How to Register VMware ESXi Guests to the Red Hat Customer Portal using virt-who

Environment

• Certificate-based subscription (RHSM)
• VMware ESX hypervisor
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest

Issue

• How do I configure virt-who for use with VMware ESX hypervisors?
• How do I register VMware ESX host/hypervisor to customer portal to use virtual subscriptions?
• How do I register a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual system running on an ESX hypervisor to consume a Virtual Datacenter subscription?
• How do I install the virt-who package?

Resolution

To have a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine consume a virtual entitlement (VDC Subscription) when running on an ESX host, virt-who will need to be configured on the RHEL VM.

• Make sure the virt-who is installed:

  # rpm -qa virt-who
  

• If virt-who is not installed:

  # yum install virt-who
  

• Register the guest via Subscription Management but do not apply any entitlements yet:

  # subscription-manager register
  

• Change the configuration in legacy virt-who file:

  # vi /etc/sysconfig/virt-who
  --enable communication to portal
  VIRTWHO_SAM=1
  

• Obtain the org name from the following command:

  # subscription-manager identity
  Current identity is: 5acd8904-25fc-498e-ad9d-239d262be0aa
  name: system1.example.redhat.com
  org name: 7086261
  org ID: 7086261
  

• Configure virt-who options in /etc/virt-who.d/lab-esx.conf

  # vi /etc/virt-who.d/lab-esx.conf
  [lab-esx]
  type=esx
  server=vcenter.example.com
  username=ro-virtwho-user
  encrypted_password=
  owner=ORG_LABEL or ORG_ID
  env=Library
  hypervisor_id=hostname
  

To generate encrypted passwords for the virt-who configuration file

• Execute virt-who-password command

  [root@satellite ~]# virt-who-password 
  Password: 
  Use following as value for encrypted_password key in the configuration file:
  924be7fb0a82ad7f11fcf545eed42f72
  

• Start and enable the virt-who service to run after every reboot.

  [root@satellite ~]# systemctl start virt-who; systemctl enable virt-who
  

• Monitor /var/log/rhsm/rhsm.log for any virt-who related errors.

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

Diagnostic Steps

• For proper virt-who reporting with the Customer Portal the rhsm.log should look as below

[root@satellite ~]# tail -f -n0 /var/log/rhsm/rhsm.log
2015-12-29 11:08:11,254 [INFO]  @subscriptionmanager.py:165 - Sending update in hosts-to-guests mapping: {
    "cf482bb9-7542-3666-8dea-28cabb6dc8d3": [
        {
            "guestId": "4234f686-233b-910b-feed-e3a401017947", 
            "state": 1, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 1, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "42348972-5976-2444-be6d-9075204e1032", 
            "state": 5, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 0, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "564d9712-1eb8-c3b1-41bd-60879e1e4553", 
            "state": 1, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 1, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "4234ff72-bc4a-ef8e-467c-a0d61515da6b", 
            "state": 1, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 1, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "564de0f9-7565-3037-791b-9a533576e0c5", 
            "state": 1, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 1, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "564dd5ef-0662-a4f6-f47a-0655889252d9", 
            "state": 5, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 0, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }, 
        {
            "guestId": "564dfec6-d4ec-111d-9138-d5ce50e33429", 
            "state": 1, 
            "attributes": {
                "active": 1, 
                "virtWhoType": "esx", 
                "hypervisorType": "vmware"
            }
        }

• In case of any issues, kindly refer to troubleshooting virt-who KB article Troubleshooting "virt-who/vCenter" connection problems. "virt-who" can not perform hosts-to-guests mapping

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