Installation
I installed SUSE Manager on a virtual machine running on VMware vSphere—the product came on an iso image bundled with a copy of SLES 11.
Oracle XE
SUSE Manager ships with a built-in Oracle XE database, which I used for my tests. In a production environment, Novell recommends using a full-sized version of Oracle 10g or 11g.
Channel Subscriptions
After installing the server, I configured software update channels for SLES 11 and for RHEL 6.
Web Admin Console
The SUSE Manager Web console should be familiar to anyone who’s used Red Hat Network or Red Hat Satellite to manage systems.
Update Alerts
My test SUSE Manager installation prompted me with system update alerts as relevant patches became available.
RHEL Package Updates
I tested with RHEL and SLES VMs. Both of my test machines retained their standard software installation tools—for RHEL, yum, and for SLES, zypper—but both tools fetched their packages from SUSE Manager.
Remote Commands
I was able to issue commands from SUSE Manager to be executed on my test machines.
Configuration
I created a configuration management group, added my SLES and RHEL systems to the group, and pushed down a small configuration file to the pair of systems.