SUSE Manager 4 Basic Operations

Who should participate

This course is aimed at:

• Server System Administrators who are tasked with managing servers on a daily basis and providing support.
• Senior System Administrators who are usually second or third level within their company and act as “team leaders” for Server System Administrators.
• Consultants who need to understand how SUSE Manager can significantly reduce the administrative burden of managing hundreds or even thousands of servers.

Prerequisites

Participants must have the following experience and skills before participating in this course:

• Knowing how to install and configure SUMA servers and proxy servers. It is assumed that the participant is responsible for day-to-day management. However, detailed information on the installation and initial configuration of SUMA is presented in SMGR211v4: SUSE Manager 4 Deployment and Initial Configuration. Participation in the SMGR211v4 course is helpful, but not required to be successful in this course.
• Have at least one year of experience managing Linux operating systems.
• Be able to work with the Linux command line and use the vi editor.
• Understand how to manually install packages on SUSE Linux Enterprise servers.

Participants will learn the following concepts and skills:

• Review the architectural components of SUMA (SUMA Server, SUMA Proxy Server and Managed Clients).
• Understand the parts of the SUMA web interface and how to access them.

• Use the SUMA web interface to:
  -Get an overview of the entire SUMA system using the View feature
  -Locate desired managed clients using the web interface’s advanced search capabilities
  -View client system details managed

• Understand the registration process and what happens during registration
• Create, configure, and manage logging-related objects such as activation keys, channels, system groups, and salt keys.
• Plan and implement logging using the web interface and bootstrap scripts.

• Implement channel management:
  -Learn channel terminology and channel types
  -Clone channel content
  -Implement configuration channels
  -Understand and implement content lifecycle management (CLM)

• Learn how to delegate management authority in SUMA:
  -Understand how and why it may be necessary to create additional SUMA organizations.
  -Establish security between SUMA Organizations
  -Know the Admin Roles and Authorization Roles that can be created and assigned to manage SUMA resources.
  -Create new administrative users of the web interface

• Managing client servers using Salt:
  -Defining Salt and understanding its architecture
  -Understanding Salt’s grains, pillars and states
  -Learning how to leverage the salt, salt-run, salt-call and salt-key commands

• Perform common administrative tasks such as:
  -Using the web interface to execute commands on remote client servers.
  -Using the System Set Manager (SSM) to perform management tasks on multiple -client servers simultaneously.
  -Create and use action chains
  -Understand and use the various methods of installing RPM packages on client servers.