Deploy on SLE Micro 5.5

In this section, you will gain expertise in setting up and deploying a containerized SUSE Manager 5.0 Server. This process installs SLE Micro, and then interacts with the container through the container utilities mgradm and mgrctl.

1. Container Host General Requirements

For general requirements, see General Requirements.

A SLE Micro or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server server should be installed from installation media. This procedure is described in SLE Micro 5.5 Installation.

2. Container Host Requirements

For CPU, RAM, and storage requirements, see Hardware Requirements.

To guarantee that clients can resolve the SUSE Manager 5.0 domain name, both the container server and host machines must be linked to a functional DNS server. Additionally, it is essential to ensure correct configuration of reverse lookups.

3. SLE Micro 5.5 Installation

Get a copy of the SLE Micro 5.5 installation media. You can begin the installation on either a virtual machine or on a physical server.

Procedure: SLE Micro 5.5 installation

  1. Begin the installation from the installation media.

  2. Adjust keyboard and language. Click the checkbox to accept the license agreement.

  3. Click Next to continue.

  4. Select your registration method. For this example, we will register the server with the SUSE Customer Center.

  5. Enter your SUSE Customer Center e-mail address.

  6. Enter your registration code for SLE Micro 5.5.

    Base operating system for SUSE Manager 5.0 containerized Server

    For SUSE Manager 5.0, the base operating system of the container is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP6. You can find these keys in your SUSE Customer Center account.

  7. If wanted activate online repositories.

  8. Click Next to continue.

  9. Select the SUSE Manager 5.0 Server extension Checkbox.

  10. Click Next to continue.

  11. Enter your SUSE Manager 5.0 Server extension registration code.

    SUSE Manager as an extension

    SUSE Manager 5.0 is installed as an extension. Therefore, in addition to acquiring SUSE Customer Center registration keys for the base Server, you will also need SUSE Customer Center registration codes for the following extensions:

    • SUSE Manager 5.0 Server

    • SUSE Manager 5.0 Proxy

    • Retail Branch Server

  12. Click Next to continue.

  13. Enter or accept default NTP Server.

  14. Click Next to continue.

  15. Add the root user password twice to confirm.

  16. Click Next to continue.

  17. Adjust Installation Settings as required.

  18. Click Next to continue.

This concludes the installation of SLE Micro 5.5.

4. Update the Container Host

When the installation completes, update the container host system.

Procedure: Update the container host and install the container utilities

  1. Log in at the prompt as root.

  2. Run transactional-update:

    transactional-update

  3. Reboot the system.

  4. Log in as root.

  5. Install the container utilities:

    transactional-update pkg install mgradm mgrctl mgradm-bash-completion mgrctl-bash-completion

  6. Reboot the system.

5. Deploy as container on SLE Micro 5.5

5.1. Basic and Advanced Deployment with mgradm

Procedure: Basic deployment of a SUSE Manager 5.0 container with Podman

  1. From the terminal of the container host, run the following command as the root user. Entering your server’s FQDN is optional. Leave blank for a default setup.

    mgradm install podman <FQDN>

    You must deploy the container as sudo or root. The following error will be displayed on the terminal if you miss this step.

    INF Setting up uyuni network
9:58AM INF Enabling system service
9:58AM FTL Failed to open /etc/systemd/system/uyuni-server.service for writing error="open /etc/systemd/system/uyuni-server.service: permission denied"

  2. Enter a database and certificate password when prompted. Press Enter.

  3. Enter a certificate and administrator account password when prompted.

    The administrator account password must be at least 5 characters and less than 48 characters in length.

  4. Press Enter.

  5. Wait for deployment to complete.

  6. Open a browser and proceed to your server’s FQDN, or IP address.

In this section you learned the basic method for deploying a SUSE Manager 5.0 Server container.

Procedure: Advanced deployment of a SUSE Manager 5.0 container using a custom configuration file

  1. Prepare a configuration file named mgradm.yaml similar to the following example:

    # Database password. Randomly generated by default
db:
  password: MySuperSecretDBPass

# Password for the CA certificate
ssl:
  password: MySuperSecretSSLPassword

# Your SUSE Customer Center credentials
scc:
  user: ccUsername
  password: ccPassword

# Organization name
organization: YourOrganization

# Email address sending the notifications
emailFrom: notifications@example.com

# Administrators account details
admin:
  password: MySuperSecretAdminPass
  login: LoginName
  firstName: Admin
  lastName: Admin
  email: email@example.com

    For security, using command line parameters to specify passwords should be avoided: use a configuration file with proper permissions instead.

  2. From the terminal, run the following command as the root user. Entering your server’s FQDN is optional.

    mgradm -c mgradm.yaml install podman <FQDN>

    You must deploy the container as sudo or root. The following error will be displayed at the terminal if you miss this step.

    INF Setting up uyuni network
9:58AM INF Enabling system service
9:58AM FTL Failed to open /etc/systemd/system/uyuni-server.service for writing error="open /etc/systemd/system/uyuni-server.service: permission denied"

  3. Wait for deployment to complete.

  4. Open a browser and proceed to your server’s FQDN or IP address.

In this section you learned how to deploy the SUSE Manager Server container.

5.2. Persistent Volumes

If you are just testing out SUSE Manager you do not need to specify these volumes. mgradm will setup the correct volumes by default.

Specifying volume locations will generally be used for larger production deployments.

Many users will want to specify locations for their persistent volumes.

By default, Podman stores its volumes in /var/lib/containers/storage/volumes/.

You can provide custom storage for the volumes by mounting disks on this path or the expected volume path inside it such as: /var/lib/containers/storage/volumes/var-spacewalk. This is especially important for the database and package mirrors.

For a list of all persistent volumes in the container see, List of persistent storage volumes.