The SAKA utilizes the Yellowdog Updater, Modified (yum) for installing and updating operating system packages. By default, the appliance will try to reach out to the standard CentOS mirror list to download updates. This approach can become problematic after SAKA has been installed in a secure production environment.

Standard security practice is to block internet traffic to and from SAKA once it has been installed in a data center. While this is a smart security decision, it has the adverse effect of cutting off the appliance from system updates. Fortunately, it is a fairly straightforward process to create an internal CentOS Repository that can make updates accessible to the SAKA.

If SAKA is blocked from making calls to the CentOS mirror list, dedicate a server—or more likely a Virtual Machine (VM)—to the purpose of hosting CentOS packages for SAKA. This document describes setting up the repository server and configuring the SAKA server(s) to communicate with your new internal repository.