NOTE

Metering services are only supported on RHEL 7. Currently, upgrading to RHEL 8 or RHEL 9 for metering services is not supported.

Introduction

To enable billing methods on Public Cloud, you need to complete either or both of the following options from the marketplace of cloud service provider:

• Convert a Pay-As-You-Go CentOS Linux or another Linux distribution to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
• Add the Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) add-on to your Pay-As-You-Go Red Hat Enterprise Linux host on the cloud instance.

To remain compliant with SLA and billing methods, configure metered billing for your Red Hat subscriptions.

A note on metering methods

Depending on your use case, there are two choices to report usage: either you can use the host-metering agent or through Red Hat Insights Cost Management.

A host-metering agent is a preferred choice if you operate in an environment where you do not share cloud data with Red Hat Insights Cost Management service.

Alternatively, Red Hat Insights Cost Management service remains a preferred choice as this method enables metering without a running process on the system, but you need to make sure that systems are appropriately tagged.

Prerequisites

• You have enabled Simple Content Access that allows your systems to automatically manage Red Hat subscriptions by simplifying the workflow of the entitlement tooling.

Enabling Metering using Insights Cost Management

The following sections will help you enable cost metering through Insights Cost Management on various cloud providers.

AWS

Set up a reporting source

Though AWS tracks your costs, Red Hat needs to access a reporting source for the cost-efficient billing of your new Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. You need to export these reports and store them for automated access. For this process, you need to set up an S3 bucket as a source for these reports. For details, see cost management documentation.

Tag your systems

To classify systems, such as, which of them are RHEL instances and which addons they consume, you need to tag them by using AWS cost allocation tags. Cost management service identifies such systems and tracks them in the report. Some tags are essential to identify systems as RHEL instances, while others are optional, like add-on subscriptions that you have elected to add to your systems. To add tags to your systems, see Configuring tags on your integrations. To find a list of available tags, see Adding tags to an AWS resource

Enabling metering service on your AWS Integration

You need to enable metering in your AWS integration on the Hybrid Cloud Console. For detailed steps, see Adding RHEL metering to an integration.

Azure

Set up a reporting source

Though Azure tracks your costs, Red Hat needs access to a reporting source for the cost-efficient billing of your new Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. You need to export these reports and store them for automated access. For this process, you need to set up an Azure blob storage bucket as a source for these reports. For details, see cost management documentation.

Tag your systems

To classify systems, such as, which of them are RHEL instances and which addons they consume, you need to tag them by using Azure cost allocation tags. Cost management service identifies such systems and tracks them in the report. Some tags are essential to identify systems as RHEL instances, while others are optional, like add-on subscriptions that you have elected to add to your systems. To add tags to your systems, see Configuring tags on your integrations. To find a list of available tags, see Adding tags to an Azure resource.

Enabling metering service on your Azure Integration

You need to enable metering in your Azure integration on the Hybrid Cloud Console. For detailed steps, see Adding RHEL metering to an integration.

Metered billing through the host-metering service

This method reports your usage through a dedicated local service, host-metering, on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9.

Install required packages

The host-metering package installs the host-meteringtools.

NOTE: The rpm version of subscription-manager >= 1.24.53-1 is required for host-metering. Though the dependency updates with the package, manual check is currently required.

$ sudo yum -y update subscription-manager
$ sudo yum -y install host-metering

Install the RHEL Extended Lifecycle Services (ELS) certificate

If you are enabling ELS you will need to retrieve the certificate that entitles your system to use that add-on:

1. Visit the Red Hat Product Certificates site
2. Select Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the drop-down list
3. In the filter box, enter Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server - Extended Life Cycle Support(copy and paste to prevent typos)
4. Select 7.9in the Select a version drop-down, and x86_64 in the Select an architecture drop-down.
5. Press the Generate button and you will be presented with several options for downloading the certificate. Use the one that works best for you.

Refresh your subscription

After downloading the certificate, refresh your entitlements from the server to include the add-ons:

$ sudo subscription-manager refresh

Start the host-metering service

Enable and start the host-metering service:

$ sudo systemctl enable --now host-metering.service

If the service was already running, restart the service so it picks up the certificate change:

$ sudo systemctl restart host-metering.service

Note: If you purchased the RHEL for third party migrations offering but want a subset of your systems to utilize an existing 1 year or 3 year subscription, make sure that host-metering is not running on those systems.

$ sudo systemctl stop --now host-metering.service
$ sudo systemctl disable host-metering.service