Get the most out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure

Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure offers several benefits, including increased scalability, flexibility, cost-efficiency, and access to a wide range of managed services. By using Microsoft Azure's global infrastructure, you can scale your Red Hat Enterprise Linux workloads to meet changing demands, reduce capital expenditure, and take advantage of various purchase models. This offering includes integrated support between Red Hat and Microsoft with 24×7 support.

In this article, I provide tips for setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure, and offer a few pointers for how to maximize its value. This article is meant to help you avoid pitfalls in the process of purchasing, deploying, configuring, and managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances on Microsoft Azure, whether you're moving existing workloads to a cloud environment, or just getting started.

Benefit from the full power of enterprise Linux

Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers more than just access to a Linux operating system (OS). It is designed specifically for Azure environments and includes built-in features and integrations that streamline performance, management, and security capabilities:

• Pre-configured Azure-specific performance profiles for faster, more consistent deployments.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Azure provides the capability to collect, analyze, and visualize performance and diagnostic data.
• Azure CLI (azure-cli) provides command line interface management of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Azure images and resources.
• Image mode streamlines cloud operations with container-native tools, enabling bootable Red Hat Enterprise Linux container images and immutable system images for reduced attack surface.

Lightspeed helps you run Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a single platform

Red Hat Lightspeed comes at no extra cost with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and can bolster the OS's capabilities as a unified platform across clouds and on premise:

1. Visibility: Lightspeed simplifies management and monitoring with a comprehensive view of your entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux estate.
2. Proactive alerts: Lightspeed proactively alerts administrators and stakeholders before an outage or security event occurs.
3. Drift analysis: Lightspeed analyzes data across all footprints, highlighting performance patterns and configuration drift that could impact application performance.
4. Compliance: Lightspeed monitors systems against industry standards, helping you to maintain compliance, and assisting your efforts to strengthen your security posture.

Lightspeed streamlines Red Hat Enterprise Linux management across diverse deployments, enabling a consistent experience no matter where you install it, which is especially useful if you still have some of your workloads running on-premise in addition to those running on Microsoft Azure.

This functionality is accessed through Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. Connect your Microsoft Azure account and your Red Hat accounts, and sign up for Red Hat Lightspeed. If you signed up for Red Hat Enterprise Linux through PAYG images on the Azure Marketplace, this connection might not be automatic.

Purchasing options for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure

There are a few different ways to purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure:

• Purchase directly on the Azure Marketplace, for pay-as-you-go (PAYG), or a 1 or 3-year term.
• Purchase a subscription from Red Hat or from a Red Hat partner. If this is a migration scenario, you can move to Microsoft Azure using Red Hat Cloud Access, which is also known as bring-your-own-subscription (BYOS). Additionally, you can deploy your own image or a gold image as a virtual machine (VM).

Each of these methods comes with different mechanisms for provisioning the underlying VM. Typically, marketplace customers will provision using the Azure console or the az command. Cloud Access customers have various methods to provision using one of the gold image options.

Either of these methods is valid and results in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance that allows for the same access to updates from Red Hat. Keep in mind that VMs provisioned through the Azure Marketplace come preconfigured to use Azure-hosted Red Hat Update Infrastructure, while VMs provisioned through BYOS need to be connected to Red Hat Subscription Manager.

Questions to answer before you begin

Before you get started, take some time to consider a few determining factors. These are some questions that come up frequently:

What is the use case for your deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Azure?

How you deploy your Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance for Microsoft Azure depends on your use case. Ask yourself:

• Do I want to use my own subscription or purchase from the Azure Marketplace? Will this instance be a long-running workload, needing a yearly subscription, or a short-lived workload needing PAYG?
• Do I want to use a standard image in Azure and build from that, or upload my own image?
• How will this machine be updated? If your answer is the Azure Marketplace, use Red Hat Update Infrastructure, but if your answer is BYOS, ask yourself how you would connect to subscription management.

A critical workload expected to run continuously for extended periods of time requires a persistent, stable, and highly available cloud infrastructure. Workloads that exhibit seasonal variance, experiencing high demand during certain periods and low demand in others, would benefit from a cloud environment's elasticity. This elasticity allows for rapid scaling up of resources during peak times and scaling down during off-peak periods, optimizing cost efficiency. These different use cases suggest different deployment models.

What is the most appropriate deployment model?

When choosing a deployment model, consider payment preference. Both an annual subscription and PAYG (based on usage) options have advantages and disadvantages, and the ideal choice largely depends on your specific requirements, budget constraints, and anticipated workload patterns. If budget predictability and simplified billing are paramount, a monthly or yearly rate may be most suitable. Conversely, if flexibility, cost-efficiency, and the ability to rapidly scale are essential, a usage-based model might be a better option.

• Annual subscription: An annual subscription provides budget predictability, simplified billing, and generally a more competitive price for committing to longer-term plans. A fixed rate also eliminates the need for close usage monitoring. Subscriptions are available through your Red Hat account manager or a certified Red Hat partner where you can qualify for the Red Hat Hybrid Committed Spend program that spans across clouds and on premise environments. Annual subscriptions can qualify toward the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), if procured through Azure Marketplace.
• PAYG: This payment option provides enhanced flexibility, freedom from longer-term commitments, and qualifies for MACC. This usage-based approach ensures you only pay for the resources you use, allowing for optimal cost allocation and rapid scaling in response to demand fluctuations. However, this model can result in unpredictable costs and necessitates continuous use monitoring to prevent overruns if not carefully monitored.

How do I switch payment models later?

If you commit to one type of payment model and your business needs change such that the other model is more appropriate, there are two methods to do so.

• Switching from PAYG to 1-year or 3-year plans using Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances: You can switch from PAYG to fixed term plans using Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances. This does not change your existing VMs directly, but applies a reservation discount to match the use of running VMs.
• Switching from PAYG to BYOS using Azure Hybrid Benefit: Switching from a PAYG VM from the Azure Marketplace to a BYOS model on a fixed-term using Azure Hybrid Benefit involves converting your existing VM to use your own Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. This is a more permanent change to your VMs. Azure Hybrid Benefit can also be used to convert from BYOS to PAYG.

What do you need to get started?

After you have chosen the deployment and payment options that work best for your organization, you need two things to get started: a Microsoft Azure account and your Red Hat account. If you do not have one or the other, set them up before you begin.

Deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure provides flexibility when it comes to deploying in the cloud. As there are various ways to pay for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure, there are various ways to deploy an instance as well.

Setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux purchased through the Azure Marketplace

If you purchased Red Hat Enterprise Linux from the Azure Marketplace, here's how to get set up.

1. Sign in

Sign into the Azure Marketplace. Search for "Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

2. Choose an offering

Some offerings are marked as Sold by Microsoft. This means your financial agreement and primary support is with Microsoft. Other offerings are labelled Sold and supported by Red Hat. This means your financial agreement and primary support is with Red Hat. Your choice may vary based on your existing relationships with these vendors and your ability to negotiate with your respective account manager. Note that Red Hat and Microsoft have integrated support for this offering, so you will always get the help you need regardless of procurement choice.

Select between these Red Hat Enterprise Linux offerings:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with its Logical Volume Manager (LVM) configured.
  • The "latest minor version" is a rolling release of the latest version
  • Lower-numbered point releases require manual intervention to version-hop
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Raw comes with a RAW disk (and no LVM configured)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux ARM64 is for ARM64 processors unlike the others, which are for x86_64 processors
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP has specific uses with SAP
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for HPC makes it easy to deploy using automation to install high performance computing (HPC) content
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Third Party Linux Migration is a discounted offering for users migrating from another rpm-based Linux distribution and it includes Extended Lifecycle Support (ELS) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ELS provides access to security patches and updates beyond the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 end of maintenance date (June 30, 2024)

3. Create a virtual machine

Regardless of what you choose, the next step is to create a virtual machine.

Select Create a resource > Compute > Virtual Machine, and fill in the required fields.

In the Image drop-down menu, select the version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux you are using.

4. Choose a provisioning agent

Select between using cloud-init, or the WALA agent for provisioning customization:

• WALA is an Azure platform-specific agent used to provision and configure VMs, and handle Azure extensions. The WALA agent is simpler to use and is tightly integrated with Azure.
• cloud-init is a non-Azure-specific agent that does not interact with Azure extensions. The cloud-init agent uses a broader standard and has more flexibility, extensibility, and active development, but is more complex to use and is not directly integrated into Azure.

5. Choose a boot type

Choose between Gen1 (BIOS) or Gen2 (UEFI) boot.

• BIOS is older, has greater backward compatibility
• UEFI is newer, boots faster, and has more compatibility with newer technologies

6. Connect to your VM

Go to your VM overview page and select Connect to open a remote shell (using SSH) into your instance.

Installing a previously deployed on-premise Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance

Transferring from a previously deployed on-premise Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance requires a few additional steps before you do the setup in the previous section. Before you start, you should also assess plans around downtime and data transfer costs.

This process is working from the assumption you are moving from a virtualized environment. If your on-premise instance was running on bare metal, this process might have additional steps that are not included here.

1. Make a backup

Making a backup is a critical step of this procedure. You will be making core changes to your system, and a good backup may be your only recovery method if things do not go as planned.

2. Create a disk image of the on-premise instance

If you're able to stop the server, you can create the image using the dd command. If you are unable to stop the server, you can create the image using Logical volume management (LVM).

Save this disk image to a file.

3. Upload the disk image to Azure Blob Storage

Sign in to the Azure Portal and navigate to Storage accounts. Create a new storage account or use an existing one.

Inside the storage account, create a Blob container, and upload the disk image file to the Blob container.

4. Create a managed disk from the disk image

In the Azure Portal, navigate to Disks under Compute.

Select Create and select the option to create a disk from a Blob. Point it to the Blob where you uploaded your disk image.

5. Create a Virtual Machine from the managed disk

Still in the Azure Portal, navigate to Virtual Machines.

Click on Create and select the option to create a VM from a managed disk. Make sure to specify the correct settings that match your on-premise deployment, such as VM size, networking options, and so on.

6. Launch the VM

Once your managed disk is ready, you can create a new VM from it. From there, the process is similar to creating any other Azure VM. Configure the VM details, add storage if needed, configure networking, review, and then create the VM.

7. Configure to match your on-premise deployment

Once your instance is running, you may need to perform additional configuration. Connect to the instance and ensure everything is running as expected. You may need to do updates, change configurations, or make other changes to match the on-premise instance.

Conclusion

Leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure can significantly enhance your cloud infrastructure's scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. By following the tips and guidelines outlined in this article, you can optimize your deployment, configuration, and management processes, enabling a seamless transition to the cloud. Whether you're migrating an existing workload or starting fresh, understanding the purchasing options, deployment models, and support mechanisms helps you make informed decisions. With the integrated support from both Red Hat and Microsoft, you can confidently navigate the complexities of cloud computing and fully harness the power of enterprise Linux in the Azure environment.

Learn more about the specific technical processes for setting up Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Microsoft Azure.