The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
Abstract In order to achieve the best performance, availability, and security needed to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a virtual environment, organizations should use a combination of Red Hat Network Satellite for systems management and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for virtualization management. Red Hat Network Satellite and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization work hand-in-hand to provide the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux experience.
Introduction Building and managing an enterprise environment is a significant undertaking. Most organizations build up their environment over a period of many years, growing in fits and starts — and patching and fixing as needed. But when it’s time to dramatically scale the infrastructure or meet a peak in demand for services (even a temporary one), it can be very difficult to grow or change these systems. Linux, especially Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is being adopted by organizations around the world in order to modernize their systems, taking advantage of both open source and virtualization. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system is robust, stable, and secure. But building an enterprise environment is more than just installing the operating system on a rack of servers. It can be difficult and complex to provision both physical and virtual servers, monitor them, update them, audit everything, and manage the complete lifecycle — including rollback and complete system recovery. This paper will review these issues and discuss how to use Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite to provide the best experience for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The Issues: What System Administrators Face in Building and Maintaining an Enterprise Linux Infrastructure An enterprise environment can be a complex organism, made up of a combination of physical and virtual servers. And those virtual servers can shift from physical machine to machine, be provisioned and de-provisioned by the minute, and create a sprawl of systems that run the gamut from test to production — even dormant systems that are unused. In addition to the sheer number of systems, monitoring them and making sure that everything is completely secure and available can be daunting. Patches and updates are issued practically every day, and knowing what to apply to which systems grows increasingly difficult. On top of that, a clear audit trail of every action taken in the system must be maintained — another issue made more complex by combining physical and virtual systems. Finally, plans should be established to provide recovery from issues and disasters, as well as rolling back or restoring anything at any time. It’s no wonder that system administrators feel overworked and underpaid. Also, there’s never a moment to do the really interesting tasks like building valuable new services for the enterprise.
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
Many assume that the continual pressure cooker of the enterprise datacenter is simply the nature of the beast. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite can be combined to create a simple, web-based portal through which all aspects of an environment can be managed. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite provide both the big picture and finely tune controls that make managing the enterprise surprisingly straightforward.
The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience Using Linux on a single computer or server is relatively simple. But to install the Linux operating system on a rack full of servers and then add virtualization into the mix raises the stakes considerably. It can become confusing, if not impossibly complex. Many assume that system administrators must manage a Linux environment through cryptic commands issued on a command line. But a powerful and flexible enterprise system can be managed using Red Hat’s complementary tool sets to provide a web-based, easy to understand and operate portal. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite address all of the major systems management issues and provide a clear way to monitor and maintain a complex environment.
Provisioning The first step is the construction or expansion of the enterprise environment through the provisioning of new servers. These servers can be either physical hardware or virtual systems. A physical server can have either a single operating system or can act as the platform to handle multiple virtual servers. This is where the complementary technologies of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite cover all of the bases. Provisioning is the process of installing the operating system, applications, and data necessary for enterprise operations. When provisioning is completed manually, it can take hours and is often subject to errors — requiring testing, debugging, and rebuilding. Automated provisioning processes can make provisioning completely reliable and error free. It also has the added benefit of being extremely fast — taking just minutes instead of the hours that manual provisioning can take. Using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite, a single administrator can provision hundreds of servers as easily as provisioning a single computer.
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
RHN Satellite: Systems Management for Red Hat Enterprise Linux running Anywhere Physical x86
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Running on Other Supported Hypervisors
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
Mainframe
Workstations
Physical Servers Red Hat Network Satellite can be used to provision all physical servers, from individual computers to mainframes — provisioning anything that will run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Using the Red Hat Network Satellite web-based GUI, administrators can quickly and easily define everything to be installed on an individual server and quickly install it. Administrators can also create templates or kickstarts, pre-building systems that can be implemented in minutes on bare metal or in virtual guests. Red Hat Network Satellite can also install the required application software and data for these systems.
Virtual Servers Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization can be used to provision virtual servers, using the same approach as Red Hat Network Satellite. The difference is that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is provisioning the virtual guest or container (CPU, memory, storage, etc.), as opposed to an operating system and application software. Once the virtual system is provisioned, it can be registered with Red Hat Network Satellite. At this point, Red Hat Network Satellite can install the required application software and data automatically and monitor the virtual system. Working together, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization creates a virtual server (the “container”), and Red Hat Network Satellite fills it with the required applications and data.
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
Virtualization Management Windows and Linux guests
• High Availability • Load Balancing • Power Saver • Storage Virt • Deployment (virtual image)
Virtual Machine
Virtual Machine
• Software Deployment, Update, and Confiuration • Provisioning (physical) • Monitoring (OS)
KVM Linux Kernel
x86 Hardware
Why Not Just Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Alone? One of the common approaches in building a virtual enterprise environment is the use of templates or “golden images” to rapidly provision virtual machines. System administrators can build these templates, carefully crafting a server and testing it, then deploy or provision any number of copies based upon this original using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. Templates have the advantage of being able to swiftly copy a set of binary files, called a virtual machine disk, and start up a new virtual instance in minutes. While this approach has the advantage of being a very fast method for provisioning, it has a number of significant drawbacks. The primary problem is that a template is created at a specific moment in time. From that moment forward it is at risk of becoming out-of-date, un-patched, and a potential security and compliance risk. System administrators can maintain their templates manually, but this approach creates complexity and erases any speed advantage in provisioning by adding significant maintenance costs. Over time, using templates to provision virtual machines can create significant administrative overhead. Even when manually updating the template, the rate of change on these systems is too fast to continually maintain. This leaves system administrators with the daunting task of constantly updating the template systems manually, which opens the door for divergence from the carefully tested golden image and other separate instances of the template (through human error, lack of process, etc.). The more successful approach is to use Red Hat Network Satellite to manage the update process for all virtual systems. System administrators can use Red Hat Network Satellite to provision new systems, track all the required updates, and apply any necessary patches. Or they can use a combined approach, leveraging templates to swiftly provision new systems and have them register with Red Hat Network Satellite. From that point forward, Red Hat Network Satellite will manage all virtual machines and ensure that they are fully patched and compliant.
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
Managing Updates, Patches, and Sprawl Once systems have been provisioned and are operational, it is necessary to keep them fully updated to ensure security and availability. But as the enterprise grows and systems spread across multiple physical and virtual machines, it becomes much more difficult to know what is installed on which systems at any given moment. Red Hat Network Satellite provides administrators with a simple and direct method for managing the ongoing updates and patches. Using Red Hat Network Satellite, both physical and virtual servers are registered as they come online. Red Hat Network Satellite lists their precise state, including current operating system and application versions. Administrators can use Red Hat Network Satellite’s web-based GUI to review all available patches and updates and decide which ones to apply to which systems either immediately or on a selected schedule. Users of Red Hat Network Satellite are not required to search online user groups and forums looking for updates — they’re all displayed neatly in the Red Hat Network Satellite interface. Administrators can use Red Hat Network Satellite to group any of the servers together to apply patches across multiple servers at once, or use channels to perform updates. The use of channels and groups allows organizations to manage the complete lifecycle of systems from development to test/QA to production. For example, an administrator can choose to apply a fix to an organization’s e-commerce servers in the testing channel before applying the fix to the production servers.
Monitor Everything Monitoring is another area where the combination of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite provides a complete enterprise-level monitoring solution. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization monitors the enterprise’s virtual servers and provides a full, real-time view of the state and performance of those systems, by monitoring the virtual container. Red Hat Network Satellite records and reports on the performance of the systems over time, providing trending and analysis of both virtual and physical Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. This mix of real-time and historical information is a powerful combination of tools that allows system administrators to fine tune system performance, plan for expansion, and manage the enterprise’s resources to better match demand without costly overbuilding.
Auditing The combination of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite provides a clear record of all actions taken on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. Returning to the metaphor of the container and the content, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provides audit records of all actions taken on the virtual server (container). Red Hat Network Satellite provides detailed audit records on the content of that server (container), including the applications.
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The Best Red Hat Enterprise Linux Experience with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite
These combined auditing capabilities are vital for an organization that is concerned with compliance and security issues. An audit record can be more than just “who did what and when.” It can also be evidence that an organization is following procedures and standards — an important record to protect an enterprise against potential liability. (For more information on this topic, please reference our white paper on Compliance and Systems Management by Akash Chandrashekar.)
Rollback and Recovery System failure and loss is a major concern for organizations. Once again, the combination of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite provides system administrators with complementary tools with which they can manage simple rollbacks and complete recovery operations. Red Hat Network Satellite provides a view of all of the operations taken on all of the registered systems. Using this display, an administrator can select individual actions to “undo” and rollback individual changes, patches, and updates. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provides a complete system snapshot, allowing system administrators to perform a full system recovery, either in a planned operation or in the case of disaster recovery.
The Best Experience and Cost Savings One of the most significant reasons that organizations choose to use Red Hat Network Satellite is the clear cost savings it provides. In a 2009 IDC study titled “Linux Management with Red Hat Network Satellite Server: Measuring Business Impact and ROI” (https://inquiries.redhat.com/go/redhat/idc-rhn-satellite), IDC reviewed 10 IT organizations that had deployed Red Hat Network Satellite. The results are clear: • The organizations yielded an average 338 percent ROI — more than three times the implementation costs over three years of use. • The typical 100 percent return of the initial cost was reached in less than five months. • Each organization reported a substantial savings in staff hours while the number of Linux servers managed per admin was doubled. • An annual benefit of $82,521 per 100 Linux servers managed was achieved.
Summary Managing an enterprise environment doesn’t have to be complex or difficult when using the right tools. Organizations that use both Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite find that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is both easy-to-manage and remarkably cost-effective. Using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite to build a web-based enterprise management portal allows administrators to easily and visually manage the infrastructure from end to end, from initial provisioning through monitoring, updating, auditing, and recovery.
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We invite you to see how to use Red Hat Network Satellite and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for the best Red Hat Enterprise Linux experience. • For more information on Red Hat Network Satellite, please visit http://www.redhat.com/ red_hat_network/. • For more information on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, please visit http://www.redhat.com/rhev. • Or contact your local Red Hat Sales representative or reseller.
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