Overview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2013 Packaging Model

To provide a more flexible and intuitive way of managing your Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, Red Hat introduced the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 2013 packaging model. This model is designed to suit customers with growing needs to deploy both physical and virtual systems in large, constantly changing datacenters.

Use this article as a starting point to understanding how the 2013 model works and how you can implement and manage subscription types for your own RHEL systems. Here you will find links to articles that illustrate different subscription scenarios, show how subscription tools work together, and describe issues you may encounter.

Subscription Scenarios for the 2013 Packaging Model

To better understand how the 2013 packaging model works, we create a set of scenarios that show how to use Subscription Manager tools to apply your Red Hat subscriptions to different configurations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) systems. Follow these links to read about those different scenarios:

• Using RHEL subscriptions (2013 packaging): Scenario 1 - Basic RHEL server: This scenario describes how to subscribe a single, two-socket computer where you want to run RHEL with no additional virtual machines.

• Using RHEL subscriptions (2013 packaging): Scenario 2 - Basic RHEL hypervisor: This scenario describes how to subscribe a single, two-socket computer where you want to run RHEL as a hypervisor with two additional virtual machines.

• Using RHEL subscriptions (2013 packaging): Scenario 3 - RHEL server, stackable SKUs: This scenario describes how to subscribe a single, four-socket computer where RHEL is not run as a hypervisor (no virtual machines running on it).

• Using RHEL subscriptions (2013 packaging): Scenario 4 - RHEL datacenter: This scenario has been removed.

• Using RHEL subscriptions (2013 packaging): Scenario 5 - Virtual Datacenter: This scenario describes how to subscribe an unlimited set of RHEL virtual machines that are running on a non-RHEL hypervisor. The underlying hypervisors can be running VMWare or Microsoft HyperV.

Details and Issues Relating to 2013 Subscriptions

The following list provides links to articles and solutions that describe different aspects of the 2013 model, including deeper descriptions of features and potential issues you may encounter when using 2013 model subscriptions:

• Understanding Subscription Stacking in Red Hat Subscription Management: This article describes how to combine subscriptions (referred to as stacking) to enable RHEL entitlements on computers with multiple CPU sockets.

• How does Red Hat calculate sockets for the 2013 Packaging Model?: Instance-based subscriptions used with the 2013 packaging model are based on the number of sockets on each computer system you are subscribing. This article describes how socket numbers are calculated by subscription-manager.

• Does virt-who Support Xen Full Virtualization on IA64 Hardware?: This solution addresses the issue of using virt-who (which provides information from hypervisors about virtual machines they have running) on IA64 hardware and Xen virtualization.

• Which hypervisors allow virt-who to query virtual machines?: This article describes which hypervisors support the virt-who tool for querying hypervisors about the virtual machines they are running.

• How can I autosubscribe systems via subscription-manager in a kickstart file?: When you entitle systems using the 2013 model from a kickstart, the key is to use subscription-manager rather that RHN classic tools. This article describes how to do that.

• What is "subscription-manager clean" and why do I need it?: This article describes how to clean subscription manager data from a RHEL system, so it can be re-subscribed without unregistering the system.

• How to use updated subscription-management client tools on older versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: This article describes which RHEL releases are able to support the 2013 packaging model subscriptions and which components need to be upgraded to take advantage of the new subscriptions.

• With RHN Classic and SAM, Why Does Server and Client Compliance Reporting Disagree?: This article tells you how you can upgrade to newer subscription tools to avoid reporting discrepancies that can arise when using the new subscriptions with older Subscription Manager tools.

• Updating rhn-client to enable enhanced reporting with Satellite or RHN: This article describes support for using the 2013 model subscriptions on older RHEL systems and older Red Hat Satellite systems.