As the highest management service level, RHN Provisioning encompasses all of the features offered in the RHN Demo, Update, and Management subscription levels. It is designed to allow you to deploy and manage your network of Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, users, and system groups.
Like, Management, Provisioning is based upon an organization. But it takes this concept a step further by enabling customers with Provisioning entitlements to kickstart, reconfigure, track, and revert systems on the fly.
In addition to all of the features mentioned in lower service levels, Provisioning provides:
Kickstarting — Systems with Provisioning entitlements may be re-installed through RHN with a whole host of options established in kickstart profiles. Options include everything from the type of bootloader and time zone to packages included/excluded and IP address ranges allowed. Even GPG and SSL keys can be pre-configured.
Client Configuration — Customers may use RHN to manage the configuration files on Provisioning-entitled systems. Users can upload files to RHN's central configuration manager, verify local configuration files against those stored by RHN, and deploy files from RHN. Further, custom configuration channels can be created to help manage this process.
Snapshot Rollbacks — Provisioning-level users have the ability to revert the package profile, configuration files, and RHN settings of systems. This is possible because snapshots are captured whenever an action takes place on a system. These snapshots identify groups, channels, packages, and configuration files.
Custom System Information — Provisioning customers may identify any type of information they choose about their systems. This differs from the more rigorous System Profile information and the completely arbitrary Notes in that it allows you to develop specific keys of your choosing and then assign searchable values for that key to each Provisioning-entitled system. For instance, this feature would allow you to identify the cubicle in which each system is located.