Monitoring hosts by using Insights in Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console

You can use the Insights advisor service in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to assess system health on hosts running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can use the Insights dashboard in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to quickly analyze recommendations for remediation, vulnerabilities, and more.

If you use Insights in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console:

  • You can use Insights services online in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • The Insights client collects data of your hosts and orcharhino forwards the data through the Insights client to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to calculate recommendations.

  • You can view and remediate those recommendations both in the orcharhino management UI and in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • orcharhino uploads host inventory reports to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • You have control over how much information is included in those reports.

  • You cannot use local Insights in orcharhino.

Red Hat Insights is now called Red Hat Lightspeed. For more information, see Red Hat Insights is now Red Hat Lightspeed.
Prerequisites

  • Install and configure the Insights client on hosts during host registration or provisioning.

  • For hosts already registered to orcharhino, install and configure the Insights client on your hosts by using an Ansible role.

  • You can change the schedule for running the Insights client by configuring insights-client.timer on a host.

Troubleshooting

  • You can find the logs in the /var/log/foreman/production.log file.

  • If you have problems connecting to Insights, ensure that your certificates are up-to-date. Refresh your subscription manifest to update your certificates.

Additional resources

Installing Red Hat Cloud plugin

Install the Red Hat Cloud plugin to generate and upload reports from orcharhino to your Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Procedure

  1. Install the Red Hat Cloud plugin on your orcharhino Server:

    $ orcharhino-installer --enable-foreman-plugin-rh-cloud

  2. Optional: In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Administer > About and select the Plugins tab to verify the installation of the Red Hat Cloud plugin.

Configuring orcharhino Server for cloud connection

You can configure orcharhino Server to connect to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console by using remote execution.

Prerequisites

  • You have added the SSH key to authorized keys on your orcharhino Server.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the execute_jobs_on_infrastructure_hosts permission.

    Note that this permission is not included in the default Remote Execution User role.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Click Configure cloud connector.

  3. Click Confirm.

Verification

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Monitor > orcharhino Tasks > Tasks.

  2. Find the job with the name Remote action: Configure cloud connector.

  3. Verify that the job completed successfully.

Data control settings

You can configure how orcharhino handles the data collected from hosts before uploading it to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console and how orcharhino handles hosts in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console that are no longer managed by orcharhino.

Minimizing collected data

You can configure orcharhino to use minimal reporting if you want to limit the data sent to Red Hat.

You can use minimal reporting to limit the amount of system data sent to the Subscriptions service, which remains active. Other Insights services are disabled because they require installed package data, which minimal reports do not include. Reports are still processed daily during the midnight synchronization cycle.

Minimal reports also exclude hostnames, IP addresses, and installed packages. Therefore, obfuscation and exclusion settings do not apply.

If you switch to Analytics data collection, orcharhino enables the following settings by default:

  • Obfuscate host names

  • Obfuscate host ipv4 addresses

  • Exclude installed packages

Review and adjust these settings to control what data orcharhino shares.

Example 1. Example of data collected in a minimal report
{
  "report_slice_id": "de92044d-9d77-4895-83c4-a476f5020519",
  "hosts": [
    {
      "account": "123456789",
      "subscription_manager_id": "9fc621b9-08c3-4085-a749-bfed38c3052e",
      "insights_id": "9fc621b9-08c3-4085-a749-bfed38c3052e",
      "bios_uuid": "203F234F-58C7-4237-8DDF-A17A2838A66C",
      "bios_vendor": "SeaBIOS",
      "bios_version": "1.16.1-1.el9",
      "arch": "x86_64",
      "infrastructure_type": "virtual",
      "system_profile": {
        "installed_products": [
          {
            "name": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64",
            "id": "479"
          }
        ],
        "cores_per_socket": 1,
        "system_memory_bytes": 3836579840,
        "number_of_cpus": 1,
        "number_of_sockets": 1
      },
      "cpu_socket(s)": "1"
    }
  ]
}
Prerequisites

  • Your user account has a role that grants the edit_settings permission.

  • Ensure that you delete existing data in Insights Inventory before switching to minimal reporting. To remove existing data of a system, navigate to Inventory > Systems in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, select the system, and click Delete.

  • You have selected an organization and location.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Select the Minimal data collection setting from the dropdown menu under Settings.

  3. When you select this option, orcharhino also updates the corresponding setting on the Insights tab under Administer > Settings.

  4. Click the Generate and upload report button to create a new inventory report and send it to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Obfuscating hostnames and IP addresses

You can configure orcharhino to obfuscate hostnames and IP addresses when uploading host data to Insights. Obfuscation ensures that sensitive identifying information is not exposed.

When obfuscation settings are enabled, orcharhino obfuscates hostnames and IP addresses. If obfuscation settings are enabled and the host has its own insights-client obfuscation settings, orcharhino honors the host settings. If obfuscation settings are disabled, orcharhino does not obfuscate hostnames or IP addresses unless the client has obfuscation enabled in insights-client.

By default, orcharhino applies global obfuscation settings unless an insights-client on the host overrides the settings with its own configuration.

Prerequisites

  • Your hosts have insights-client installed and configured.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Enable the Obfuscate host names setting to obfuscate host names sent to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  3. Enable the Obfuscate host ipv4 addresses setting to obfuscate IPv4 addresses sent to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Verification

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. In the Organization dropdown menu, select the organization that uploaded the host data.

  3. Click Download report to download the host inventory report from Insights.

  4. Verify that the hostname is randomhostname.example.com and the IP address is obfuscated.

Removing hosts from the Insights Inventory

When hosts are removed from orcharhino, they can also be removed from the inventory of Insights, either automatically or manually. You can configure automatic removal of hosts from the Insights Inventory during Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console synchronization with orcharhino that occurs daily by default.

If you leave the setting disabled, you can still remove the bulk of hosts from the Inventory manually.

If Automatic mismatch deletion is enabled, orcharhino removes any hosts from the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console that are not registered in orcharhino. Enable this setting only when all hosts are registered through orcharhino. If any hosts are registered through other orcharhino instances or directly to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, orcharhino deletes them.

Prerequisites

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the view_foreman_rh_cloud and edit_settings permissions.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Inventory Upload.

  2. Enable the Automatic mismatch deletion setting.

Enabling Insights analytics for hosts

You can enable Insights analytics for hosts. Install the Insights client on hosts to collect host data. Include hosts in the daily inventory reports uploaded to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to analyze host data.

Insights is a service by Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts. Ensure to set these parameters for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts only. If you set the parameter on any non-Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems, orcharhino automatically uploads new reports to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console when enabled in RH Cloud orcharhino settings.

You can set these parameters at any level. For more information, see Host Parameter Hierarchy managing hosts.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Host > Provisioning Setup > Operating Systems.

  2. Select any Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems for which you want to change the value.

  3. Enable installation of the Insights client on hosts during host registration:

    1. On the Parameters tab, add the host_registration_insights parameter, select the boolean type, and set the value to True.

    2. Click Submit to save the parameter.

  4. Include the hosts in the daily inventory reports uploaded to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console:

    1. On the Parameters tab, add the host_registration_insights_inventory parameter, select the boolean type, and set the value to True.

    2. Click Submit to save the parameter.

Deploying Insights client on registered hosts

You can use the RedHatInsights.insights-client Ansible role to automate the installation of the Insights client on hosts and initiate the host data upload.

Prerequisites

  • Remote execution with the Ansible provider is available.

  • Ensure that the following repositories are enabled on your host:

    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: rhel-10-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms and rhel-10-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: rhel-9-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms and rhel-9-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8: rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms and rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

    • On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: rhel-7-server-rpms

Procedure

  1. Add the RedHatInsights.insights-client role to the hosts. For more information, see Using Ansible roles to automate repetitive tasks on hosts in Configuring hosts by using Ansible.

  2. To run the RedHatInsights.insights-client role on your host, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts and click the name of the host that you want to use.

  3. On the host details page, expand the Schedule a job dropdown menu.

  4. Click Run Ansible roles.

Additional resources

Synchronizing Insights recommendations for hosts

You can enable automatic synchronization of the recommendations from Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console that occurs daily by default. If you leave the setting disabled, you can synchronize the recommendations manually.

Procedure

  • To get the recommendations automatically:

    1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

    2. Enable Sync Automatically.

  • To get the recommendations manually:

    1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

    2. On the vertical ellipsis, click Sync Recommendations.

Examining recommendations for hosts

You can view the recommendations for RHEL hosts in the orcharhino management UI.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

  2. From the menu next to the Remediate button, select View in Insights to navigate to the recommendations page in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Additional resources

Remediating issues based on Insights recommendations

You can remediate issues on RHEL hosts based on Insights recommendations. You can only remediate recommendations that have an associated playbook.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Insights > Recommendations.

  2. Select the recommendations that you want to remediate.

  3. Click Remediate.

  4. In the Remediation summary window, you can select the Resolutions to apply if there are multiple options. Use the Filter field to search for specific keywords.

  5. Click Remediate.

Verification

  1. On the Jobs page, you can view the progress of your remediation.

  2. Verify that the remediation job completed successfully.

Exclusion of hosts from Insights analytics

You can exclude hosts from Insights analytics by using host parameters.

host_registration_insights

Setting this parameter to false will prevent orcharhino Server from forwarding data from the Insights client on hosts to Insights services. The Insights client will not be installed on newly registered hosts.

host_registration_insights_inventory

Setting this parameter to false will exclude the host from the orcharhino host inventory that is uploaded to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

If you exclude a host that is already reported on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console, it will be still removed automatically from the inventory. However, this process can take some time to complete.

You can set these parameters at any level. For more information, see Host Parameter Hierarchy managing hosts.

The text and illustrations on this page are licensed by ATIX AG under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International ("CC BY-SA 4.0") license. This page also contains text from the official Foreman documentation which uses the same license ("CC BY-SA 4.0").