Troubleshooting Metered RHEL Configurations

Resolution

Overview

For marketplace subscriptions metered by Red Hat (described as "Software as a Service" in marketplaces) to bill properly, three things must be true:

1. The customer has properly configured Red Hat metering to calculate usage for remittance.
2. The customer uses Red Hat software within a cloud account that possesses their marketplace subscription.
3. The customer possesses a metered SaaS subscription from the cloud marketplace in a cloud account that is linked to their Red Hat Organization (Red Hat Org).

This requirement presents three potential breakages:

1. The metering stack isn't configured properly
2. There is no subscription in the cloud account where RHEL is being used
3. There is no link between the cloud account and the Red Hat org

Remediating breakages

Use the following information to confirm the proper setup of the metering tool that you selected, to check your subscriptions and remitted usage, and to ensure that the connection between your cloud marketplace account and your Red Hat account is active.

Confirming configuration of host-level metering

This remedy is necessary only when you have chosen host-metering as the tool to calculate usage of metered RHEL.

For each host that intends to use a metered RHEL subscription, establish that the service is enabled and running.

$ sudo systemctl enable --now host-metering.service
$ sudo systemctl restart host-metering.service

Establish that the service is live and successfully submitting a payload.

# systemctl status host-metering 
● host-metering.service - Host metering service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/host-metering.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2024-06-05 10:44:53 CDT; 1 weeks 1 days ago
Main PID: xxxx (host-metering)
Tasks: 8
Memory: 17.9M
CGroup: /system.slice/host-metering.service
└─xxxx /usr/bin/host-metering daemon
Jun 13 11:44:55 ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx host-metering[xxxx]: Notification successful - sent 1 sample(s)
Jun 13 11:54:55 ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx host-metering[xxxx]: Notification successful - sent 1 sample(s)
Jun 13 12:04:56 ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx host-metering[xxxx]: Notification successful - sent 1 sample(s)
Jun 13 12:14:55 ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx host-metering[xxxx]: Notification successful - sent 1 sample(s)
Jun 13 12:24:55 ip-xxx-xx-xx-xx host-metering[xxxx]: Notification successful - sent 1 sample(s)

If success messages are NOT present the single most likely point of failure is a firewall interfering with the connection. Configure your proxy according to the guidance in How to configure HTTP/HTTPS proxy for host-metering service ?

If this does not solve the problem, a support ticket may be necessary to investigate further breakages for an installed and active RHEL service.

Confirming Cost Management metering

This remedy is necessary only when you have chosen Red Hat Cost Management as the tool to calculate usage of metered RHEL. Cost Management is a fully-featured finops service whose overall configuration is out of scope for this Solution. For purely metering-focused configurations, we recommend:

For AWS Metering

• Create a Filtered AWS Integration and pay special attention to section 2.4 "Activating AWS Tags."
• Ensure that all instances that require metering have the correct tag.

RHEL ELS metered instances should have this information:

com_redhat_rhel_addon : ELS
com_redhat_rhel : 7

RHEL Third Party Conversion instances should have this information:

com_redhat_rhel_conversion : true
com_redhat_rhel : 7

• Activate RHEL Metering

For Microsoft Azure Metering

• Create a Filtered Microsoft Azure Integration.
• Ensure that all instances that require metering have the correct tag.

RHEL ELS metered instances should have this information:

com_redhat_rhel_addon : ELS
com_redhat_rhel : 7

RHEL Third Party Conversion instances should have this information:

com_redhat_rhel_conversion : true
com_redhat_rhel : 7

• Activate RHEL Metering

For all Cost Management metering configurations

When the configuration of a cloud integration is successful, you will see the following health indicator:

Confirming Cloud Marketplace Subscriptions

• Navigate to the RHEL Usage section of the Hybrid Cloud Console
• Choose "RHEL for x86 ELS On-Demand" or "RHEL for x86 ELS On-Demand for Third party Linux Migration" as appropriate.
• Export your account data.

• Within the data export there are two relevant sections:

Your marketplace subscription information, which will include all cloud accounts where Red Hat has recognized a subscription to RHEL ELS On-Demand. Each stanza will resemble:

[
    {
    "sku": "*depends on your ELS subscription*",
    "productName": "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Lifecycle Service (Hourly)",
    "accountNumber": "123456",
    "subscriptionNumber": "6872263",
    "billing_provider": "aws",
    "billing_account_id": "01234567890",
    "quantity": 1,
    "startDate": "2024-04-11T04:00:00Z",
    "endDate": "2024-05-11T04:00:00Z",
    "serviceLevel": "Premium",
    "usage": "Production"
    }
  ]

Usage information from systems reporting RHEL ELS using a metering tool. Each stanza will resemble:

{
    "instanceId": "c7ithr3pjq8f4oof6gv0",
    "displayName": "c7ithr3pjq8f4oof6gv0",
    "billing_provider": "aws",
    "billing_account_id": "01234567890",
    "lastSeen": "2024-04-17T21:00:00Z",
    "instanceType": "RHEL Instance",
    "monthlyVcpuHours": 31,
  },

• Each "billing_account_id" that has a RHEL host submitting ELS usage MUST have a matching subscription with the same "billing_account_id" in the marketplace subscription information. Any host whose cloud account does not appear in the marketplace subscription section can be corrected by logging into that cloud account and subscribing it to the appropriate RHEL ELS subscription. If the cloud account already has such a subscription, our next and final debugging step should correct the issue.

Confirming cloud integrations

To meter Red Hat software for customers, Red Hat must index public cloud accounts to your Red Hat Organization. This is established after you select "subscribe" within the cloud marketplace, with a prompt that urges the customer to "configure your SaaS!" If this step is not performed, Red Hat does not receive metering credentials from your public cloud and cannot submit SaaS usage for our public cloud customers; the metering chain of custody is broken. This can be corrected in the following ways.

AWS

From your AWS marketplace "subscribed software" listing, you can link your accounts using the following dialogue:

Azure

From your within Azure Subscription listing, you can see the following dialogue that will prompt an account link:

For all cloud marketplaces

Each public cloud prompt will take you to a screen that looks similar to this partner gateway:

Completing this dialogue will link your cloud accounts AND redirect you to a section of the hybrid cloud console most appropriate to begin using your Red Hat hybrid cloud platform subscription.

Wrap-up

In this Solution, we've covered how to health check:

1. Metering tools
2. Metered marketplace subscriptions
3. Links between your Red Hat Org and your public cloud account

With all three requirements healthy, metering should flow as expected.