2.2. Hardware Requirements

RHN Satellite supports several hardware architectures. The following table illustrates the architecture support for RHN Satellite on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

RHEL Version	x86	x86_64	s390	s390x
RHEL 4	yes	yes	yes	yes
RHEL 5	yes	yes	no	yes

Table 2.1. RHN Satellite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Architecture Support

2.2.1. x86 and x86_64 Hardware Requirements

The following table shows the required and recommended hardware configurations on the x86 and x86_64 platform for the two types of RHN Satellite:

Stand-Alone Database	Embedded Database
Required - Intel Core processor, 2.4GHz, 512K cache or equivalent	Required - Intel Core processor, 2.4GHz, 512K cache or equivalent
Recommended - Intel multi-core processor, 2.4GHz dual processor, 512K cache or equivalent	Recommended - Intel multi-core processor, 2.4GHz dual processor, 512K cache or equivalent
Required - 2 GB of memory	Required - 2 GB of memory
Recommended - 8 GB of memory	Strongly recommended - 8 GB of memory
5 GB storage for base install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux	5 GB storage for base install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
At least 30 GB storage per software channel (including Base and child channels), in `/var/satellite/`, configurable at install	At least 30 GB storage per software channel (including Base and child channels), in `/var/satellite/`, configurable at install
Recommended - an external SAN for more reliable backups	Recommended - an external SAN for more reliable backups
	12 GB storage for the database repository, in the `/rhnsat` partition (local storage only)
	Strongly recommended - a SCSI drive connected to a level 5 RAID
	Separate partition (or better, a separate set of physical disks) for storing backups. This can be any directory specifiable at backup time.

Table 2.2. Stand-Alone Database and Embedded Database Satellite Hardware Requirements

The following hardware configuration is required for the Stand-Alone Database:

Two processors
2 GB of memory

See Section 2.3, “Database Requirements” for instructions on estimating the tablespace of the database and setting its environment variables.

Keep in mind, the frequency with which client systems connect to the Satellite is directly related to load on the Apache Web server and the database. Reducing the default interval of four hours (or 240 minutes) as set in the /etc/sysconfig/rhn/rhnsd configuration file of the client systems significantly increases the load on those components.