Managing Red Hat subscriptions

orcharhino can import content from the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN). orcharhino requires a Red Hat subscription manifest to find, access, and download content from the corresponding repositories. You must have a Red Hat subscription manifest containing a subscription allocation for each organization on orcharhino Server. All subscription information is available in your Red Hat Customer Portal account.

Use this chapter to import a Red Hat subscription manifest and manage the manifest within the orcharhino management UI.

Subscription allocations and organizations

You can manage more than one organization if you have more than one subscription allocation. orcharhino requires a single allocation for each organization configured in orcharhino Server. The advantage of this is that each organization maintains separate subscriptions so that you can support multiple organizations, each with their own Red Hat accounts.

Future-dated subscriptions

You can use future-dated subscriptions in a subscription manifest. When you add future-dated subscriptions to your manifest before the expiry date of the existing subscriptions, you can have uninterrupted access to repositories.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure you have a Red Hat subscription manifest.

    • If your orcharhino is connected, use the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console to create the manifest.

    • If your orcharhino is disconnected, use the Red Hat Customer Portal to create the manifest.

Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on managed hosts requires a subscription from Red Hat. Ensure to provide valid licenses for all used Red Hat products. Using insufficient, invalid, or otherwise inadequate licenses might violate your terms with Red Hat.

We recommend using a Manifest file from your Red Hat account to import available content to orcharhino. Navigate to Content > Subscriptions to see available and consumed Red Hat subscriptions.

Importing a Red Hat subscription manifest into orcharhino Server

Use the following procedure to import a Red Hat subscription manifest into orcharhino Server.

Simple Content Access (SCA) is set on the organization, not the manifest. Importing a manifest does not change your organization’s Simple Content Access status.
Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, ensure the context is set to the organization you want to use.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions and click Manage Manifest.

  3. In the Manage Manifest window, click Choose File.

  4. Navigate to the location that contains the Red Hat subscription manifest file, then click Open.

CLI procedure

  1. Copy the Red Hat subscription manifest file from your local machine to orcharhino Server:

    $ scp ~/manifest_file.zip root@orcharhino.example.com:~/.

  2. Log in to orcharhino Server as the root user and import the Red Hat subscription manifest file:

    # hammer subscription upload \
--file ~/manifest_file.zip \
--organization "My_Organization"

You can now enable repositories and import Red Hat content. For more information, see Importing Content in Managing Content.

Locating a Red Hat subscription

When you import a Red Hat subscription manifest into orcharhino Server, the subscriptions from your manifest are listed in the Subscriptions window. If you have a high volume of subscriptions, you can filter the results to find a specific subscription.

Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, ensure the context is set to the organization you want to use.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions.

  3. In the Subscriptions window, click the Search field to view the list of search criteria for building your search query.

  4. Select search criteria to display further options.

  5. When you have built your search query, click the search icon.

For example, if you place your cursor in the Search field and select expires, then press the space bar, another list appears with the options of placing a >, <, or = character. If you select > and press the space bar, another list of automatic options appears. You can also enter your own criteria.

Adding Red Hat subscriptions to subscription manifests

Use the following procedure to add Red Hat subscriptions to a subscription manifest in the orcharhino management UI.

Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, ensure the context is set to the organization you want to use.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions.

  3. In the Subscriptions window, click Add Subscriptions.

  4. On the row of each subscription you want to add, enter the quantity in the Quantity to Allocate column.

  5. Click Submit

Removing Red Hat subscriptions from subscription manifests

Use the following procedure to remove Red Hat subscriptions from a subscription manifest in the orcharhino management UI.

Manifests must not be deleted. If you delete the manifest from the Red Hat Customer Portal or in the orcharhino management UI, all of the entitlements for all of your content hosts will be removed.
Prerequisites
Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, ensure the context is set to the organization you want to use.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions.

  3. On the row of each subscription you want to remove, select the corresponding checkbox.

  4. Click Delete, and then confirm deletion.

Updating and refreshing Red Hat subscription manifests

Every time that you change a subscription allocation, you must refresh the manifest to reflect these changes. For example, you must refresh the manifest if you take any of the following actions:

  • Renewing a subscription

  • Adjusting subscription quantities

  • Purchasing additional subscriptions

You can refresh the manifest directly in the orcharhino management UI. Alternatively, you can import an updated manifest that contains the changes.

Procedure

  1. In the orcharhino management UI, ensure the context is set to the organization you want to use.

  2. In the orcharhino management UI, navigate to Content > Subscriptions.

  3. In the Subscriptions window, click Manage Manifest.

  4. In the Manage Manifest window, click Refresh.

Content Delivery Network structure

Information in this section only applies if you consume Red Hat content using a Red Hat manifest.

Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN), located at cdn.redhat.com, is a geographically distributed series of static webservers which include content and errata designed to be used by systems. This content can be accessed directly through a system registered using Subscription Manager or through the orcharhino management UI. The accessible subset of the CDN is configured through content available to a system using Red Hat Subscription Management or using orcharhino Server.

Red Hat Content Delivery network is protected by X.509 certificate authentication to ensure that only valid users can access it.

Directory structure of the CDN
$ tree -d -L 11
└── content  (1)
    ├── beta  (2)
    │   └── rhel  (3)
    │       └── server  (4)
    │           └── 7 (5)
    │               └── x86_64  (6)
    │                   └── sat-tools  (7)
    └── dist
        └── rhel
            └── server
                └── 7
                ├── 7.2
                │   └── x86_64
                │       └── kickstart
                └── 7Server
                    └── x86_64
                        └── os
1 The content directory.
2 Directory responsible for the lifecycle of the content. Common directories include beta (for Beta code), dist (for Production) and eus (For Extended Update Support) directories.
3 Directory responsible for the product name. Usually rhel for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
4 Directory responsible for the type of the product. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux this might include server, workstation, and computenode directories.
5 Directory responsible for the release version, such as 7, 7.2 or 7Server.
6 Directory responsible for the base architecture, such as i386 or x86_64.
7 Directory responsible for the repository name, such as sat-tools, kickstart, rhscl. Some components have additional subdirectories which might vary.

This directory structure is also used in the Red Hat Subscription Manifest.

The text and illustrations on this page are licensed by ATIX AG under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International ("CC BY-SA 4.0") license. This page also contains text from the official Foreman documentation which uses the same license ("CC BY-SA 4.0").