Insights client is available for the following releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client

[root@server ~]# insights-client --register

Use these instructions to deploy Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system connected to Red Hat Cloud Access.

[root@server ~]# yum install insights-client

Use these instructions to deploy Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux on an existing, cloud marketplace-purchased Red Hat Enterprise Linux system managed by Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI).

The Insights client runs automatically, according to its scheduler settings. By default, it runs every 24 hours. To run the client interactively, enter the insights-client command.

When the client runs, the following values and settings control its behavior:

The Insights client is not automatically installed on systems running the minimal installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.

For more information about minimal installations, see Configuring software selection in Performing a standard RHEL installation.

If you do not select the Standard checkbox, RHEL installs without the insights-client package. If that happens, use dnf install to install the Insights client at a later time.

The Insights client executes a number of commands that collect data on your system. Therefore, it has a configuration restriction that limits its CPU usage to no more than 30%. This restriction is defined in the configuration file:

This configuration prevents the Insights client from creating a CPU spike on your system. This spike could interfere with other applications running on your system. Specifically, it could prevent applications that depend on real-time scheduling from initiating.

If you need to enable real-time scheduling you can disable the CPU quota restriction. The risk of removing this configuration is minimal. However, it is possible that when the Insights client runs, the CPU usage may become unusually high. If this situation occurs and negatively impacts other services on your system, please contact Red Hat support for assistance.

How do I open and manage a support case on the Customer Portal?

Depending on how you use Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you must use one of the following authentication methods:

An activation key is a preshared authentication token that enables authorized users to register and configure systems. It eliminates the need to store, use, and share a personal username and password combination, which increases security and facilitates automation.

You can use an activation key and a numeric organization identifier (organization ID) to register a system with Red Hat hosted services, such as Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM) or remote host configuration (rhc). Your organization’s activation keys and organization ID are displayed on the Activation Keys page in the Hybrid Cloud Console.

For more information about how to create and manage activation keys for your systems, see Creating and managing activation keys in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

After you install the Insights client, you need to register your system. This requires two steps:

For more information about registering the system with Insights client, refer to Configuring insights-client.

RHEL 9

After you install Insights client and configure authentication, you must register your system with Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Registration enables you to use Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux services.

As an option, you can assign a display name for your host when you register your system. The display name identifies the system in the Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux UI. If you do not assign a display name when you register the system, Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the default value in /etc/hostname.

You can now access the cloud-based Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux services.

You can unregister your system with Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. When you do so, your system information is no longer uploaded to Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

[root@insights]# ERROR: `force-reregistration` has been deprecated. Please use `insights-client --unregister && insights-client --register` instead

To re-register systems in Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and also avoid any duplicate host entries in the Insights inventory service after re-registering, run the insights-client command twice using two options:

[root@insights]# Successfully uploaded report for <machine name>
View the Red Hat Insights console at https://console.redhat.com/insights/

You can change the host display name as it appears in the GUI. Make this change either when you register the system with Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or after registration. If you do not assign a display name when you register the system, Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses the value in /etc/hostname.

This procedure is optional. Determine if you want to use a display name in addition to the default hostname.

You can display the client version and client core version.

You can obfuscate the IPv4 host address in the archive file before it is sent to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

When you choose IP address obfuscation, your host address in the archive file is changed to the value provided in the Python SoS file. You cannot configure the value provided for obfuscation. You also cannot mask or select the portion of the host IP address to obfuscate.

If you choose IP address obfuscation on another system, the Python SoS process changed its IP address to the same obfuscated value in the archive file. In this example, the additional system also shows an obfuscated IP address of 10.230.230.1. In the Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux GUI, you might see multiple systems with the same IP address as a result of obfuscation.

You can obfuscate the host name in the archive file before it is sent to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The hostname in /etc/hostname changes to host0 if you have a single host name assigned to your system. Additional host names change to host1, host2, up to the number of host names you configured for your system.

You can assign a display name to your system that is not obfuscated. The display name appears in Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux application. Only the /etc/hostname is obfuscated.

When you choose host name obfuscation, the /etc/hostname value in the archive file is changed to the value that is provided in the Python SoS file. The obfuscated host name then displays in Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux application.

The Insights client provides data redaction options. Depending on your version of RHEL, there are two methods for controlling data redaction.

When you use a configuration file for data redaction, the contents of the file control which data is redacted, as well as how it is redacted. The default configuration file is /etc/insights-client/remove.conf. As an option, you can also configure the Insights client to use a different redaction configuration file.

Based on your entries in the redaction configuration file, you can specify one or more of the following actions:

When you configure redaction by elimination, the redacted information is never recorded in the archive file. Redaction is performed by preprocessing the data before it is captured in the archive file.

For redaction by string substitution, the archive file is processed by a Python SoS process before it is sent to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

You can use command line options to control the archive file output. For example, you can generate the archive file, but not send it to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can inspect and verify the redaction results before sending the archive.

When you use YAML files for redaction, two files control the redaction actions:

You can use one or both files, depending on the content you want to redact. When the Python SoS process runs, it redacts the specified content before it can be captured in the archive file.

The /etc/insights-client/file-content-redaction.yaml defines pattern redaction and keyword replacement. For pattern redaction, the process redacts patterns or regular expressions that match those specified in the YAML file. For keyword replacement, the process replaces the specified keywords with generic identifiers.

You can verify the contents of the archive file. By inspecting the archive file, you can confirm what data is sent to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If you use obfuscation or redaction, you can inspect the archive before it is sent. If you want to preserve the archive file, you can keep it on your system.

As Linux becomes the mandatory operating system for SAP ERP workloads in 2025, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux are working to make Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux the management tool of choice for SAP administrators.

As part of this ongoing effort, Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux automatically tags systems running SAP workloads and by SAP ID (SID), without any customization needed by administrators. To filter those workloads throughout the Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux application, use the global Filter Results drop-down menu.

Satellite host groups are configured in Satellite and automatically recognized by Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

You can apply custom grouping and tagging to your systems. This enables you to add contextual markers to individual systems, filter by those tags in the Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux application, and more easily focus on related systems. This functionality can be especially valuable when deploying Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux at scale, with many hundreds or thousands of systems under management.

In addition to the ability to add custom tags to several Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux services, you can add predefined tags. The advisor service can use these tags to create targeted recommendations for your systems that might require more attention, such as those systems that require a higher level of security.

Red Hat Insights advisor service recommendations treat every system equally. However, some systems might require more security than others, or require different networking performance levels. In addition to the ability to add custom tags, Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides predefined tags that the advisor service can use to create targeted recommendations for your systems that might require more attention.

To opt in and get the extended security hardening and enhanced detection and remediation capabilities offered by predefined tags, you need to configure the tags. After configuration, the advisor service provides recommendations based on tailored severity levels, and preferred network performance that apply to your systems.

To configure the tags, use the /etc/insights-client/tags.yaml file to tag systems with predefined tags in a similar way that you might use it to tag systems in the inventory service. The predefined tags are configured using the same key=value structure used to create custom tags. Details about the Red Hat-predefined tags are in the following table.

7.4.1. Configuring predefined tags

You can use the Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux advisor service’s predefined tags to adjust the behavior of recommendations for your systems to gain extended security hardening and enhanced detection and remediation capabilities. You can configure the predefined tags by following this procedure.

Prerequisites

• You have root-level access to your system
• You have Insights client installed
• You have systems registered within the Insights client
• You have already created the tags.yaml file. See Creating a tags.yaml file and adding a custom group

Procedure

1. Using the command line, and your preferred editor, open /etc/insights-client/tags.yaml. (The following example uses Vim.)

   [root@server ~]# vi /etc/insights-client/tags.yaml

2. Edit the /etc/insights-client/tags.yaml file to add the predefined key=value pair for the tags. This example shows how to add security: strict and network_performance: latency tags.

   # cat /etc/insights-client/tags.yaml
   group: redhat
   location: Brisbane/Australia
   description:
   - RHEL8
   - SAP
   security: strict
   network_performance: latency

3. Save your changes.
4. Close the editor.

5. Optional: Run the insights-client command to generate an upload to Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or wait until the next scheduled Red Hat Insights upload.

   [root@server ~]# insights-client

Confirming that predefined tags are in your production area

After generating an upload to Red Hat Insights (or waiting for the next scheduled Insights upload), you can find out whether the tags are in the production environment by accessing Red Hat Insights > RHEL > Inventory. Find your system and look for the newly created tags. You see a table that shows:

• Name
• Value
• Tag Source (for example, insights-client).

The following image shows an example of what you see in inventory after creating the tag.

Example of recommendations after applying a predefined tag

The following image of the advisor service shows a system with the network_performance: latency tag configured.

The system shows a recommendation with a higher Total Risk level of Important. The system without the network_performance: latency tag has a Total Risk of Moderate. You can make decisions about prioritizing the system with higher Total Risk.

You must disable the client schedule before you can change the default Insights client settings and create a new schedule.

The procedure you use to disable the insights-client schedule depends on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux and client versions.

When you first enable the client schedule, it runs using its default settings. If you make changes to the schedule, those settings take precedence.

When you run insights-client from the command line, Insights client runs using the settings you specify for only that session. When the next scheduled run takes place, it uses the default settings.

To change when the Insights client runs, modify the schedule. The method that you use depends on the RHEL release and client version that your system is running.

Select the procedure that matches your version of RHEL.

/etc/cron.hourly
/etc/cron.daily
/etc/cron.weekly
/etc/cron.monthly

You can disable the automatic collection rule updates for Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If you do so, you risk using outdated rule definition files and not getting the most recent validation updates.

You can re-enable the automatic collection rule updates for Red Hat Insights for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, if you previously disabled updates. By default, automatic rule update is enabled.

You can create a diagnostic log to share with the support team.