Reviewing RHEL systems on the Red Hat Customer Portal

In previous posts, we showed you how to enable Simple Content Access (SCA), register your Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with Insights, and tag and review systems. In this third part of our series on Subscription Manager and SCA, we will look at reviewing your RHEL instances in the Red Hat customer portal.

Review your Registered Systems on the Red Hat Customer Portal

1. Click on the Systems tab link in the Red Hat Customer Portal (Note: You need to be in the Subscriptions section on the Red Hat Customer Portal.)

You'll note that there is a question mark (?) by each System Name. This happens when SCA is enabled as you no longer need to attach a subscription to a registered system. If any subscriptions are attached to a registered system, the number of subscriptions attached wil be registered in the third column.

2. To see the details of a registered system, click on the system name and make sure you are on the Details tab page. 

In this example we chose serv01 which does not have any subscriptions attached.

 On the Details tab page, you will notice that the Subscription Management status is unknown and that no subscriptions are attached to the RHEL instance. 3. Click on the Subscriptions tab. You'll notice that there is no subscription information on the Subscriptions Tab page.Note: Even with SCA enabled, you can attach subscriptions to systems if for some reason you want to track and control the subscription usage of a specific add-on like an Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) subscription. 4. To attach a specific subscription — a RHEL 6 ELS subscription, for example — first, find the Pool ID of the subscription you want to attach, and then subscribe to that pool.  

Use subscription-manager list to see that the correct subscription is attached to your RHEL instance. You can also validate that the subscription is attached to your RHEL instance on your Red Hat Customer Portal page under Subscriptions.

# subscription-manager list --available
# subscription-manager subscribe --pool=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# subscription-manager list

5. Choose a RHEL system from the Systems page that has a subscription attached to that system. You will now see the attached subscription and subscription details for that system. 6. Back on the Red Hat Customer Portal page, choose the Subscriptions link. 

In the Subscriptions page, scroll through the list and choose a subscription to review. Make sure you are on the Overview tab of the Subscription page. Here, you can see the subscription quantity available and the number of subscriptions consumed. 7. In the same subscription page, click the Systems tab to see which RHEL instances have the subscription attached to them.

Conclusion

As you adapt to changing development and workload requirements, you need the flexibility to quickly provision and decommission RHEL machines. Simple Content Access and Red Hat Insights provide you with the flexibility you need to separately manage your RHEL content and subscriptions.

Simple Content Access separates RHEL content consumption from subscription management. You no longer have to worry about whether or not a decommissioned RHEL machine is consuming a subscription that is needed elsewhere in your environment.

Customers are still responsible for subscription compliance and Insights provides you with tools to manage your subscription consumption. Insights lets you share your RHEL consumption information across your IT organization, from procurement to IT management to admins responsible for your RHEL systems. 

Custom tagging of your RHEL systems, via Insights, provides you with the ability to create more granular views of your RHEL usage to easily show how and where your RHEL systems are used and deployed.

Simple Content Access with Insights allows you to respond more quickly and efficiently to the constantly changing landscape that makes up your hybrid cloud world. Learn more about Red Hat Insights and how it can help you manage your IT environment.

Reference

• "How do I enable Simple Content Access for Red Hat Subscription Management?" - in the Simple Content Access article

• Subscription Manager Command Cheat Sheet

• System Tags and Groups documentation - Create custom tags for your RHEL systems to use a filter on inventory views