What subscription management services are offered by RHSM?

Updated -

Services Offered and Supported in RHSM

Feature/Function Available in RHSM
Red Hat Product Support
Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions supported YES

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (5.7 and newer)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (6.1 and newer)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Intended for future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization versions supported YES

RHEV 3.0 or newer

Red Hat Satellite 5 YES

Satellite 5 certificates can be created and managed in RHSM

Red Hat Satellite 6 YES
RHEL Migration to RHSM Support YES

RHEL 5 (5.8+)
RHEL 6 (6.3+)

Support for all product SKUs YES, with a small number of exceptions

Why aren't my subscriptions available in Red Hat Subscription Management?

Subscription Management Support
Default client for installation method YES

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (6.3 and later)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (5.9 and later)
future versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Content basis for client YES


subscription-manager

Command line utilities for client YES


yum update

System registration YES


subscription-manager register

How to register and subscribe a system to the Red Hat Customer Portal using Red Hat Subscription-Manager

Activation keys YES

Red Hat Customer Portal - Activation Keys

List subscriptions available to apply to installed system on client YES


subscription-manager list --available

Force list all subscriptions on client YES

subscription-manager list --available --all

Why can't I see available subscriptions for my system in Red Hat Subscription Management?

Smart auto-subscribe a subscription YES


subscription-manager register --auto-attach

How do I subscribe to a channel in Red Hat Subscription Management?

Graphical user interface utilities for client YES

Red Hat Customer Portal

Package update utility YES


/usr/bin/yum

Yum plugin support YES


subscription-manager
(provides subscription-manager.conf and product-id.conf)

Web-based administration tool for customers YES

Red Hat Customer Portal

Support for updating content through Content Delivery Network YES
Email errata notifications YES

Customer Portal: How do I get errata notifications from Red Hat Subscription Management?

Satellite 6: Subscribing to Errata Notifications

Support for IP-based firewall rules YES

How do I disable Location Aware Updates with Red Hat Subscription Management?

Support for sosreport diagnostics logging YES
Optional and supplementary channels available? YES

How to access Optional and Supplementary channels, and -devel packages using Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM)?

Support for subscription status YES
Support for subscription consumption reports YES through Red Hat Subscription Asset Manager

FUTURE: via Red Hat Satellite 6

System Management Support
Support for smart management Red Hat Enterprise Linux add-on YES with Red Hat Satellite 6
Support for machine provisioning and monitoring YES with Red Hat Satellite 6 provisioning feature
Content Management Support
Content download GUI YES
Support for remote updating NO
Support for offline updating YES with Red Hat Satellite 6
Support for proxied updating YES with Red Hat Satellite 6 Capsule Server

References

  1. Benefits of Red Hat Subscriptions
  2. Benefits of Red Hat Subscription Management
  3. Overview of Red Hat Subscription Management
  4. Red Hat Subscription Management Guide
  5. RHN Classic Hosted/stand-alone Proxy Customer Options for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7)
  6. Important Changes Coming to Red Hat Satellite 5
  7. Red Hat Satellite 5.8 documentation

14 Comments

This document talks only about how to do base subscription. It ought to be updated to include differences in adding channels in the Content section. Saying to use the other tool is hardly helpful.
e.g. comparing "rhn-channel" options vs the "subscription-manager repos" options.
FYI:
For anyone needing the latter the link describing them is at:
https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/265523

The link "How do I apply updates remotely with Red Hat Subscription Management?" at URL https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/node/63055
appears to be broken and leads to an access denied page.

Thank you - the link has been removed.

The doc needs to be updated now that Sat 6 is GA.

THank you - updated.

Hi

Regarding:
MPORTANT - Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions as client systems managed by each platform:
Red Hat Network Classic: RHEL versions 4, 5, and 6
Red Hat Satellite Proxy: RHEL versions 4, 5, 6, and 7* (Proxy 5.6+ together with Satellite 5.6+ only)
Red Hat Satellite: RHEL versions 4, 5, 6 and 7
(*Satellite 5.6+ only)

Since Satellite 5.7 is available I guess it also support RHEL7.

I see nothing here about the most useful part of RHN -- the "dashboard" that gave me, on one page, a list of all of my systems and how out-of-date they were regarding updates. Not only did it list the number of updates available for each system, but even broke it down into how many were security, how many were bug fixes, and how many were enhancements.

It also allowed me to schedule updates for a particular server or group of servers without having to log in to each one and run the updates manually. I didn't use that one as much, but it was certainly nice at those times when it was important to update a certain item (such as time zone data) on all systems, and nothing else.

It was the most useful part of RHN, and this document pretends that it never existed.

What I want is the same thing with the new scheme. I can't believe that Red Hat took it away, but I see nothing about such capability under Subscription Management.

Does this give you what you're looking for - https://rhn.redhat.com/rhn/systems/SystemEntitlements.do ?

I don't know. That link goes to the classic RHN, and I don't have any system entitled under RHN any more.

One of them is a RHEL 6 machine, so I suppose I could unentitle it under SM and re-entitle it under RHN, just to see that that link does. But I'm a bit busy right now.

If you go to Subscriptions in upper left corner after login to access.redhat.com it takes you to https://access.redhat.com/management/. That in turn has everything you need for licensing. At the top it will show you your subscriptions. Under "Manage" heading on left side you find all the detail about your RHSM (Redhat Subscription Management) systems and on the right side you find detail for RHN (Old Redhat Network now known as RedHat Classic).

At the very bottom you'll see a button for "VIEW VIRTUALIZATION" summary that will show you how many entitlements you have for each subscription and how many you've utilized.

Note that "Entitlements" is generally twice the number of subscriptions (for non "Datacenter" which is a different subscription). Generally each physical 1 or 2 socket server requires 2 entitlements. More sockets requires more entitlements. Each virtual guest (that is not associated with a "Datacenter" subscription requires only 1 entitlement.

The Datacenter subscriptions get applied on one of the guests on a given hypervisor to register that hypervisor. After that all other guests on that hypervisor (including the first one) are registered and associated with that hypervisor so take up no additional entitlements.
I had to figure all this out last month from the various posts and articles regarding licensing when we were doing our true up.

NOTE: The virtualization summary and other things on the left side do NOT include any system you still have registered under RHN. You'd have to look at what is on the right side for the RHN stuff then manually calculate. There IS a way to convert systems from RHN Classic to RHSM so long as the systems are running RHEL5.3 or higher or RHEL6.2 or higher.
You definitely want to look through both RHN and RHSM to verify you don't have the same system registered in both.

The following is not availible in subscription manager

  • Auto errata update

  • ability to see packages installed

My search was how to get a subscription. Simple. Got nothing I could understand. People skilled in the field should not be writing like doctors talk. Completely unuseable information. No idea how to subscribe.

To some extent systems administration is very much like being a doctor. One diagnoses issues and prescribes a treatment.

This article is an overview and contains a plethora of information as well as links for other detailed information.

You say "how to get a subscription" which is somewhat inexact. This article regards how to "apply" subscriptions to your systems and/or manage them at RedHat. Are you asking instead how to "buy" subscriptions in the first place? If so the link here may help: Buying Subscriptions

Hi, Alex. Sorry you had trouble. Here on the Customer Portal if you have never had a subscription before and clicked "Subscriptions" in the top nav bar, you should have been directly presented with a few ways to purchase. If you went to that page, did that show up? Maybe we have a bug if not. Here are some links that should help: https://www.redhat.com/en/store and https://www.redhat.com/en/contact (sales). I also agree that we should have a knowledgebase article that addresses this as well. We'll work to get that created.