Chapter 17. How does the subscriptions service show my subscription data?

The subscriptions service views can be grouped generally into the graph view and the table view.

The graph view is a visual representation of the subscription usage and capacity for your organization, where your organization is also a Red Hat account. This view helps you track usage trends and determine utilization, which is the percentage of deployed software when measured against your total subscriptions.

The table view can contain one or more tables that provide more details about the general data in the graph view. The current instances table, also referred to as the current systems table, provides details about subscription usage on individual components of your environment, for example, systems in your inventory or clusters in your cloud infrastructure or restricted network. The current subscriptions table provides details about individual subscriptions in your account. The table view helps you to find where Red Hat software is deployed in your environment, to understand how individual subscriptions contribute to your overall capacity for usage of similar types of subscriptions, to resolve questions you might have about subscription usage, and to refine plans for future deployments.

The usage and utilization graph view

The graph view shows you your total subscription usage and capacity over time in a graph form. It provides perspective on your account’s subscription threshold, current subscription utilization, and remaining subscription capacity, along with the historical trend of your software usage. The graph view might contain a single graph or multiple graphs, depending upon how subscription usage for a product is measured.

The usage and capacity calculations that appear in the graph are based on data snapshots that are provided periodically as the Hybrid Cloud Console processing tools analyze information from the various data collection tools and data sources. The data snapshots for Annual subscriptions generally update once every 24 hours. The data snapshots for On-Demand subscriptions can be more frequent, updating multiple times per day.

Although the graph shows trends over a selected time interval, you can also view more specific information for the graph. For example, if the selected time interval is Weekly, you can hover over the graph near a date to see more specific data for a particular week.

You can also use the available filters, which can vary by product, to change the usage data that displays in the graph. For example, you can filter by the time interval, the unit of measurement, or by the subscription attribute filters such as service level agreement (SLA), as applicable. Additional filter options might include a filter by the type of usage measurement, such as physical or virtual, or a filter by variants for that product, such as a supporting architecture of x86.

The graph view: example graph

The following image shows an example RHEL usage and utilization graph in the subscriptions service. For other product pages, the graph view will contain differences in design, depending on how those products are sold and measured.

For the graph, the time filter is set to a daily view, and the graph displays a month of RHEL usage.

Figure 17.1. Usage and utilization graph example

The table view: current instances table

The current instances table shows you details about usage on individual components in your environment, taken from the most recent daily snapshot of the usage data. This table provides information that can help you correlate the aggregated usage totals in the graph with the current software deployments on individual components across your organization. The components and data shown in the table vary by product because of the different ways that usage is tracked for products, by socket count, core count, core hours, and so on. Also, a component that displays as an "instance" or a "system" in the table can be a physical or virtual machine, or it can be another object such as a cluster or instance. Therefore, generic references to this table as either the current instances table or the current systems table are for convenience only.

The information in the current instances table generally shows the name of the instance or system, the type of the system, the usage total for that system according to the unit of measurement, and the date that the system was last seen. However, the available columns in the table might differ according to the types of data that are relevant for that product. Columns in the table are sortable.

For the Name column that contains the name of the system, the system is the machine, either physical or virtualized, on which the product or product set is deployed. A system can also be a different component, such as a Red Hat OpenShift cluster or an instance of a Red Hat Cloud Services service. The system is usually represented by either its display name or its universally unique ID (UUID). For multi-guest systems such as hypervisors, you can expand the system to see more information about individual guests. For some objects in the Name column, you can also click the system name to open the full system record in a different resource, for example, in the Hybrid Cloud Console inventory application.

For the Guests column that displays in the table when hypervisor usage can be tracked, the guest count is for the number of guests that are under the management of that hypervisor system. For other types of usage, the double dashed line represents a null value for that system.

For the Type column that contains the type of the system, the type is the infrastructure type on which the product or product set is deployed. A system can be a physical host, hypervisor, individual virtual machine, or other form of virtual deployment such as a public cloud instance. The information in this column might not be applicable to all products, so for some products the Type column might not appear.

For the column where the usage total for that system is displayed, the column label will vary according to how product usage is measured. For subscriptions where usage is measured with multiple metrics, multiple columns will display. The usage is the actual or equivalent amount of physical hardware that the product or product set is consuming on that system. Usage is counted according to the applicable unit of measurement, which in turn is determined by the terms of the subscription. For example, for a subscription that is sold by sockets, the usage total is the number of sockets, also known as subscribed sockets, that are consumed by a system. Other subscriptions such as On-Demand subscriptions are sold with different terms, such as by core hours, or might include multiple metrics in the terms, such as data transfer, data storage, and instance hours.

For the Last seen column that contains a date, that last seen date is the date that the system was last found by the Cloud Services platform tools, such as the inventory service or Red Hat OpenShift Cluster Manager and other tools in the monitoring stack. As part of the underlying tasks that subscriptions and other tools perform to calculate usage, the inventory service and the monitoring stack help to identify and deduplicate system data that is gathered by the various data collection tools.

As with the usage and utilization graph, you can use the filters to change the data that displays in the current instances table. However, a change to the time interval, such as changing from days to weeks, has no effect on the current instances table. The data displayed is from the most recent snapshot, so it is usually no more than 24 hours old.

You can also search the current instances table for a specific system name or a group of similarly named systems by using the search field. Exact and partial strings are accepted, but common wildcard characters are treated as literal characters, not special character wildcards.

The table view: current subscriptions table

The current subscriptions table shows you details about your currently active subscriptions, taken from the most recent daily snapshot of this data. This table contains information that can help you understand the maximum capacity for your usage of that product within your account. The maximum capacity is displayed as the subscription threshold in the usage and utilization graph view.

The table shows the capacity for each subscription in the unit of measurement by which that subscription is sold, for example, sockets or cores. The sum of the capacity for all rows equals the subscription threshold.

By using the data in the current subscriptions table, you can more fully understand how individual subscriptions are contributing to the subscription threshold. This information can help you plan for any future purchasing decisions, such as adjusting the amount of existing subscriptions or purchasing different subscriptions that are more suited to your usage profile. You can also use the information in the table to anticipate upcoming events that could affect your business activities in relation to purchasing and renewals, such as contract expiration.

The information in the current subscriptions table generally shows the name of the product subscription, the service level agreement (SLA) for the subscription, the quantity of the subscription, the capacity of that subscription according to the unit of measurement, and the next renewal event for the subscription. All columns in the table are sortable.

The Product column lists unique product subscriptions that are currently active in your account. Future-dated subscriptions that are not yet active do not appear in the table. Expired subscriptions that are not renewed are removed from the table.

In general, subscriptions that share the same stock-keeping unit (SKU) appear on a single row. Subscriptions that can be grouped on the same row include these characteristics:

However, some subscriptions might display multiple times in the Product column. These subscriptions include these characteristics:

The Service level column contains the service level agreement (SLA) for a subscription, as defined within the terms of the subscription. Examples include Premium, Standard, or Self-Support. This information can sometimes help you distinguish between two subscriptions in the Product column that have identical descriptions.

The Quantity column contains the number of active subscriptions for a SKU. For example, a single table row might contain multiples of the same SKU purchased in the same transaction. It might also contain multiples of the same SKU purchased in different transactions.

For the column where the capacity for a subscription is displayed, the column label will vary according to how product usage is measured. For example, RHEL is sold in socket pairs, so the capacity column for RHEL has the label Sockets. This capacity column measures the maximum amount of available usage for the subscriptions in each table row. Usage is counted according to the applicable unit of measurement, which in turn is determined by the terms of the subscription. When summed, the total for all rows in the table represents the maximum possible capacity of usage for all subscriptions of that product. This value is also the subscription threshold in the graph view.

For some product pages, the capacity column might be replaced with a different column if capacity is not applicable. For example, for an On-Demand subscription, a Subscription type column might display the type of subscription, such as Annual or On-Demand.

The Next renewal column lists the next pending renewal event for any subscription that is included in that row.

Currently, the subscriptions service tracks certain types of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat Cloud Services products. The data that is displayed for usage and capacity varies by product.

Overall usage and capacity trends display on the usage and utilization graph. The information in the current instances table provides additional detail about the most recent day of data from the graph. Where applicable, the information in the current subscriptions table provides additional detail about your currently active subscriptions.

The unit of measurement by which product usage is tracked is determined by the terms of the subscription.

You can further refine the subscriptions service data by selecting values from the available filters in the interface. When you select a filter option, the graph view (and in some cases, the tables in the table view) generally refreshes to show data that relates to that option. In other words, most of the filters are inclusive, not exclusive, for the selected option.

Filtering by time

For Annual subscriptions, you can filter data by several different time intervals, including daily (the default) and quarterly. For On-Demand subscriptions, you can filter by time interval only for the current month or by any other month in the previous 12 months. Because billing cycles for On-Demand subscriptions might vary across the different cloud provider marketplaces that you might purchase from, the calendar month interval is used in the subscriptions service to report On-Demand usage.

Filtering by time affects only the usage and utilization graph view. The current instances table and current subscriptions table views always show the most recent data that is available, whether from the most recent subscriptions service daily snapshot or from more frequent reporting offered by the monitoring stack tools, and is not affected by the time filter.

Filtering by subscription attributes

You can use several filters to filter by subscription attributes, which is data that describes the characteristics and intended usage of subscription. The accuracy of those filters is dependent upon how accurately the subscription attribute data is set.

Subscription attributes might be configured from the operating system or its management tools, or from settings within the product itself. In these various tools, subscription attribute data is also known as system purpose, subscription settings, or similar names. In some cases, subscription attribute values might be derived from the subscription, such as when a subscription is sold either by sockets or cores.

You can use the subscriptions service filters to get a more focused view on usage that meets certain use cases within your subscription profile. For example, filtering your RHEL subscriptions by the SLA filter, which is the service level agreement, to show only those with an SLA of Premium could help you determine the current usage of premium subscriptions compared to your overall capacity for those premium subscriptions. In turn, this knowledge can inform decisions such as additional deployments, actions to mitigate subscription compliance issues, or future purchasing and renewals.

As another example, selecting a nonspecific value for a filter, such as the No SLA or Unspecified options, can help show subscriptions that have subscription attribute values that might be missing or that might be less common and not specifically filterable by the subscriptions service. For those subscriptions with missing subscription attributes, adding that data can improve the accuracy and usefulness of the subscriptions service reporting.

The subscriptions service provides the following filters and filter options for RHEL:

The subscriptions service provides the following filter and filter options for Red Hat OpenShift:

If an offering is available as one subscription type only, such as with Red Hat OpenShift AI, filtering by subscription attributes is not available.

Filtering by type

You can use the Type filter to filter by the type of subscription usage when multiple types of subscription usage are tracked for a product. For example, the subscriptions service tracks RHEL physical, virtual, public cloud, and hypervisor usage to match the different infrastructure types for RHEL product deployment. This filter is different from the Usage filter that corresponds to subscription attribute (system purpose) usage.

Filtering by variant

You can use the Variant filter to filter on various aspects of a subscription that are appropriate for the product page that is displayed. For example, you can filter on architecture variants for RHEL or product variants for Satellite.

Filtering by name (current instances table)

You can filter the data in the current instances table by the contents of Name column, which shows either the display name or universally unique ID (UUID) of each system. To filter by name, use the search field near the Name column.

You can search for a specific system name or a group of similarly named systems. Exact and partial strings are accepted, but common wildcard characters are treated as literal characters, not special character wildcards.