Bug 2208326

Summary:	Content management guide section about export/import syncable content is not clear
Product:	Red Hat Satellite	Reporter:	Joniel Pasqualetto <jpasqual>
Component:	Inter Satellite Sync	Assignee:	satellite6-bugs <satellite6-bugs>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Satellite QE Team <sat-qe-bz-list>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	6.13.0	CC:	bangelic, chrobert
Target Milestone:	Unspecified	Keywords:	Documentation
Target Release:	Unused	Flags:	mdolezel: needinfo? (bangelic)
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Description Joniel Pasqualetto 2023-05-18 15:28:35 UTC

Document URL: 

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_satellite/6.13/html/managing_content/synchronizing_content_between_servers_content-management#Exporting_the_Library_Environment_in_a_Syncable_Format_content-management

Section Number and Name: 

8.4. Exporting the Library Environment in a Syncable Format
8.5. Importing Syncable Exports

Describe the issue: 

Instructions are not really clear about how things are supposed to work.

Section 8.4 says that:

"You can then serve the generated content using a local web server on the importing Satellite Server or in another Satellite Server organization."

Then goes about how to modify the CDN configuration to use a custom CDN. 

This is not wrong, but:

1. Configuring the custom CDN should be on the section talking about importing content. It is not related to export.

2. If the user decides to use another webserver to host the content, the guide has no instructions on how the user should proceed. For example:

  - I decided to put my content on webserver.example.com/pub/SATCONTENT
  - configured the custom CDN to use that URL

  questions that come to my mind:
  - how is satellite getting the content?
  - the command on section 8.5 accepts an URL instead of a local path to import?

Section 8.5, simply gives one command to import the content. It does not explain:

1. What exactly is the command doing
2. What are next steps after the command is executed (if any)
3. The note saying the data must be on one of the allowed import paths is true only if the data is stored locally. If it's on a URL it works. This kind of comes with my observation about the import command accepting an URL.

Suggestions for improvement: 

Give examples :-)

- One example of an import being stored locally on Satellite
- One example of an import of an incremental export (stored locally on satellite)
- One example of an import from an external webserver
- One example of an import of an incremental export from an external webserver

Explain what the commands do and if anything else is necessary after running them. Lots of customer come from older versions where they had to manually enable repositories and manually sync them. It's important to let the reader know when the process is done.

Additional information:

Comment 1 Joniel Pasqualetto 2023-05-18 16:39:02 UTC

I just noticed some of the examples I asked for are present on later sections of the documentation. 

That being said, I would like to suggest that we could group the instructions in different (and isolated) chapters?

This kind of happens on section "8.1. How to Synchronize Content Using Export and Import" but it only talks briefly about it and doesn't really cover the steps. The explanation about the method is distributed on other sections (not always easy to find unless you already know what you're looking for)

This is what I have in mind (just a general idea):

8.1 - How to Synchronize Content Using Export and Import 
   - 8.1.x - group together all possibilities available for that method: export/import + complete/incremental + library/version/repository) in sub-itens

8.2 - How to Synchronize Content Using Syncable exports
    - 8.2.x - group together all possibilities available for that method (export/import + complete/incremental + library/version/repository + from webserver/from local disk)

8.3 - How to synchronize using an Upstream Satellite Server as a Content Store
    - 8.3.x - Any sub-items to help describe how it works

A graphic design of the workflow used by each method would be awesome.