SAM / Virtual Datacenter licenses only

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I currently purchased virtual datacenter licenses and i was trying to get SAM working.

I spun up a RHEL 6 server with SAM (via ISO).
I registered the server using rhn classic.

I also installed virt-who on this server.

I have since ran into numerous problems.
i tried to use a combination of this: https://access.redhat.com/articles/480693
which suggests i can register with rhn classic, do what i need to do, and then register with RHSM.

the only difference i'm attempting is to use SAM instead of going directly to the Red hat network.

anyone else try this? is this crazy?

GD
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Responses

DL Red Hat Active Contributor 296 points
5 January 2015 1:53 PM

George,

Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) is part of the subscription tools for use with the new subscription service of Red Hat Subscription Management. The service can be hosted (Customer Portal) or on-premise using SAM, but either-way the client tool must be Subscription-Manager. When using the old subscription services of Red Hat Network the client tool is rhn_register. Using the vDC subscription on top of the subscription service changes can be a little confusing, since it will act differently.

I'm very interested in clearing up the confusion between the old tools and the new tools for subscription services and
the vDC subscription. The article you reference kinda assumes you are using the new tools, so here is the start of a new article that attempts to clarify the use and need of virt-who; give it a read and let me know if it helps of adds further to the confusion: https://access.redhat.com/articles/1300283

You can always contact me directly at dlah@redhat.com to setup time to discuss in person if it's too difficult through the discussion.

Thanks for the effort,
Dan Lah

GD Community Member 26 points
9 January 2015 1:38 AM

I'll try to lay out what i did.
I have 4 Virtual Datacenter licenses. For simplicity, lets says i have no other linux servers.

Steps:
I spun up a RHEL 6.6 server, registered rhn_classic (to RHN via proxy). Installed SAM and virt-who packages via yum.
I then setup SAM on my server and pulled down the manifest file, and converted the registration from rhn_classic to subscription manager (had to rip out the proxy info from the repo file).
This of course didn't subscribe properly, because my virtual datacenter license wouldn't register properly without virt-who up and running.
virt-who required the subscription-manager to point to SAM to register the hosts/guests relationship properly.

After pulling out the proxy info from yum and subscription manager, i added it to the thumbslug.conf to allow SAM to be proxy aware.
https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/solutions/268983

At this point i was getting 403 errors when running any yum commands. I called support and they told me that i couldn't configure this the way did. They told me that i had to use subscription manager from the start, no rhn_classic to subscription-manager conversions. They also told me that subscription-manager on SAM is leveraged to get the updates and thats why it was failing.
I had a hard time believing this but i folded, it did seem to me that SAM was being used as a proxy to get out to RHN to get the updates and not using the SAM server subscription manager.

Anyway, redid the whole thing.
Steps:
I spun up a RHEL 6.6 server, registered subscription-manager (to RHN via proxy, using a trial license). Installed SAM and virt-who packages via yum.
i spun up a RHEL 6.6 test server and registered subscription-manager (to SAM). It licensed.
I still got the 403 errors. after digging through the entries i noticed that i was all the EUS repos. i disabled them on subscription-manager, everything worked!
I then removed the trial license from the SAM server subscription manager. registered it to the SAM installation on itself, disabled the EUS repos, and success!

it all seems to be working, however im not sure why i cant use any EUS repos. Also im not sure what packages i have that are enabling those repos.

KM Active Contributor 354 points
9 January 2015 6:53 AM

We have RHEVM with over 150 mahines registered in SAM. As I know you have to register your machine with Red Hat site via subscription-manager for SAM to work, then import manifest with your subscriptions in to it. I attached the RHEVM subscritions to hypervisors. albo the RHEL unlimited subscriptions.

On every virtual machine you have to install the rpm package installing the configuration for your SAM. Then you can subscribe your virtual machine to sam also by 'subscription-manager' software. All works fine then.

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