Chapter 2. Preparing to register RHEL systems

To register your Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems and access the content associated with your subscriptions, you must log in to Red Hat with an account that is associated with those subscriptions.

A Red Hat account is used to identify and authenticate you to Red Hat. It provides you with access to Red Hat applications and services, purchasing capabilities, communities, support, information, and other benefits.

Red Hat accounts are available in two different types:

If you meet any of the following criteria, you already have a Red Hat account:

It is possible that you could have both a corporate and a personal account, and that you use each for different purposes. It is also possible that you are unsure which type of account to use to register systems and install subscriptions, or even if you have an account. However, if your company is using Red Hat software to power enterprise-level solutions, it is likely that it has one or more corporate accounts and organizations to acquire and manage that software.

If you need more information about Red Hat accounts and how they should be used to register systems, you should first discuss your options with internal contacts in your company before proceeding with Red Hat account creation. If you have additional questions, contact Red Hat customer service for assistance.

Simple content access provides an improved subscription experience that removes many of the time-consuming and complex business processes associated with the older Red Hat entitlement-driven enforcement model. The simple content access tool removes the need to use an entitlement to attach a subscription to a system before you can access Red Hat subscription content on that system.

In the entitlement-based subscription model, an entitlement is one of a predefined number of allowances that is used during the registration process to assign, or attach, a subscription to a system. The entitlement-based subscription model is now deprecated and is superseded by the access-based subscription model of simple content access. In the access-based subscription model, access to subscription content is provided by the existence of a valid subscription and registration of the system.

By using simple content access, you can more easily consume subscription content and reduce the complexity of your subscription management workflow. Instead, if you have access to a valid subscription, you can register a system and then consume the subscription content on that system, in a process that is commonly referred to as the “register and run” experience.

The subscriptions service and simple content access are designed to work together to simplify and streamline the overall subscription experience. By removing the need to attach subscriptions at the system level, simple content access reduces complexity and saves time when you are adding, removing, and renewing subscriptions. By offering visibility into subscription usage, the subscriptions service eliminates manual subscription management and enables account-wide governance of your subscriptions.

The subscriptions service in the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console is a dashboard-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application that enables you to view subscription usage in your Red Hat account. It provides a visual representation of that usage over time across your hybrid infrastructure, including physical and virtual technology deployments; on-premise and cloud environments; and cluster, instance, and workload use cases.

From the subscriptions service dashboard, you have an account-level view of current and historical subscription usage, along with the remaining capacity for growth and scaling. You also have a view of the subscriptions that are in use in the account and of the systems or other entities that are using those subscriptions. The account-level view of the subscriptions service dashboard can be shared within an organization among procurement personnel, system administrators, IT administrators, and operators for collaborative management of subscriptions, from purchasing and renewals to deployment decisions.

The subscriptions service and simple content access are designed to work together to simplify and streamline the overall subscription experience. By removing the need to attach subscriptions at the system level, simple content access reduces complexity and saves time when you are adding, removing, and renewing subscriptions. By offering visibility into subscription usage, the subscriptions service eliminates manual subscription management and enables account-wide governance of your subscriptions.

If your organization is not already using the subscriptions service, some steps are required to begin using it.

When you begin deploying subscriptions, it is important for the different personas in your organization to understand how and where those subscriptions are being used. Operations personas, including IT administrators and system administrators, need to build and manage systems to run specific workloads. Procurement personas need to manage purchases by balancing the account’s subscription footprint with current and future business needs.

The setting of use case data on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system to record its intended use is done through a set of attributes that are collectively known as system purpose.

System purpose attributes include the following types of information:

The following default values are available for each RHEL system purpose attribute:

These system purpose attribute values help operators guide workloads to the correct systems and help procurement personnel filter and analyze system usage in tools such as the subscriptions service to make more informed purchasing decisions.

You can set system purpose values during multiple phases of the system life cycle, enabling your organization to set these values at the most appropriate point in your process. You can set system purpose values at build time, when you are creating installable images for your subscription content, at connection time, during installation and registration tasks, or at runtime, when you begin using the content. For example: