The developers at the Katello project have released version 1.0 of their open source systems management software. Written in Ruby, Katello allows users to manage the software packages, updates and security fixes for a large number of systems, and can be administered via a Rails web front end or a Python command-line interface (CLI). Content can be pulled in by Katello from remote repositories, local directories and ISOs, and users can test changes before implementing them in a locked-down container before rolling them out to production machines.

To do all of this, the systems management solution integrates the Pulp, Candlepin and Foreman projects. While the software is primarily aimed at Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems, derivatives such as CentOS should also work, but are not yet officially supported. Red Hat currently uses Katello as the backbone for its CloudForms hybrid cloud-management framework. In the medium to long term, Katello and CloudForms are supposed to replace Spacewalk and the Red Hat Network Satellite; additional background is given in the 2011 and 2012 presentation slides from past Red Hat Summit events.

Further information about this major milestone, including download links, can be found in the release notes. Installation instructions for Katello are provided on the project's wiki; Katello has been tested with RHEL 6.3 or later and Fedora 16; the developers are currently working on support for Fedora 17. Source code for Katello is hosted on GitHub and is licensed under the GPLv2.

(crve)