Monitoring hosts by using Insights in orcharhino

You can use local services of Insights in orcharhino to assess system health on hosts running Red Hat Enterprise Linux without connecting to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. Insights in orcharhino provides advisor recommendations and vulnerability reports.

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

If you use Insights in orcharhino:

  • The Insights services run locally on your orcharhino Server.

  • orcharhino only communicates with the locally running services of Insights in orcharhino.

  • orcharhino does not send any reports to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • orcharhino does not forward any data through the Insights client to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • You cannot use any of the hosted services on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Your environment must meet the following requirements:

  • You have installed Insights in orcharhino on your orcharhino Server.

  • 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.

To troubleshoot hosts monitoring, you can find the logs in the /var/log/foreman/production.log file.

Enabling Insights analytics for hosts

You can enable Insights analytics for hosts. Install the Insights client on hosts to collect 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.

You can set this parameter 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.

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

Examining recommendations for hosts

You can view Insights recommendations for Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts in the orcharhino management UI. Use the list to identify configuration issues and prioritize which issues to remediate.

Prerequisites

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_insights_hits, and view_advisor permissions. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud Read Only built-in role.

Procedure

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

    By default, orcharhino management UI only displays recommendations enabled for the organization. To view disabled recommendations, update the recommendation filter to include disabled recommendations.

  2. Click the arrow next to the recommendation to expand it.

  3. Click the name of the recommendation to view full details and affected hosts.

    If the recommendation is disabled for the organization, you might see the reason for disablement and the date thereof under the Recommendation is disabled section.

    If the recommendation is disabled for any hosts, you can inspect the reason for disablement and the date thereof under the Recommendation is disabled for some systems section, by clicking View systems.

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. Click the name of the recommendation to view the recommendation details.

  3. Select the affected hosts that you want to remediate.

  4. Click Remediate.

  5. 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.

  6. Click Remediate.

Verification

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

  2. Verify that the remediation job completed successfully.

Disabling recommendations in orcharhino

You can disable recommendations per organization or per host. orcharhino does not show disabled recommendations in dashboards or reports.

Prerequisites

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the following permissions: view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_insights_hits, view_advisor, and edit_advisor. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud built-in role.

  • An organization and location are selected in the top bar of the orcharhino management UI.

Procedure

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

  2. Disable the recommendation:

    • To disable the recommendation for an organization:

      1. Click the recommendation menu icon next to the recommendation you want to disable.

      2. Select Disable recommendation.

      3. Optional: Enter a justification for disabling the recommendation.

      4. Click Save.

    • To disable the recommendation for a host:

      1. Click the name of the recommendation to view affected hosts.

      2. Click the host menu icon next to the host for which you want to disable the recommendation.

      3. Select Disable recommendation for system.

      4. Optional: Enter a justification for disabling the recommendation.

      5. Click Save.

Enabling recommendations in orcharhino

If you have previously disabled recommendations, you can re-enable them per organization or per host.

Prerequisites

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the following permissions: view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_insights_hits, view_advisor, and edit_advisor. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud built-in role.

  • An organization and location are selected in the top bar of the orcharhino management UI.

Procedure

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

  2. Enable the recommendation:

    • To enable the recommendation for an organization:

      1. Filter recommendations to include disabled recommendations.

      2. Click the recommendation menu icon next to the recommendation you want to re-enable.

      3. Select Enable recommendation.

    • To enable the recommendation for a host:

      1. Click the name of the recommendation to view recommendation details.

      2. Under the Recommendation is disabled for some systems section, click View systems.

      3. Click Enable in the row next to the host for which you want to re-enable the recommendation.

Examining vulnerability of hosts

You can view Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) from Insights Vulnerability. You can examine how the CVEs affect your hosts.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed Insights in orcharhino.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_insights_hits, and view_vulnerability permissions. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud Read Only built-in role.

Procedure

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

  2. In the CVE ID column, click the ID of the vulnerability to see details.

Disabling vulnerability analysis on hosts

If you do not require vulnerability analysis for some hosts, you can disable it on those hosts.

Prerequisites

  • You are using Insights in orcharhino.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the following permissions: view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_vulnerability, and edit_vulnerability. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud built-in role.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the view_hosts permission. You can get this permission with the View hosts built-in role.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts.

  2. Disable vulnerability analysis.

    • To disable vulnerability analysis on hosts in bulk:

      1. Select the hosts for which you want to disable vulnerability analysis.

      2. Click the host table menu icon.

      3. Select Manage vulnerability analysis > Disable.

    • To disable vulnerability analysis on a single host:

      1. Click the host menu icon in the row of the host for which you want to disable vulnerability analysis.

      2. Select Disable vulnerability analysis.

Verification

  • The Total CVEs column shows Analysis disabled for hosts with vulnerability analysis disabled. This column is hidden by default. You can show it by clicking Manage columns and selecting Total CVEs.

Enabling vulnerability analysis on hosts

If you have previously disabled vulnerability analysis on some hosts, you can re-enable it.

Prerequisites

  • You are using Insights in orcharhino.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the following permissions: view_foreman_rh_cloud, view_vulnerability, and edit_vulnerability. You can get these permissions with the ForemanRhCloud built-in role.

  • Your orcharhino account has a role that grants the view_hosts permission. You can get this permission with the View hosts built-in role.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Hosts > All Hosts.

  2. Enable vulnerability analysis.

    • To enable vulnerability analysis on hosts in bulk:

      1. Select the hosts for which you want to enable vulnerability analysis.

      2. Click the host table menu icon.

      3. Select Manage vulnerability analysis > Enable.

    • To enable vulnerability analysis on a single host:

      1. Click the host menu icon in the row of the host for which you want to enable vulnerability analysis.

      2. Select Enable vulnerability analysis.

Verification

  • The Total CVEs column shows a count of CVEs for hosts with vulnerability analysis enabled. This column is hidden by default. You can show it by clicking Manage columns and selecting Total CVEs.

Exclusion of hosts from Insights analytics

You can exclude hosts from Insights analytics by using a host parameter.

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.

You can set this parameter 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").