Red Hat Satellite 6.1 upgrades systems management 

Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Satellite 6.1, Red Hat's systems management solution for managing Red Hat infrastructure. Since the launch of Red Hat  Satellite 6.0 in September 2014, new additions to the systems management software bring upgraded security enhancements, enhanced discovery and container management capabilities across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Red Hat Satellite 6.1 brings users significant upgrades in three key areas:

* Container management

* Security

* Provisioning

Container Management
As cloud infrastructures continue to shift toward container-based deployments, customers increasingly need an agile management solution for new container setups housing sensitive applications and data. The core capabilities of Satellite 6.1 now extend to container deployments - making them more scalable, manageable and consistent - and allow Docker users to tap into its modern design as they seek more control around versioning, authentication and integration with existing platforms. A scalable on-premise registry based with Role-Based Access Controls, auditing and a robust API are now available for developers seeking to manage systems in a container-based environment.

Security
Satellite 6.1 brings upgrades to errata management, allowing users to quickly and easily address security, bugfix and enhancement errata. Improved reporting now enables organizations to more quickly identify and respond to hosts affected by a security vulnerability, minimizing downtime and sensitive data exposure in vulnerability scenarios such as those presented by Shellshock, Heartbleed and GHOST. Additionally, OpenSCAP, a standardized approach to maintaining enterprise system security, is now available in tech preview. OpenSCAP automatically verifies the presence of patches, checks system security configuration settings and examines systems for signs of compromise in daily/weekly/monthly cadences that can be customized by end users to best fit their own internal security protocols.

Provisioning
Red Hat Satellite helps to simplify the provisioning process through new discovery processes, allowing automatic bare metal discovery of unknown nodes on the provisioning network. New nodes can self-register to Red Hat Satellite and upload their hardware facts, and this discovery allows the software to best determine the type of system to provision.

Other new capabilities introduced in Red Hat Satellite 6.1 include:

* Multiple Network Support for provisioning systems with complex networking requirements, including VLANs, Bonds and Aliased interfaces. Satellite 6.1 includes newer provisioning templates and workflows that enable the setup of complex interfaces as systems are initially provisioned.

* Isolated Capsule Server, a key component of large Red Hat Satellite installations, now features a number of communication improvements. Communications between the managed host, Capsule Server and Satellite Server are now better isolated and streamlined for a more secure environment, allowing system administrators to more easily deploy Red Hat Satellite Capsule in their environments.

* Tech preview of Red Hat Access Insights is a new automated, opt-in service announced at the 2015 Red Hat Summit. Red Hat Satellite users can identify key risks to stability, performance and security through Red Hat Access Insights, which offers recommendations of how to address discovered issues.