Bug 1226227

Summary: [doc] Not enough documentation that describes provisioning templates
Product: Red Hat Satellite Reporter: James Read <jread>
Component: Docs Provisioning GuideAssignee: satellite-doc-list
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact: David O'Brien <daobrien>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: UnspecifiedCC: adahms, dmesser
Target Milestone: Unspecified   
Target Release: Unused   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-07-12 06:41:59 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description James Read 2015-05-29 09:04:05 UTC
Documentation URL: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Satellite/6.0/html/Provisioning_Guide/chap-Red_Hat_Satellite-Provisioning_Guide-Finalizing_Provisioning_Configuration.html

Section Number and Name: Somewhere around "Chapter 5. Finalizing Provisioning Configuration"

Describe the issue: This chapter of the documentation does not provide enough detail on precisely how to create provisioning template. In particular, it does not describe how provisioning templates are constructed, and how the Ruby template IF conditions work. 

The severity of this is that new customers with Satellite 6 have to "reverse engineer" the existing templates, and many of these users are systems adminstrators WITHOUT many scripting skills. 

A real customer example here is a large global SI, who are trying to deploy Satellite 6 in to 5 different environments simultaneously. This requires some considerable customization of the provisioning templates, and the engineers are having a hard time working out what variables and statements are available in-context.

Suggestions for improvement: If we want to encourage our partners to use this area of Satellite (and we really do), then adequate documentation is necessary. 

Additional information: No public training courses are available for Satellite 6 yet, which is why it's so essential that the documentation is adequate to help customers up until this point.

Comment 1 RHEL Program Management 2015-05-29 09:12:21 UTC
Since this issue was entered in Red Hat Bugzilla, the release flag has been
set to ? to ensure that it is properly evaluated for this release.

Comment 2 Daniel Messer 2015-05-29 09:16:32 UTC
I agree with this RFE. A good starting point on what should be covered at the very minimum can be found here: http://projects.theforeman.org/projects/foreman/wiki/TemplateWriting