A Policy-Driven Architecture for Enterprise-Scale Patch and Configuration Governance Using Red Hat Satellite

Abstract

Enterprise Linux environments continue to expand in scale and heterogeneity, increasing the complexity of maintaining consistent patch levels and configuration compliance across thousands of systems. Although centralized lifecycle management platforms such as Red Hat Satellite provide foundational capabilities for system provisioning, patching, and configuration management, they lack an explicit governance model that enforces policy-driven compliance at enterprise scale. This paper presents a policy-driven architecture for enterprise patch and configuration governance built on Red Hat Satellite. The proposed architecture introduces a formal governance layer that defines compliance policies, enforcement rules, and remediation workflows independent of underlying operational tooling. Patch and configuration states are continuously evaluated against defined policies, enabling automated enforcement, exception handling, and compliance reporting. The architecture integrates Red Hat Satellite with automation frameworks to establish closed-loop governance across system lifecycle operations. A controlled experimental evaluation using a representative enterprise-scale Linux environment demonstrates improvements in compliance consistency, reduction in configuration drift, and faster convergence to desired system states compared to traditional operational approaches. The results indicate that separating governance logic from operational tooling provides a scalable and reproducible approach to enterprise patch and configuration management.