Terms To Understand - Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.2 Installation Manual

Chapter 1. Introduction
Advantages of using RHN Satellite Server include:
• Security — an end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to the RHN
Satellite Server without connecting to the public Internet.
• Efficiency — packages are delivered significantly faster over a local area network.
• Control — clients' System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite Server, not on the central
Red Hat Network Servers.
• Customized updates — create a truly automated package delivery system for custom software
packages required by client systems, as well as Red Hat packages. Custom channels allow fine-
grained control of the delivery of custom packages.
• Access control — system administrators can be restricted to access only those systems within their
maintenance responsibilities.
• Bandwidth management — the bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and the RHN
Satellite Server is controlled by the organization on the local area network; RHN Satellite Server
clients do not have to compete with other clients accessing the central Red Hat Network file servers.
• Scalability — RHN Satellite Server may oversee an entire organization's servers in combination with
RHN Proxy Server.

1.3. Terms to Understand

Before understanding RHN Satellite Server, it is important to become familiar with the following Red
Hat Network terms:
• Channel — A channel is a list of software packages. There are two types of channels: base
channels and child channels. A base channel consists of a list of packages based on a specific
architecture and Red Hat release. A child channel is a channel associated with a base channel that
contains extra packages.
• Organization Administrator — An Organization Administrator is a user role with the highest level
of control over an organization's Red Hat Network account. Members of this role can add other
users, systems, and system groups to the organization as well as remove them. A Red Hat Network
organization must have at least one Organization Administrator.
• Channel Administrator — A Channel Administrator is a user role with full access to channel
management capabilities. Users with this role are capable of creating channels, assigning packages
to channels, cloning channels, and deleting channels. This role can be assigned by an Organization
Administrator through the Users tab of the RHN website.
• certificate authority — A certificate authority distributes digital signatures to users as part of public
key infrastructure for encrypted authentication and communication.
• Red Hat Update Agent — The Red Hat Update Agent is the Red Hat Network client application
that allows users to retrieve and install new or updated packages for the client system on which
the application is run. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 users, use the yum command; for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 4 and lower, use the up2date command.
•
Traceback — A traceback is a detailed description of "what went wrong" that is useful for
troubleshooting the RHN Satellite Server. Tracebacks are automatically generated when a
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