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3. Viewing High-Level Subscription and System Information
3.1. The Overview Page
The ultimate goal of subscription management is to allow administrators to identify the relationship between their systems and the subscriptions used by those systems. This can be done from two different perspectives: from the perspective of the local system looking externally to potential subscriptions and from the perspective of the primary account, looking down at the total infrastructure of systems and all subscriptions.
The Red Hat Subscription Manager GUI and CLI are both local clients which manage only the local machine. These tools are somewhat limited in their view; they only disclose information (such as available subscriptions) from the perspective of that one system, so expired and depleted subscriptions or subscriptions for other architectures are not displayed.
Customer Portal Subscription Management is a global tool which is intended to give complete, account-wide views into subscriptions and systems. It shows all subscriptions and all systems for the entire account. Customer Portal Subscription Management can perform many of the tasks of the on-premise tools, like registering systems, attaching subscriptions, and viewing system facts and UUID. It can also manage the subscriptions themselves, such as viewing contract information and renewing subscriptions — a task not possible in the local clients.
Customer Portal Subscription Management provides two different perspectives on subscriptions:
- A view of all subscriptions in use for an account
- A view of all systems within the inventory
Customer Portal Subscription Management establishes the relationship between the infrastructure (servers) and the subscriptions; Customer Portal Subscription Management is an inventory tool that manages systems and attaches existing subscriptions. Customer Portal Subscription Management also intuitively connects with subscription procurement, which allows administrators to buy and renew subscriptions for the account.
Figure 3. Customer Portal Subscription Management Menu
The overview page in Subscription Management summarizes the total number of systems and other units, by type, in the inventory. It also shows the numbers of systems that are managed under Subscription Management and the number managed under RHN Classic.
Note
Customer Portal Subscription Management gives a global view of all systems and units, of all types, for an account, which is crucial for planning and effectively attaching subscriptions. However, it does not provide any insight into what products are installed on a system and whether subscriptions are attached for those products. To track subscriptions for installed software, you must use the local Red Hat Subscription Manager tools.
Figure 4. Customer Portal Subscription Management Overview Page
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