Migrating from RHN Classic

Red Hat Subscription Management 1

to migrate from older Red Hat Network Classic (hosted) to updated subscription management

Red Hat Subscription Management Documentation Team

January 11, 2016

Abstract

Beginning with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1/5.7, a new way of representing subscriptions was introduced. The Red Hat subscription management structure provides more detailed, accurate, and clear representations of the relationships between subscriptions, systems, their parent organizations, and overall usage patterns. This guide addresses migration paths from legacy Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to the updated subscription framework.
Maintaining subscription assignments with systems is a critical part of management as infrastructures change and are updated. Maintaining those subscriptions is essentially migrating the subscriptions.
There are currently two migration paths, depending on the system and what is changing:
  • Systems can be upgraded from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 systems use the same type of subscription management services, but the available content repositories and product subscriptions are different between the platforms. This means that subscriptions must be managed appropriately as part of upgrading the underlying system.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 systems can migrate from channel-based subscription services to Red Hat Subscription Management. This is truly migrating subscriptions, since the subscriptions are moved from one type of service to another.
Upgrading the System

Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 can use Red Hat Subscription Management and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 systems must use Red Hat Subscription Management, there is no need to migrate the subscription services: it is the same service. However, the system migration and installed product migrations may not happen at the same time, which means that the subscriptions required to cover the system at Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 may be different than the ones required after it is upgraded. This requires administering the subscriptions for the system, by updating the registration, configuring repositories, and re-attaching the subscriptions.

Migrating Subscription Services

Red Hat Subscription Management structure provides detailed, accurate, and clear representations of the relationships between subscriptions, systems, their parent organizations, and overall usage patterns. This is done by identifying the different elements involved in subscription management — the system, the installed products, and the assigned subscriptions — with unique certificates.

This is a fundamentally different approach than the legacy channel approach, which only defined user access to a pool of subscriptions. Systems which are registered to RHN Classic can be migrated to the new Red Hat Subscription Management in a way that preserves all of the original subscription assignments.

1. Managing Subscriptions When Upgrading to RHEL 7

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 introduces a new tool that can upgrade a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, redhat-upgrade-tool.
The procedures and requirements for upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to 7 are outside the scope of this document. This document only provides the steps related to managing system subscriptions as part of the upgrade process. For full information on upgrading your system, including requirements and warnings, see https://access.redhat.com/site/solutions/637583.

Important

The redhat-upgrade-tool upgrades the underlying operating system, but any software or applications installed may not necessarily be upgraded by the script. Many products do not yet have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 content repositories available.
While the system can be upgraded, many of the applications on that system may not be able to be upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 if no hosted content repositories are available.
In most cases, upgrading a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 environment will be much like installing a fresh Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 system, in that the system will be registered as a new identity to the subscription service and new subscriptions will be attached to the system after registration. However, currently attached system subscriptions must be handled properly to ensure that they are available to new and upgraded systems or to other systems in the infrastructure.
To manage sybscriptions during an upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7:
  1. Update the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to install the required upgrade tools, and reboot the system.
  2. Run the preupgrade check.
  3. Unregister your system from the previous subscription service. This is done using the unregister command. 
    [root@server  ~]# subscription-manager unregister
  4. Remove the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 product certificate to allow the system to be upgraded. If the product certificate is not removed, then later attempting to register the system creates a conflict, because it is incorrectly interpreted as a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 system. 
    [root@server  ~]# rm -rf /etc/pki/product/69.pem
  5. Use the upgrade script to upgrade the system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. In this example, the version is set to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 and the installation directory points to a public FTP repository. 
    [root@server  ~]# redhat-upgrade-tool-cli --network 7.0 --instrepo ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/7.0/x86_64/os

    Note

    This only upgrades the base operating system. Any additional products or applications need to be upgraded separately.
  6. Register your system again with the subscription service. This is done using the register command. 
    [root@server  ~]# subscription-manager register --username admin@example.com
Password: 
The system has been registered with id: 7d133d55-876f-4f47-83eb-0ee931cb0a97
  7. Locate any available Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 repositories for any required layered products, and configure yum to use those repositories.
  8. Optional. Attach any required subscriptions. For example: 
    [root@server1 ~]# subscription-manager list --available

+-------------------------------------------+
    Available Subscriptions
+-------------------------------------------+
ProductName:            RHEL for Physical Servers
ProductId:              MKT-rhel-server
PoolId:                 ff8080812bc382e3012bc3845ca000cb
Quantity:               10
Expires:                2016-09-21

[root@server1 ~]# subscription-manager attach --pool=ff8080812bc382e3012bc3845ca000cb