Hybrid cloud your way: Automating the RHEL registration process

In a world where workload automation is easier than ever to develop and manual intervention is lessening by the day, are you getting tired of managing your Red Hat subscriptions day in and day out? Spending hours (if not days) managing contract renewals year in and year out? Are you scratching your head wondering why these menial tasks are even still a thing? 

So why are they? Well, let’s look at these ever-advancing technologies first. You’re building a complex enterprise environment, deploying a number of products across your hybrid cloud, tying together a physical environment, mixed with a virtual environment combining some on-prem, and some hosted in <name your favorite public cloud vendor>. 

With this comes the added complexity of elementary SKU logic that’s become increasingly complex with every new SKU variation created over the years. So now you have to be the logical one and say “this system wants this product, and this SKU provides said product.” From there you map them together and (crossing fingers and toes and eyes) these systems can now consume the content they are hopefully entitled to. Hold on… why is this a you problem? 

Kicking off alongside the RHEL 8.4 Beta launch, we've launched an even better subscription experience with some new improvements that will take some of this responsibility off of your plate, once and for all. 

Automate the Red Hat registration process

Starting with the Cloud Access program, you can now configure your account to automate the registration process when provisioning and deploying new cloud-based systems. With this, it’s easier than ever to get these previously disparate systems connected to Red Hat’s cloud.redhat.com platform, where you can easily manage them with our growing Red Hat Insights ecosystem. 

Once connected, you’ll be able to manage system operational tasks with services like advisor and drift. Security maintenance will be efficiently managed using our vulnerability and compliance services. Finally, with the subscriptions service and resource optimization the business operations of planning for a strong and stable future will be easier than ever.

In addition, we’ve entered the next phase of simple content access where we’re now including Red Hat Subscription Management (RHSM) as a compatible platform. What this means is that whether you’re registering systems via our Red Hat Satellite platform, or directly to Red Hat via RHSM, you can now access your products, your way, without the added burden of attaching subscriptions to each individual system. Register, and run… easy as that.

Cloud Access

As mentioned, along with the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Beta, we’re amplifying the story of this simplified experience for RHEL users running in the public cloud. Not only are the number of steps getting deployed minimal, but we’ve just made it simpler to consume those value-add capabilities that are provided on cloud.redhat.com.

This new product experience allows our users to provide an authentication credential, linking their Red Hat identity to their cloud provider account. Once complete it takes no further effort to enable a number of capabilities including Cloud Access Gold Images, high-precision subscription data, autoregistration and Red Hat Connector.

To elaborate slightly, Cloud Access Gold Images open up the flexibility of users bringing their own subscriptions. Next up, the Subscriptions service normally provides the accuracy of a status within a single day. Now on supported public cloud vendors, we track instances with more precise data points for substantially higher accuracy.

Furthermore, instances can now be configured to connect to cloud.redhat.com automatically. This auto-registration in tandem with Red Hat Connector (which now registers systems to both Red Hat Subscription Management and Red Hat Insights synchronously) removes a number of tedious steps previously required to get systems fully deployed, connected, and active.

Simple Content Access for Red Hat Subscription Management

Simple Content Access removes the complexity of Red Hat’s subscription tools, allowing administrators and developers to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux with minimal configuration, by simply registering a system. The previous requirement of attaching subscriptions is no longer required. For more information on this, keep your eye out for another post in the coming weeks!

It’s time to start managing your hybrid cloud workloads, your way! Head over to the public cloud landing page and Red Hat Cloud Access reference guide and find out more about taking advantage of these new features today.