Problem Statement

Customer wants to export the contents in syncable format from their Connected Satellite to Disconnected Satellite with chunking as a feature allowed which was there before in Satellite when pulp2 was used which is why customer is not feeling confident to upgrade Satellite as their whole environment depends on the same. In a sentence, customer is looking for some alternative in respect to the below command in case of syncable export for current or future Satellite versions.
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1.  hammer repository export --export-to-iso 1 iuso-mb-size 4500 --organization <org> --id <id>      (Customer uses this in Satellite 6.8)

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User Experience & Workflow

Customer have tried other methods so far like having either split files across parts or have not worked as expected and ended in a single big archive of approximately the size of the repository-export's output.  We tried to assist customer that this feature is not present in pulp3 or in latest version of Satellite but it becomes quite difficult for the customer to run their environment on latest Satellite version without having the requested utility. Customer tried the "tar -zcvf" idea, they were somewhat skeptical about a 50% reduction for mainly-RPM content but it only gave them a ~1.5% reduction.  For customer, the target is to get e.g. a 70GB repository through the gateway in, say, multiple 4GB (independent chunks).

Requirements

Customer has Satellite 6.17 in Development environment. The requirements are as follows.

(1). Export to size-limited ISO-files, which can be broken-down into two requirements, to wrap up batches of the content into .iso bundles.
(1.a). How can we configure Satellite 6.17’s content-export in ’syncable’ form to split content into e.g. 4.5GB ISO files/archives?, or
(1.b.) How can we configure Satellite 6.17’s content-export in ’syncable’ form to split content into e.g. 4.5GB batches (directories?) for us to wrap up individually as .iso files?

(2). How can we configure Satellite 6.17’s content-export in ’syncable’ form to output the content files with their original time-stamp modified-time?

The reason for (1) is for ease of transit and processing involved as the small ISOs get to their destinations. Mostly go to Disconnected Satellite, some go to other disconnected domains. Customer understood that the ISO provision had been removed in one later version of Satellite but requesting for restoration because it's removal had caused customer so many problems.

The reason for (2), this enables searches for release cut-offs (either way) direct from a CDN, when baselines are drawn up (in a disconnected domain).

Business Impact

Customer is still using Satellite 6.8 and unable to move for Satellite 6.17 or latest version in Production as customer has large infrastructure to deal with and customer is unable to proceed without having the chunking option or any alternate similar utility which will help customer to manage these huge amount of contents in chunks.