Getting to Day Two with foreman-ansible modules

[flyemsafe]

SUMMARY

Setting up a whole new Satellite for Day-2 operations can be a lot of work, you have to:

• Create a subscription allocation in the customer portal
• Add subscriptions to an allocation
• Export a subscription manifest from the customer portal
• Create your satellite ORG
• Upload manifest to satellite ORG
• Enable Red Hat repositories
• Create, publish and promote content views
• Create activation keys
• Synchronize content
• Creating a domain
• Create a subnet
• Create host groups

To be clear, I'm am not saying getting the above done is Day Two Ops [1], but you need to get the above done in order to focus on Day Two. To narrow this down further, the Day Two options I am referring to are:

(1) I can now register systems and patch them (2) I can now register a system with RHEL installed and install the layered Red Hat products I am entitled to (RHV, OSP, OCP, Satellite).

There should exist a role that leverages the ansible-foreman-modules to automate the above steps. This role will need to be highly opinionated and incorporate known best practices for setting content views for Red Hat products and product families, along with creating the associated activation keys. The role should assume as many safe defaults as possible, this will allow someone new to Satellite that's just trying to get to (1). This person may already have an existing RHEL base and purchase Satellite because they need to apply patches quickly. This user should be able to edit a vars file and input relevant information such as:

• RHSM username/password
• Organization Name
• Location
• The product they want to support, perhaps allow them to specify major and minor release
• Satellite admin and username

Another persona may be the user is an existing Satellite/RHEL customer and now they purchased a RHV and OSP. They should be able to run this role and specify they have rhv and osp and the role configures Satellite so that they can continue with the installation steps in the doc knowing that yum install will work.

With this in mind, I've attempted to write such a role [2] and would like to see the community adopt it.

[1] https://dzone.com/articles/defining-day-2-operations [2] https://github.com/flyemsafe/satellite-day-two-ops

ISSUE TYPE

• Feature Idea

[amalivert]

I am glad to be a part of project that will empower the foreman community users be able to configure satellite. This will bring great value. We can work towards adding new features and also fixing current bugs and issues. Abner