One of the great features that I have become accustomed to using in Red Hat Satellite 6, is the ability to provide content and patching services to your entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) fleet on an air gapped network. Anyone that has worked on an air gapped network will understand the challenges there are in using internet connected products that cannot dial home.

This is where Satellite 6 can step up and provide continuity to your RHEL fleet and ensure these hosts receive the latest security errata and packages. One of the Red Hat recommendations for a disconnected content transfer to populate your disconnected Satellite 6 is through content ISO’s. Another method is through the Inter-Satellite Sync

You can find this through the Red Hat website here: (sign in required)

Export Content ISO’s
https://access.redhat.com/articles/1375133

Inter-Satellite Sync
https://access.redhat.com/articles/2390791

There is another method that can be performed to ensure that your air gapped Satellite 6 continues to replicate an internet connected Satellite 6 with the latest errata and packages. This is done through a series of scripts that were written by Geoff Gatward and continue to be updated and fine tuned. These scripts are now active on the various Satellite 6 instances I sustain for the customer and are the backbone of content transfers across various networks. Weekly exports of various RHEL products and EPEL are brought across and ingested within hours for customers to apply security errata or install packages.

You are able to download the scripts from here.

https://github.com/RedHatSatellite/sat6_scripts

One caveat, these scripts are not supported by Red Hat however feel free to leave comments if you require further clarification. Geoff has put a lot of time and effort into these scripts and are now used by various users of air gapped Satellite 6 instances.

There are extremely detailed instructions provided with the package as there are some configuration changes that you will need to make on both your Satellite 6 instances. Depending on your process to transfer files across to your air gapped network, these scripts can be automated to import content, promote and publish your content views through cron.  I will talk a bit more about how to configure the scripts and automate these functions in my next post.

In the mean time, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.