How do you use Satellite for test and production?

[JohnAdams]

Hi, folks,

     I've been thinking about the possibilities of having a second Satellite server in our environment, now that we've got a license for it. This was my brainstorm: Is anyone doing anything similar?

     We have a Satellite server running production at 6.3, and I'm thinking that we should have a second Satellite server at 6.4 running for test. I'd like to migrate some (or all) of our test machines to it. As we determine the new server is solid, I'd like to make it the production machine and move everything over to it. Once we're off of the 6.3 server, we tear it down and prepare to build a 6.5 (or 7.0) server and repeat.

     I'm very simpleminded about this stuff. What am I missing?

Thanks,

     John A

[JG_Kootstra · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

I have a sandbox Satellite running 6.4.1 with a few clients, which I use to test upgrades.
If successful, I start upgrading the Satellite for Development and Test servers.

Moving the load from one box to another might give you a lot of work. You need to reconfigure all clients to use the new server (SSL certificates need to change for yum and puppet).

So I would not recommend to switch from one server to another with all clients (at least not if you have a lot of clients.

Regards