Ask an OpenShift Admin Office Hour - Subscription Comparison, Licensing & Entitlements

Not sure which Red Hat OpenShift subscription offering is right for you? It can be a little overwhelming with so many options available, but we're here to tidy things up. This episode we’re joined by Tushar Katarki, Product Manager for OpenShift, to explore the differences between OpenShift subscription levels. 

Whether self-managed, fully managed, on-premises, on private cloud, public cloud, or edge deployment - all editions of Red Hat OpenShift offer a consistent user experience for developers and operations across every footprint. RHOPP, RHOCP, RHOKE, and RHOSD? All the acronyms you've come to know and love will be broken down into simple language.

As always, please see the list below for additional links to specific topics, questions, and supporting materials for the episode!

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Episode 30 recorded stream:

Use this link to jump directly to where we start talking about today’s topic, and you can find the slides used today here.

Supporting links for today:

• Just a friendly reminder to keep an eye on RHSB-2021-004 and be sure to update your cluster appropriately to mitigate!
• We’ve talked about the install process and how to troubleshoot a few separate times, but I recently discovered there is a GitHub page, maintained by engineering, on the topic. This is another set of suggestions, beyond what’s in the docs, for how to figure out what went wrong during installation.
• A few weeks back we talked about mounting /var to a different partition or disk when deploying RHCOS. There are some distinct advantages to doing this, not the least of which is being able to have a dedicated disk for container storage, but there are also some things to be on the lookout for too.
• Another item we’ve talked about before (but I apparently did not catlog in a blog post) is the sizing of the cluster network and service network, which are configured at install time and used for Pods and Services. This segment of the show discusses how to determine the appropriate size of those subnets for your cluster.

Questions answered during the stream:

• Would it be possible to have transcripts of the live streams? We’re working on this, thanks for asking!
• OpenShift 4.7 Servicemesh uses Istio version 1.6, any idea what version will be used by the Servicemesh Operator shipped with OpenShift 4.8? The next release will be based on Istio 1.9!
• Is there a tool which will gather subscription information, based on the cluster configuration, in real time? The subscription allocation information on cloud.redhat.com is updated when the OpenShift cluster reports it’s telemetry. This happens automatically every 5 minutes for some data and every 45 minutes for other data.
• Clusters are associated with a pool of entitlements, which means that the entire cluster is entitled at the same level - there’s no ability to mix entitlements in the same cluster.
• Changing entitlement levels, from RHOKE to RHOCP to RHOPP, is done using cloud.redhat.com, with no change needed at the cluster level.
• When will consumption based pricing be available for OpenShift? It’s available today! For self-managed clusters, contact your Red Hat account team to inquire about details. For managed clusters from OpenShift Direct, Red Hat OpenShift on AWS, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, and the others, they are already billed based on consumption.
• What is Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus? It is a single entitlement for OpenShift, Advanced Cluster Manager, Advanced Cluster Security, and Quay.
• Is it becoming more common to have a larger number of clusters with smaller node counts than previously? Yes, for a number of different reasons, ranging from failure domain, permissions and isolation, to GitOps and CI systems dynamically creating and destroying clusters automatically.
• Can clusters be entitled using automation or is a human required to visit cloud.redhat.com? Clusters deployed by ACM are automatically entitled, but other clusters need manual action.
• Did you know that a (free!) Red Hat Developer Subscription allows you to deploy an OpenShift cluster up to 16 nodes?!
• OpenShift deployed to physical servers can use socket-based entitlements, which are valid for up to 64 cores each.
• How are disconnected clusters entitled? The same way as a connected cluster, browse to cloud.redhat.com, input the cluster identifier, and associate it with a pool of entitlements.
• For disconnected clusters, how does support know when a cluster has been entitled?
• Infrastructure nodes are special. They don’t require entitlements. What qualifies as an infrastructure workload? There is an extensive list of what does and does not qualify as infrastructure workloads in the Subscription Guide. The controller Pods for Operators, both Red Hat and third party Operators, are considered infra workload, but the application instance(s) deployed by the Operator are not. It’s important to note that infra nodes cannot be used for builds however.