Red Hat Satellite Installation Guidance

This blog provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to installing Red Hat Satellite 6.15 on a RHEL 8 virtual machine in a connected network environment. It includes system prerequisites, firewall configuration, subscription setup, Satellite installation, and verification steps. By the end, you'll have a running Satellite server ready for post-install configuration. The figure below is the overview architecture of Red Hat Satellite.

1. Overview

Red Hat Satellite is a systems management solution that enables efficient provisioning, configuration, and patching of RHEL systems. Satellite 6.15 introduces performance improvements and streamlined content management. This guide walks through deploying Satellite in a connected network setup.

2. System Requirements

Before proceeding with the installation, make sure your environment meets the following requirements:

Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
Architecture: x86_64 only
Resources: Allocate sufficient CPU, memory, and storage based on the official Satellite sizing guide
A VM or physical host with RHEL 8 pre-installed and registered.

3. Network Connectivity & Firewall Configuration

To ensure successful communication between the Satellite Server and its clients (Capsules and Content Hosts), you need to configure both host-based and network-based firewalls.

Step 1: Open Required Ports on Satellite Server

These ports are required for Satellite components and client systems to communicate. Please refer to the Red Hat official website for the ports that Satellite needs. These two ports are manually opened before installation, which does not mean that Satellite only uses these two ports.

# firewall-cmd \

--add-port="8000/tcp" \

--add-port="9090/tcp"

Step 2: Allow Essential Services

In firewalld, a service is a predefined group of rules for common applications, like https, http, ssh,dns, etc, for Satellite installation. The services below are used for provisioning, PXE booting, and content delivery.

# firewall-cmd \

--add-service=dns \

--add-service=dhcp \

--add-service=tftp \

--add-service=http \

--add-service=https \

--add-service=puppetmaster

Step 3: Make Changes Persistent

Make sure the changes you made are persistent, and run the following command.

# firewall-cmd --runtime-to-permanent

Step 4: Verify Firewall Rules

Using the list to check that the changes or the rules you make to ensure it was set properly.

# firewall-cmd --list-all

Step 5: List Open Ports (Optional)

It is recommended to check the ports that are used by the command, but it only lists the ports that you opened. It does not mean you only use these two ports for the Satellite. Red Hat Satellite does have a lot of functionalities, some of which will be used after the Satellite installation. Make sure your system or the host meets the port requirements.

# sudo firewall-cmd –zone=public --list-ports

4. DNS Resolution Validation

This is a very important step. Satellite depends on proper DNS resolution. Verify both hostname and localhost resolution. It is suggested to use the proper hostname, which has to match the name on your DNS server. It will be more complicated if you would like to change your hostname later. So careful with the hostname change.

# ping -c1 localhost

# ping -c1 `hostname -f` # my_system.domain.com

If your hostname does not resolve, ensure it's correctly configured in /etc/hosts or in your DNS server.

5. Register with Red Hat Subscription

Register your system with Red Hat and configure only the necessary repos. To ensure there are no conflicts, it is required to disable all the other repos first and only enable the necessary repos. Enable the specific Satellite repositories based on version 6.15.

# sudo subscription-manager register

# sudo subscription-manager repos --disable "*"

# subscription-manager repos --enable=rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms \

--enable=rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms \

--enable=satellite-6.15-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms \

--enable=satellite-maintenance-6.15-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

This step is to enable the dnf module of the Satellite. You have to ensure that there is no error at this step to proceed with the satellite installation.

# dnf module enable satellite:el8

6. Install and Enable fapolicyd

Ensure your RHEL server has the base OS repo of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. fapolicyd stands for File Access Policy Daemon — it’s a security feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 and later that controls which applications are allowed to run based on a set of rules and file metadata.

# sudo dnf install fapolicyd

# sudo systemctl enable --now fapolicyd

# sudo systemctl status fapolicyd

7. System Update

Before installing Satellite, fully update your system:

# sudo dnf upgrade -y

If you encounter errors related to RPM metadata, rebuild the RPM database:

# sudo rpm --rebuilddb

8. Install Satellite Packages

Once the system is updated and the correct repositories are enabled:

# sudo install satellite

This will pull in all required packages and dependencies.

9. Run Satellite Installer

Use the following command to configure the Satellite server:

# sudo satellite-installer --scenario satellite \

--foreman-initial-organization "wz_org" \

--foreman-initial-location "wz_sydney" \

--foreman-initial-admin-username admin \

--foreman-initial-admin-password admin

This step may take several minutes. Once completed, it configures services like Foreman, Puppet, and Katello. After running the command, the success page will be shown, and you can see the information about the success and go ahead to choose install the capsule server or not.

You can choose to install the Capsule server now or later.

10. Access the Satellite Web Interface

Once the installation is complete:

Ensure your hostname resolves to the correct IP address via DNS
Open your browser and navigate to:

# https://<your-satellite-hostname>

11. What's Next?

Your Satellite Server is now operational. Proceed with:

Content sync and lifecycle environment setup
Host registration and provisioning templates
Capsule configuration if required

👉 For post-install configuration, stay tuned for the next blog in this series.

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Weinan Z.