The monitoring module is available only when using RHN in proxy mode and is a hardware-software product provided by Red Hat. The company is working to make this module available on the satellite server for customers that require disconnected RHN. We didn't test the monitoring module, but Red Hat says it provides autodiscovery; agentless monitoring of servers, including Unix and Windows servers; reporting; and notification. The monitoring software integrates into other monitoring packages, like Hewlett-Packard HP OpenView or BMC Software Patrol, using open APIs.
By the time you read this (or shortly thereafter), Red Hat will release an update to the RHN service that provides a provisioning module. This module was not part of our tests because Red Hat had not completed the documentation required for us to evaluate it, but the company says it will complement the management module and provide configuration management of RHEL machines, rollback capabilities and bare-metal recovery services.
The bare-metal recovery ability will use kick-start software through a GUI interface. The provisioning module will be able to track changes, based on delta actions, and roll back your server to a good known state. Using rollback and kick-start, it will be possible to clone a machine to another machine without much intervention, according to Red Hat. We can see where being able to easily transform unused development machines to production Web or mail servers when the load demands--among other uses that spring to mind--would be a strong selling point.
In our tests, RHEL worked flawlessly, and the addition of RHN should make it a good fit for most companies looking to go Linux. However, there's room for some improvements.
Atop our wish list: premium support for all releases, allowing ES to run on 64-bit platforms like Intel Itanium and AMD 64; larger memory footprints for ES; and changes in the licensing model.
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