Understanding Subscription Stacking in Red Hat Subscription Management

Updated

What is subscription stacking?


At the start of October 2013, Red Hat introduced a new Pricing and Subscription Model. We call this the 2013 Packaging Model for convenience.

This model has been designed to allow more flexibility with subscriptions and to allow end users to assign subscriptions between virtual and physical machines as required and makes p2v migration a less complicated procedure.

Traditionally, entitlements have been assigned to an individual machine. Each entitlement has been sized according to the hardware it will be used on.

With the 2013 Packaging Model, customers now have the option to use "Stackable Subscriptions". These subscriptions cover two CPU Sockets per SKU.

For example; to correctly entitle a six CPU socket computer, the administrator will need to assign three Two-socket subscriptions.

A Two-Socket Entitlement may be used instead, to entitle up to two Virtual Machines. Those VMs may be running on any hypervisor.

Why should I use subscription stacking?


Subscription stacking offers some benefits for the administrator of a large enterprise.
  • It simplifies the purchase process.
    • By using stacking, you only need to know the number of sockets in a machine and the support level required.
    • You no longer need to buy specific subscriptions for Virtual Machines.
    • A Two-Socket Subscription can be used on an installed piece of hardware, or instead, applied to two VMs.
  • Subscription Manager makes it easier to see the current status of your installations for compliance reporting and makes it easier to fix those issues.

What are the benefits of subscription stacking?


To make use of Subscription Stacking, you need three things.
  • You must be using a Subscription Management Application.
    • At the moment, Satellite 5.6 (or greater) and Subscription Manager 1.2 (or greater) are the supported options for this.
  • You must have purchased suitable Subscriptions via your existing sales channel.
  • An up to date distributor application such as subscription-manager
    • For RHEL 6.5 and above, subscription manager is the latest version.
    • For RHEL 6.4 or earlier, you must update subscription-manager, please see

What use case examples do you have?


We have five scenarios available as examples.

How do I migrate from classic subscriptions to the 2013 Packaging Model?


The migration path to the new subscription management tools is documented in the [Subscription Management Guide](https://access.redhat.com/site/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Subscription_Management/1/html/Subscription_Concepts_and_Workflows/rhn-migration-workflow.html)

Are there any known Issues?


Layered products such as Scalable Filesystem are added on top of Stacked Subscriptions
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