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
When are you planning to release the source code of RHN? Is there an ETA for this?
Also I would love to use RHN with PostgreSQL instead of very expensive Oracle.
Thanks
May 7th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Hi Joy,
Why do you ask?
Thanks,
~m
May 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Hi
Not sure what you mean. Ask couple of nice people on memo-list .
May 9th, 2008 at 6:54 am
I’d like to know about the next generation of Satellite too. There are several areas of the current Satellite that require improvement. Developing the next generation behind closed doors is an infuriating way forward.
Enterprise customers really need to see what’s going on, or they’ll turn their backs and walk to other management products.
What is the ETA for next gen Satellite?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Hi Duncan,
Satellite development is driven by customer feedback. I’ve seen you post on the satellite-users-list so I know you’ve seen the discussions and surveys we have on a continual basis directly with our users to help drive and inform the product’s development. You should also know as a customer that you can always contact your sales representative (or TAM if applicable) for a roadmap presentation of the product’s future if you are curious about what’s next for the product and what the schedule for future releases looks like.
Given the above, I am not really sure what exactly it is you are asking for; it does seem vague enough that I’m not quite sure how an ETA could be put on it.
~m
May 9th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Hi Joy,
That’s a pretty interesting response but not one that really answers my question. If you are a Satellite customer and would like to discuss the product and your questions further, please feel free to contact me at duffy $at# redhat *DOT/ com. I would be happy to hear from you.
~m
May 18th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Marin,
Does this thinking also apply when you evaluate software from companies like Microsoft,Oracle etc? They _also_ work with customer and take their feedback and develop great products like Windows Server System 2008 and Oracle 11g.
But I guess this does not matter for Open Source Slut (OSS) like Red Hat. You can flag FOSS when it suits you and preach the virtues of close source software when you have to give back something that you developed to community.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:10 am
Hi Joy,
It doesn’t really sound like you’re willing to work with me on this so I’m just going to assume you’re not interested. Sorry we couldn’t work something out.
~m
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:55 am
Mairin,
There is one thing you can do: make it an option to choose preferred database with RHN Satellite installation if you know the price of Oracle database that customers have to shell out despite the fact that PostgreSQL will fit the requirement.
Remember it is all about “choice”.
May 28th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Joy’s question seems perfectly legitimate. Red Hat did say a few years ago that it was going to open the source for RHN. Additionally, wasn’t the famous (and now defunct) ‘Red Hat Database’ actually PostgreSQL rewrapped?
May 28th, 2008 at 11:56 am
There are some typos/mistakes in the survey:
Red Hat Network Provisioning Model
Red Hat Network Monitoring Model
should be
Red Hat Network Provisioning Module
Red Hat Network Monitoring Module
Sattelite should be Satellite
May 29th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Hi Joy,
That would require implementing PostgreSQL support in the Satellite product. Have you filed a feature request for this?
~m
May 29th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Hi Peter,
I believe what you’re referring to is a specific article in which our product manager was misquoted. He was actually referring to the RHQ open source project which was open sourced and which we announced a while back.
~m
May 29th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Hi Riann,
Thanks for the corrections!
~m
June 1st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Mairin,
It was filed two years back. One thing I failed to understand why on earth Red Hat is not supporting the databases that comes with Red Hat Enterprise Linux viz. MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Please keep in my that I have nothing against Oracle. But we would not like to get squeezed by insane Oracle database configuration. We have in house expertise to manage high volume databases running on MySQL and PostgresSQL. Just because RHN forced us to use Oracle we HAVE to hire Oracle database administrator. And that is not cheap.
My urge is to consider decoupling RHN from any specific database so that customer can use their preferred database.
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Mairin,
Peter is right. There was a murmur to open RHN Satellite Server.
Refer to http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070130-8737.html
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/red_hat_to_open.html
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
Joy,
As I mentioned to Peter, the articles you are citing are based on a misquote of something our product manager said a while back. He was actually referring to open sourcing the RHQ project, which has since been open sourced (http://rhq-project.org/) and he was unfortunately misquoted as referring to open sourcing the Satellite product. Posting the links to the articles where he was misquoted doesn’t really change the fact that he was misquoted, does it?
If you would be willing to email me at duffy (at) redhat (dot) com, as I mentioned earlier, I would be happy to continue this conversation with you and try to address all of your points. I don’t feel that this is the appropriate forum for this as this article is in regards to a survey, not Satellite’s license or database of choice. I assumed you were not interested in discussing this with me since you have as of yet not sent me an email - I will certainly not be continuing this conversation in this venue so if you’d like further responses please contact me at the address above.
Thanks,
~m
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:12 am
Mairin,
Yes you are right. This is not an appropriate venue to discuss . I will put forward my request through TAM for possible resolution.