If you’re seeking an open-source solution for managing your physical or virtual servers’ software content, then Katello could be for you! Through Katello, magnitudes of servers’ content can be easily and quickly managed via web browser. Files and software packages can be remotely synced or uploaded and then grouped into Lifecycle Environments at a per-content-unit level. Synced content in Katello can be easily deployed onto servers and stepped through Lifecycle Environments such as Development, Testing, and Production, or as many as are needed. Katello can also keep administrators aware of CentOS/RHEL errata -- bug fixes, enhancements, and security patches.

Already an avid user of Katello? Features new to Katello within the past few years will be highlighted, such as dependency solving and Composite Content View auto-publishing. Also, to inspire new ways to use Katello, we’ll explore content-enabled Smart Proxies and see a demonstration of an automated web server deployment. Whether you’re new to Katello or a pro, you're invited to join this community presentation and discussion!

A Tale of Upgrading From MongoDB-based Pulp 2 to PostgreSQL-based Pulp 3 in Katello

Whether you are a developer, system administrator, or simply a consumer of software, upgrades can be a painful experience. When was the last time your prescribed hour-long upgrade turned into a full-day endeavor? Have you been procrastinating upgrading your project’s EOL’d backend service for fear of breaking APIs? In the Katello project, we certainly have experienced these issues ourselves. After learning lessons the hard way when upgrading our backend service Pulp years ago, we’ve created a plan and are currently executing our latest upgrade to Pulp 3 now. The upgrade could be painful if we’re not careful. How can we switch to an in-development service with completely new concepts and APIs in a way that is easy for developers but still produces stable releases?

In this presentation, I will share a development story that covers prior mistakes we made and the lessons learned, the planning and architecture of incrementally introducing Pulp 3, and how we’ve maintained clear communication across the Katello and Pulp 3 teams to keep our efforts aligned.
This talk’s audience isn’t limited to developers alone; anyone in configuration management, system administration, or management fields should find it relatable as well.