SupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Chapter 3. Cluster subscriptions and registration

To use all Red Hat OpenShift functionality, your clusters must be registered to Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager and subscribed to Red Hat subscription management.

After you create a cluster, it is automatically registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager and subscribed to a Red Hat subscription where you can access Red Hat support and updates.

  • OpenShift Container Platform clusters are automatically subscribed to a limited 60-day Red Hat evaluation subscription when created. To upgrade your OpenShift Container Platform cluster to your own Red Hat subscription, see Section 3.1, “Configuring OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscriptions”.
  • To create an OpenShift Dedicated cluster, you must enter your Red Hat subscription details at creation. You can use your own Red Hat subscription when creating an OpenShift Dedicated cluster, or try OpenShift Dedicated using a 60-day trial subscription to be upgraded later. To configure the subscription settings on your OpenShift Dedicated clusters, see Section 3.2, “Managing OpenShift Dedicated cluster subscriptions”.
  • For Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) clusters, no subscription configuration is necessary in OpenShift Cluster Manager, as this service is licensed directly from your AWS account. ROSA pricing is consumption-based and is billed directly to your AWS account.

Additional resources

3.1. Configuring OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscriptions

By default, your OpenShift Container Platform cluster automatically registers to the OpenShift Cluster Manager service (https://console.redhat.com/openshift/) after it is created, and is subscribed to a limited 60-day Red Hat evaluation subscription for access to Red Hat support and updates.

To avoid downtime on your cluster, you must edit the cluster subscription settings in OpenShift Cluster Manager to use your own Red Hat subscription before your evaluation subscription expires.

You can use one of the following Red Hat subscription types to support your OpenShift Container Platform clusters:

  • Annual: A subscription that provides a fixed capacity of resources, pre-purchased from Red Hat.

  • On-Demand: This subscription that allows flexible usage and is billed through the Red Hat Marketplace. Your clusters must be connected to Telemetry in OpenShift Cluster Manager to use this subscription type.

    When you enable an On-Demand subscription in Red Hat Marketplace, you set resource limits for your services to control usage automatically.

You can view your active OpenShift Container Platform subscriptions from the Subscriptions area in OpenShift Cluster Manager.

Note

If you disabled Telemetry or your cluster cannot connect to api.openshift.com, you can alternatively complete the Red Hat registration process online at https://console.redhat.com/openshift/register. See Registering disconnected clusters for more information.

Prerequisites

  • A Red Hat login
  • An OpenShift Container Platform cluster

  • A Red Hat Annual subscription or an OpenShift Container Platform On-Demand subscription enabled from the Red Hat Marketplace with resource limits configured.

    • Check your resource limits from the Subscriptions area in OpenShift Cluster Manager. If no resource limits display, enable On-Demand subscriptions in Red Hat Marketplace.
  • You must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account to edit a cluster’s subscription settings.

Procedure

  1. View an OpenShift Container Platform cluster in OpenShift Cluster Manager.
  2. Click Actions > Edit subscription settings. You can also access this from the Subscription settings section of the cluster Overview page.

  3. Select your Subscription type:

    • Annual to use your Red Hat fixed capacity subscription

    • On-Demand to use your Red Hat Marketplace flexible usage subscription

      Important

      If On-Demand is not available as an option, contact Red Hat Sales to enable an account and link your billing information in the Red Hat Marketplace. You can also verify whether On-Demand billing is enabled if Marketplace shows as Enabled in the Subscriptions area under OpenShift Container Platform.

      After setting your subscription type, you cannot change a cluster’s subscription type from On-Demand to an Annual subscription.

  4. If you selected Annual, select the options that apply to your Red Hat subscription in the dialog. See OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscription settings for more details about the available settings. If your cluster is disconnected, the subscription type is automatically set to Annual. For On-Demand, all other settings are pre-configured.
  5. Click Save settings.

It might take up to two hours for these settings to update for your cluster in the Subscriptions summary and Red Hat Subscription Management after making changes to your Red Hat subscription in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

Verification steps

View your cluster’s subscription status and usage in Subscriptions > Container Platform.

Additional resources

3.1.1. OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscription settings

To ensure that you get the correct level of support for your OpenShift Container Platform clusters, configure your cluster subscription settings in OpenShift Cluster Manager to align with the values for your Red Hat subscription.

For OpenShift Dedicated clusters, no further subscription configuration is needed after choosing your subscription type. OpenShift Dedicated clusters are automatically subscribed to Red Hat subscriptions and come with Premium-level support.

Note

To find more details about your subscriptions, view your Subscriptions Inventory in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

To change the support type of an OpenShift Container Platform cluster after it has been initialized on Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager, click more options (more options) > Edit subscription settings for a cluster.

The following options are available for OpenShift Container Platform clusters:

Table 3.1. Subscription settings
Subscription settingOptionsSummaryMore information

Subscription type

  • Annual: Fixed capacity subscription from Red Hat
  • On-Demand: Flexible usage billed through the Red Hat Marketplace

What type of subscription are you using for this cluster?

Contact Red Hat Sales to enable On-Demand subscriptions from the Red Hat Marketplace for OpenShift Container Platform clusters.

Service level agreement (SLA)

  • Premium
  • Standard
  • Self-Support 60-day evaluation

How is this cluster supported?

The hours of coverage, support ticket response times, and other terms that are defined by the Service Level Agreement (SLA). See Production Support Terms of Service.

Support type

  • Red Hat support (L1-L3)
  • Partner support (L3)

Which team do you contact for primary support?

If you purchased the subscription through Red Hat, select L1-L3.

Cluster usage

  • Production
  • Development/Test
  • Disaster Recovery

How do you intend to use this cluster?

Describe the purpose of the cluster - for example, running production workloads or testing internal development projects.

Subscription units

  • Cores/vCPUs
  • Sockets

How is usage measured for your subscription?

Define how the cluster will consume the purchased Red Hat subscriptions.

Number of compute cores

A value between 1-999

How many compute cores does your cluster use?

NOTE: Configuration is only necessary on disconnected clusters.

This defines the number of physical cores used by your cluster. This excludes control plane nodes and nodes that do not use RHCOS. See Section 3.1.3, “Calculating the number of compute cores for your cluster” for more details.

3.1.2. Understanding subscription usage for OpenShift Container Platform clusters

The subscriptions service in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console tracks Red Hat OpenShift usage as cluster size on physical and virtual systems. The cluster size is the sum of all subscribed nodes. A subscribed node is a compute or worker node that runs workloads, as opposed to a control plane or infrastructure node that manages the cluster.

The subscriptions service tracks Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform usage in physical CPU cores or sockets for clusters and aggregates this data into an account view.

Subscriptions are used based on a 1 physical core or 2 vCPU core rate.

As an example, the subscription Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Standard/Premium (64 Cores or 128 vCPUs) supports an environment using either of these measurements:

  • 64 physical cores, or
  • 32 physical cores and 64 vCPUs

Both configurations would be counted the same. This information can be viewed in the Cores field of the subscriptions service’s usage record on the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console.

Additional resources

3.1.3. Calculating the number of compute cores for your cluster

OpenShift Container Platform subscriptions are measured by physical cores and vCPUs or sockets, depending on your subscription terms.

Note

Configuring the Number of compute cores in OpenShift Cluster Manager is only necessary for disconnected clusters.

In most cases, when configuring the Number of compute cores on your OpenShift Container Platform clusters, enter the number of compute cores and vCPUs or sockets included in your Red Hat subscription, excluding any control plane nodes. This applies to all clusters using Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS) as an operating system.

However, if your clusters do not have any worker nodes, or the nodes are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux only (rather than RHCOS), usage for those nodes is not calculated against your OpenShift Container Platform subscription. In this case, enter a value of 1 for Number of compute cores for these nodes.

To confirm the unit of measurement used by your subscription and other details, log in to the Red Hat Subscription Management area in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

3.1.3.1. Obtaining CPU information for your cluster

To find the CPU information used to calculate required subscriptions for the worker nodes, run the following commands from the OpenShift command line (oc) in your OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Prerequisites

  • An OpenShift Container Platform cluster
  • Cluster administrator permissions
  • OpenShift Container Platform oc CLI tool installed

Procedure

  1. Log into your OpenShift Container Platform cluster and run this command, replacing the values for username, password, and openshift-server: 

    $ oc login -u=<username> -p=<password> --server=<your-openshift-server> --insecure-skip-tls-verify

  2. Obtain the roles of the nodes within the cluster (master, infrastructure or worker): 

    $ oc get nodes -o wide

  3. Obtain the CPU information which is used to calculate the necessary subscriptions to cover worker nodes: 

    $ oc describe nodes | egrep 'Name:|InternalIP:|cpu:'

  4. In OpenShift Cluster Manager, enter this value in the Number of compute cores field for your cluster:

    1. In OpenShift Cluster Manager, locate your cluster in the Clusters list.
    2. Click more options (more options) > Edit subscription settings for the cluster.
    3. Enter the value in the Number of compute cores field and save the changes.

You can then use your OpenShift usage data in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console subscriptions service to inform your subscription renewal or purchase. Viewing your OpenShift hosts and nodes in OpenShift Cluster Manager, Red Hat Subscription Management, and the inventory in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console shows the number of cores or vCPUs as known by the host.

Note

If you are running OpenShift on a hypervisor and your compute core count appears to be incorrect, ensure that you configure your hypervisor so that it groups vCPUs as your subscription is arranged. See this Knowledgebase article for more information.

Additional resources

3.2. Managing OpenShift Dedicated cluster subscriptions

OpenShift Cluster Manager allows you to create OpenShift Dedicated clusters using your Red Hat subscriptions. These clusters are managed by Red Hat and come with Premium-level support. You must enter your subscription details when creating an OpenShift Dedicated cluster.

You can use one of the following types of Red Hat subscriptions to create OpenShift Dedicated clusters:

  • Annual: A subscription providing a fixed capacity of resources, pre-purchased from Red Hat. Cluster provisioning is based on available quota. Quota is allocated from your Red Hat subscriptions and is required to scale up a cluster.
  • On-Demand: A subscription allowing flexible usage, billed through the Red Hat Marketplace. When you enable an On-Demand subscription in Red Hat Marketplace, you set resource limits for your services to control usage automatically.
  • OpenShift Dedicated trial: You can try OpenShift Dedicated for 60 days free of charge with a trial Red Hat subscription. You can upgrade your cluster to a paid Red Hat subscription at any time. See About the OpenShift Dedicated Trial for more details.

You can view your quota and resource limits, based on your active OpenShift Dedicated clusters, from the Subscriptions menu in OpenShift Cluster Manager.

Important

You must select the subscription type when creating the cluster. You cannot change the subscription type on an existing OpenShift Dedicated cluster, with the exception of upgrading a trial subscription. To create a new cluster, see Creating an OpenShift Dedicated cluster.

Prerequisites

  • A Red Hat login
  • An active Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated subscription with sufficient quota to create a cluster. See https://www.openshift.com/products/dedicated/ for more information.
  • You must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account to edit a cluster’s subscription settings.

Procedure

  • To view a summary of all subscriptions for OpenShift Dedicated purchased by your organization or granted by Red Hat, go to OpenShift Cluster Manager and click Subscriptions. The summary also shows how much of your quota and resource limits have been used by your OpenShift Dedicated clusters, broken down by subscription type.

3.2.1. Upgrading an OpenShift Dedicated trial cluster to a fully supported cluster

You can upgrade your OpenShift Dedicated (OSD) trial cluster at any time after starting the free trial.

You can choose to upgrade your trial cluster before the trial conclusion if you want to run production services or use features that are not included in the free trial, such as autoscaling, specific add-on services, and quota increases.

Important

The OpenShift Dedicated free trial ends when you delete your cluster or after 60 days, whichever happens first. At that time, your OpenShift Dedicated trial cluster and all installed add-on services are marked for permanent deletion.

If you upgrade the cluster before the trial is over, you can continue using the resources you created during the trial without interruption.

Prerequisites

  • A Red Hat login
  • An OpenShift Dedicated cluster using a trial subscription
  • A Red Hat subscription for OpenShift Dedicated
  • You must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account to edit a cluster’s subscription settings.

Procedure

  1. Go to the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager.
  2. Find your OpenShift Dedicated trial cluster, labeled OSD Trial in the Cluster Type column.
  3. Click Upgrade from trial and follow the instructions to upgrade your cluster.
Note

If the Upgrade from trial option does not appear, the reasons could include the following:

  • You do not have the permissions needed to upgrade this cluster to a fully supported cluster. You must be an Organization Administrator on the Red Hat account or the Cluster Owner to upgrade the account.
  • This cluster account is already upgraded to a fully supported OpenShift Dedicated cluster.

Verification steps

  • Find your OpenShift Dedicated cluster in the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager. The Cluster type is no longer be listed as OSD Trial.

Additional resources

3.3. Registering OpenShift Container Platform clusters to OpenShift Cluster Manager

To monitor the health of your OpenShift Container Platform clusters with Insights Advisor and receive alerts, updates, and recommendations from Red Hat Insights, your clusters must be registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager and subscribed to a Red Hat subscription.

By default, every OpenShift Container Platform cluster automatically registers to OpenShift Cluster Manager the first time the cluster boots after installation.

OpenShift Container Platform clusters report health and usage data to Red Hat through Telemetry and the Insights Operator when registered in OpenShift Cluster Manager. These are referred to as connected clusters.

Occasionally an OpenShift Container Platform cluster does not automatically register to the OpenShift Cluster Manager service (referred to as a disconnected cluster), for example if:

  • the cluster was created in an air-gapped environment and cannot reach OpenShift Cluster Manager to inform OpenShift Cluster Manager it has been created
  • you disabled the Telemeter client
  • your cluster cannot connect to api.openshift.com

In this situation, you can register a disconnected cluster to OpenShift Cluster Manager manually from https://console.redhat.com/openshift/register. You can also enter your Red Hat subscription details from here to subscribe your cluster to Red Hat support.

After an OpenShift Container Platform cluster is registered and subscribed, you can then monitor your subscription capacity and usage in Subscriptions > Container Platform.

3.3.1. Verifying your OpenShift Container Platform cluster is registered and subscribed

You can verify that your OpenShift Container Platform cluster is registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager and subscribed to a Red Hat subscription from OpenShift Cluster Manager.

A OpenShift Container Platform cluster that is registered on OpenShift Cluster Manager is referred to as a connected cluster. In rare cases, for example, if Telemetry is disabled or blocked on the user’s network, the cluster cannot be registered automatically and you must manually register the cluster to OpenShift Cluster Manager.

Prerequisites

  • A Red Hat login
  • An OpenShift Container Platform cluster
  • To edit a cluster’s subscription settings, you must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account.

Procedure

  1. Go to the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager and locate your OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

    Note

    If your cluster does not appear in the Clusters list, you need to register your cluster. See Registering disconnected clusters for instructions.

  2. Review the Status column for the cluster:

    • If the Status is Ready, it is connected to OpenShift Cluster Manager and reporting Telemetry data. No manual registration is required.
    • If the Status is Disconnected, it is not sending Telemetry data to OpenShift Cluster Manager. This is due to the cluster being installed on a private network, or having Telemetry disabled.
    • If the Status is Stale, your cluster is connected but has not sent Telemetry data to OpenShift Cluster Manager recently.

  3. Review the Created column for the cluster to see the cluster subscription status:

    • A date: Your cluster is subscribed to a Red Hat subscription and is receiving support and updates.
    • 60-day evaluation: Your cluster is subscribed to Red Hat support with a temporary evaluation subscription. Configure the cluster to access Red Hat support with your own Red Hat subscription by clicking more options (more options) > Edit subscription settings.

    • Evaluation expired: Your cluster is not subscribed to Red Hat support. Configure your subscription details for the cluster by clicking more options (more options) > Edit subscription settings.

      Note
      • You can also check the cluster’s subscription settings from the cluster Overview page.
      • You must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account to edit a cluster’s subscription settings.

Next steps

3.3.2. Registering disconnected clusters

To monitor the health of your OpenShift Container Platform clusters and receive alerts, updates, and recommendations from Insights Advisor, your clusters must be registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager. If your cluster does not appear on the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager, you need to register it.

Note

If your cluster is already registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager and you only want to edit subscription settings for your cluster, click more options (more options) > Edit subscription settings, or configure your subscription settings from the cluster details page. See Configuring OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscriptions for details.

Prerequisites

  • A Red Hat login
  • An OpenShift Container Platform cluster
  • A Red Hat subscription
  • You must have the Cluster Owner or Cluster Editor role on the cluster, or Organization Administrator privileges in your Red Hat account to edit a cluster’s subscription settings.

Procedure

To register a disconnected cluster, create a profile for your cluster manually in OpenShift Cluster Manager:

  1. Go to the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager.
  2. At the top of the Clusters list, click more options (more options) > Register cluster to open the Register disconnected cluster page.

  3. Enter the Cluster ID for the cluster you want to register. For example, 00000c9e-f75e-44e4-86e1-ebf60ec0b000.

    Note

    You can find your cluster ID in the cluster web console in OpenShift Container Platform.

  4. Enter the Display name for the cluster. This can be any name that you want to identify the cluster by in OpenShift Cluster Manager. You can find your cluster by this name in the cluster list for your organization.
  5. Enter the Web console URL for the cluster. This is the URL to log into your OpenShift Container Platform cluster web console.

  6. To subscribe your cluster to Red Hat support, enter your Red Hat subscription details in Subscription settings:

    1. Select the Service level agreement (SLA) for the cluster.
    2. Select your Support type.
    3. Specify how you intend to use the cluster in Cluster usage.
    4. Specify the unit your subscription is measured in (cores/vCPUs or sockets) in Subscription units.
    5. Enter the number of compute cores your cluster will consume.
  7. Click Register cluster to confirm registration and subscription.
Note

See OpenShift Container Platform cluster subscription settings for details about the subscription settings in OpenShift Cluster Manager.

Your cluster is now registered to OpenShift Cluster Manager and subscribed to Red Hat support.

Verification steps

  1. Find your cluster displayed in the Clusters list in OpenShift Cluster Manager.
  2. The subscription configuration displays in the Subscription settings section. This can now be edited.
  3. Go to Subscriptions > Container Platform to verify you can view subscription information about your clusters, including capacity and subscription usage.

Additional resources

Red Hat logoGithubRedditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

© 2024 Red Hat, Inc.