SUSE Manager 4 Deployment and Initial Configuration This three-day course is intended to teach the student the purpose, features and benefits of SUSE Manager (SUMA) 4.x.

Course overview

About this course

This three-day course is intended to teach the student the purpose, features,
and benefits of SUSE Manager (SUMA) 4.x. The course will present the
three-tier architecture of a SUMA System and the requirements for
successfully installing these architectural components.

You will learn how to deploy and configure all the architectural components
of a SUSE Manager (SUMA) 4.x system in a step-by-step fashion. In particular
you will learn how to install and configure the SUMA Server, the SUMA Proxy
Server, and the Salt Minion code for target client servers.

This training will enable you to setup a functional SUMA system to begin
exploring the myriad of management capabilities SUMA provides for your
managed client servers. Regardless of the size of your organization, this
course will get you up and running with a fully functional SUSE Manager 4.x
system.

Audience profile

This course is designed for those that are new to SUSE Manager. In particular
for:

• system architects leading the deployment of SUSE Manager across
  their organization
• and Linux system administrators who want an efficient and effective
  way to manage their Linux servers centrally rather than individually
  as a bunch of separate servers.

At course completion, you will learn:

• Understand the system management challenges, and need for a comprehensive systems management solution
• Understand the benefits of SUSE Manager 4.x
• Learn about the new product features introduced in SUSE Manager 4.2
• Understand the three different tiers of a fully deployed SUSE
  Manager system and learn the major software components of SUSE
  Manager and how they relate to one another
• Understand the purpose of the Hub Server in very large SUSE
  Manager deployments
• Learn the hardware and software requirements for installing the various tiers of the SUSE Manager system
• Understand how to perform an on-line installation of SUSE Manager
  Server
• Understand the purpose of the two stages (Initial Setup and SUMA Administrative Setup) of the SUMA setup procedure
• Learn how to perform the Initial Setup whether your SUMA Server was installed in “text only” or “graphical mode”
• Perform the SUMA Administrative Setup using the SUMA Web UI
• Understand the importance of the SUSE Customer Center (SCC) in providing patch and update content for your SUMA Server
• Learn how to sync SCC provided content down to your SUMA Server using the Web UI’s Setup Wizard and be able to monitor the progress of the synchronization process
• Understand the pre-installation issues and hardware and software requirements for a SUMA 4.2 Proxy Server
• Install a SUMA 4.2 Proxy Server and register the Proxy as a Salt Minion
• Understand how to configure a SUMA 4.2 Proxy Server to make it function as a Proxy Server for downstream client servers
• Understand the purpose of the Client Registration Process and what occurs during Registration
• Planning you need to do prior to registering target client systems, in particular how to make SCC channel content available once systems have been registered.
• Learn how to manually create Bootstrap Repositories required for Client Registration.
• Create and configure System Groups and Activation Keys and learn the best practices for doing so.
• Learn the different methods that can be used to Register target client servers.
• Perform Client Registration using multiple methods.
• Understand what a Salt Key is and the methods to accept pending Salt Keys at your SUMA Server.
• Understand how to create and implement a Content Lifecycle
  Management strategy to manage patches and updates for registered client systems.