4.4. Importing and Maintaining Manifests

Every registered system has a certain number of software entitlements. These entitlements are listed in a manifest. Manifests are used by Subscription Asset Manager to manage your systems on site, without having to log directly in to your Red Hat Network account.

4.4.1. About Manifests

there is a direct relationship between the subscription management application organization in Customer Portal Subscription Management and the organization definition in an on-premise application like Subscription Asset Manager. This relationship is the method that Customer Portal Subscription Management uses to transfer subscriptions from Red Hat to the on-premise application to administer locally.
This transferred block of subscriptions is listed in the subscription management application organization manifest. This manifest is a ZIP archive which is downloaded directly from Customer Portal Subscription Management from the subscription management application organization entry and then is uploaded to the on-premise application.

Important

Any changes to the subscriptions for the organization are made to the subscription attached to the subscription management application organization entry in Customer Portal Subscription Management. The manifest is then regenerated, downloaded, and re-uploaded to the application.
The manifest itself is a collection of directories and JSON files which contain the subscriptions, entitlement certificates, products, and list of rules for the subscription management application organization. 
manifest.zip
      |
      |- consumer_export.zip
                   |
		   |- export/
		         |
			 |- consumer_types/
			 |
			 |- entitlements/
			 |
			 |- entitlement_certificates/
			 |
			 |- products/
			 |
			 |- rules/
			 |
			 |- consumer.json
			 |
			 |- meta.json
consumer.json and meta.json

These JSON files contain a little information about the application organization entry (the UUID) and the manifest itself (version and creation date).

consumer_types/

consumer_types/ contains a list of JSON files, one for each supported application type. The JSON files indicate which type the subscriptions are attached to. For example, for Subscription Asset Manager, the sam.json has a manifest value of true. 

{"id":"5","label":"sam","manifest":true}
entitlements/

entitlements/ contains a JSON file for each subscription attached to the application organization. Each filed is named UUID.json.

The file contains the complete subscription information, including the contract number, pool ID, contract start/end dates, keys and certificates for the subscription, the product ID for each included product, quantities, and any other information associated with the subscriptions.
For example, this is the information for a single Red Hat Enterprise Linux product in a subscription JSON: 
...
{"id":"8a878dcd3520d43501353f6f98f911e9","productName":"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server","productId":"69","updated":"2012-02-02T18:59:32.000+0000","created":"2012-02-02T18:59:32.000+0000"}],"endDate":"2012-10-13T03:59:59.000+0000","quantity":50,"productName":"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, Premium (4 sockets) (Up to 4 guests)","contractNumber":"2625891","accountNumber":"1506376","productId":"RH0153936","subscriptionId":"2267347","consumed":31,"exported":30,"sourceEntitlement":null,"activeSubscription":true,"restrictedToUsername":null,"productAttributes":[{"productId":"RH0153936","name":"support_type","value":"L1-L3","id":"8a878dcd3520d43501353f6f98f811de","updated":"2012-02-02T18:59:32.000+0000","created":"2012-02-02T18:59:32.000+0000"}
...
entitlement_certificates/

entitlement_certificates/ contain PEM files with the base 64-encoded blob of the entitlement certificate for each subscription.

products/

products/ contains JSON file for every product included with the subscriptions. This contains detailed information about supported versions and content sets, dependencies, repositories, and other product-specific (but not necessarily subscription-specific) information.

For example, for part of the JSON file for one version with a basic Red Hat Enterprise Linux product: 
...
{"name":"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server","id":"69","attributes":[{"name":"type","value":"SVC"},{"name":"arch","value":"i386,ia64,x86_64"},{"name":"name","value":"Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server"}],"multiplier":1,"href":"/products/69","productContent":[{"content":{"name":"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server Beta (Source ISOs)","id":"861","type":"file","vendor":"Red Hat","modifiedProductIds":[],"contentUrl":"/content/beta/rhel/server/5/$releasever/$basearch/source/iso","label":"rhel-5-server-beta-source-isos","gpgUrl":"http://","metadataExpire":86400,"requiredTags":"rhel-5-server"},"enabled":false}
...
rules/

rules/ contains a single JavaScript file which sets the functions that the application uses to interact with the backend Red Hat subscription management service.