How to configure virt-who for Nutanix AHV to work with RHSM

Updated

Issue

  • How do I configure virt-who for Nutanix AHV to work with RHSM?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9, 10
  • Red Hat Subscription Management(RHSM)
  • Red Hat Customer Portal
  • Nutanix AHV Hypervisor

Resolution

Prerequisites

  • A virtual machine running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 or 8.4 to host the virt-who agent.

  • An updated virt-who agent that supports registration of Nutanix AHV:

  • The Virtual Machine (VM) must have internet connectivity. Because virt-who requires internet connectivity to communicate with customer portal to report the Hypervisors profile on the Red Hat Customer Portal. If there is any firewall or proxy in the network, the URLs provided in How to access Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM) through a firewall or proxy will need to be whitelisted.

  • Proper communication between the Hypervisor/Host and the guest/VM needs to be possible.

  • The hypervisor is not required to have a connection to the internet/the Customer portal.

  • When using a RHEL7 guest on Nutanix AHV, RHEL8.2, RHEL8.4 or later is also required to run virt-who.

Procedure

  • Configure virt-who: On the Physical system, edit the '/etc/virt-who.d/' file to enable the AHV host:

     # vi /etc/virt-who.d/virt-who.conf
 
 [ahv]
 type=ahv
 server=(Type the IP address of either the Prism Element or Prism Central web console)
 username=(The user name of either the Prism Element or Prism Central web console)
 password=(The password of either the Prism Element or Prism Central web console)
 owner=(org ID from the Command # subscription-manager identity)
 hypervisor_id=hostname
 prism_central=(Set this value to true if you are connecting to Prism Central. Set this value to false if you are connecting to Prism Element)
 update_interval = 60 (The frequency of VM-to-host mapping updates)
 internal_debug=(When set to true, the output of the REST API calls is printed)

IMPORTANT:

The server field expects an ip address. Nutanix does not support FQDN for this field

The update_interval field controls the frequency of VM-to-host mapping updates for AHV. This field does not control how often the data is synchronized with RHSM. Synchronization with RHSM is configured using the interval field in the system wide configuration file /etc/virt-who.conf

The internal_debug field provides extra AHV debug information when used in tandem with the debug field in the system wide configuration file /etc/virt-who.conf.

Do not provide hypervisor details in the template.conf file present in the "/etc/virt-who.d" directory because when the virt-who package is updated, it will clear all the data present in it.

  • After Configuring start and enable the virt-who service.

     $ systemctl enable virt-who --now

  • Once done, the Nutanix AHV hypervisors will be available on the This content is not included.Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console inventory.

  • Use the below command to register RHEL guests VMs and access the repos directly:-

     # subscription-manager register 
 # yum repolist -v

  • Track the subscription usage in This content is not included.Subscription Watch service available in Hybrid Cloud Console.

  • AHV uses port 9440 for communication. This is the port for the management interface.

  • If testing, troubleshooting, or only 1 report is needed, stop the virt-who service if running and run the virt-who service in one shot mode with debug to get details of the virt-who run. This should be included in your case update to support should you open a case.

     $ systemctl stop virt-who
 $ virt-who -od

For more KB articles/solutions related to Virt-who and Virtual Datacenter (VDC) Subscriptions Issues, please refer to the Consolidated Troubleshooting Article for Virt-who and Virtual Datacenter (VDC) Subscriptions Issues

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