4 Chapter 1. Red Hat Network Overview
• Custom System Information — Provisioning customers may identify any type of information they
choose about their systems. This differs from the more rigorous System Profile information and the
completely arbitrary Notes in that it allows you to develop specific keys of your choosing and then
assign searchable values for that key to each Provisioning-entitled system. For instance, this feature
would allow you to identify the cubicle in which each system is located.
1.5. Monitoring
Unlike the other service levels, RHN Monitoring does not include the systems management functions
of other entitlements. Instead it is a separate entitlement available to Management- and Provisioning-
level customers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems.
Monitoring allows an organization to install probes that can immediately detect failures and identify
performance degradation before it becomes critical. Used properly, the Monitoring entitlement can
give you insight into the applications, services, and devices on each system.
Specifically, Monitoring provides:
• Probes — Dozens of probes can be run against each system. These range from simple ping checks
to custom remote programs designed to return valuable data.
• Notification — Alerts resulting from probes entering WARNING and CRITICAL states can be sent
to email and pager addresses with contact methods identified by you. Each probe notification can
be sent to a different method, or address.
• Central Status — The results of all probes are summarized in a single Probe Status page, with the
systems affected broken down by state.
• Reporting — By selecting a probe and identifying the particular metric and a range of time, you
can generate graphs and event logs depicting precisely how the probe has performed.
1.6. Errata Notifications and Scheduled Package Installations
You can configure Red Hat Network to send you email notifications of new and updated software
packages as soon as the packages are available through RHN. You receive one email per Errata,
regardless of the number of your systems affected. You can also schedule package installs or package
updates. The benefits include:
• Reduced time and effort required by system administrators to stay on top of the Red Hat Errata list
• Minimized security vulnerabilities in your network by providing the patches as soon as Red Hat
releases them
• Filtered list of package updates (packages not relevant to your network are not included)
• Reliable method of managing multiple systems with similar configurations
1.7. Security, Quality Assurance, and Red Hat Network
Red Hat Network provides significant benefits to your network including security and quality assur-
ance. All transactions made between you and Red Hat Network are encrypted, and all RPM packages
are signed with Red Hat’s GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) signature to ensure authenticity.
Red Hat Network incorporates the following security measures:
1. Your System Profile available at http://rhn.redhat.com is accessible only with an RHN-verified
username and password.
