Terms To Understand; How It Works - Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE SERVER 3.6 Installation Manual

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Security — an end-to-end secure connection is maintained from the client systems to the RHN
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Satellite Server without connecting to the public Internet.
Efficiency — packages are delivered significantly faster over a local area network.
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Control — clients' System Profiles are stored on the local RHN Satellite Server, not on the central
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Red Hat Network Servers.
Customized updates — create a truly automated package delivery system for custom software pack-
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ages required by client systems, as well as official 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
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maintenance responsibilities.
Bandwidth management — the bandwidth used for transactions between the clients and the RHN
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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
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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
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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 but contains extra
packages.
Organization Administrator — An Organization Administrator is a user role with the highest level
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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 man-
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agement 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.
Red Hat Update Agent — The Red Hat Update Agent is the Red Hat Network client application
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( ) that allows users to retrieve and install new or updated packages for the client system
up2date
on which the application is run.
Traceback — A traceback is a detailed description of "what went wrong" that is useful for trou-
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bleshooting the RHN Satellite Server. Tracebacks are automatically generated when a critical error
occurs and are mailed to the individual(s) designated in the RHN Satellite Server's configuration
file.
For more detailed explanations of these terms and others, refer to the Red Hat Network Reference
Guide.

1.4. How it Works

RHN Satellite Server consists of the following components:
Chapter 1. Introduction