An Introduction to Red Hat OS and Applications
With the increased focus on technology platforms and application migrations into public cloud, and emphasis on provisioning servers quickly, it is important to ensure that both licensing and license management are not bottlenecks in the process. Furthermore, it’s imperative to ensure compliance while saving costs and choosing the most efficient licensing method for your environment and workload.
In our experience, in the race to cloud adoption and pressure to realise the benefits thereof, it’s not unusual for some organisations to overlook some of the nuances and technicalities of their enterprise license contracts.
As experts in enterprise license optimisation, we are keenly aware that this principle applies to most Tier 1 vendors. This post will focus on Red Hat and provide an overview on how Red Hat subscriptions are purchased and managed with an emphasis on how these subscriptions are applied to a cloud environment.
What is Red Hat?
For background purposes, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the operating system offering of Red Hat) is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Linux itself is an Open-Source operating system released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
So at this point, it’s important to explain how Red Hat is licensed and what this means from a license management perspective.
- Red Hat does not use a ‘license plus’ support licensing metric.
- All Red Hat products use the ‘Support Subscription’ metric. This means what you purchase from Red Hat is:
> Technical support
> Feature/Compatibility updates
> Security updates
> Bug fixes
> Source code and documentation
• It is possible to use Red Hat products for free however there are certain clauses that might compel you to purchase some form of support.
This ‘support subscription’ metric can often be confused or overlooked potentially impacting how you choose to manage your subscriptions. The subscriptions model gives you the flexibility to amend, recycle and adjust your quantities and product mix annually (depending on the term of your agreement). This unlike rigid license plus support agreements, is an advantage for the subscription model. In essence, you can change your product mix and quantities to fit your needs. It’s important to be clear on the distinction.
Red Hat License Metrics
Moving on from the general explanation above, I’ll go through Red Hat’s license metrics.
Red Hat products fall under 2 license metrics — one for the OS support and the other for application software:
Per Socket / Per VM — As a Red Hat customer, you have the choice of deploying your Red Hat Enterprise Linux products on either a physical or virtual basis.
- If you are deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux on physical hardware, your subscriptions are based on the number of socket pairs in the systems used. This model is best for provisioning to physical hardware or as virtual instances in the cloud.
- If you are deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a virtual environment, your subscriptions are based on the number of virtual instance pairs running the product. This model is best for low and medium density virtual environments.
This metric applies to all Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions and all its flavours including the Smart Virtualisation and Smart Management offerings.
Per Core/vCPU — Red Hat application services products are sold in units of “core bands” or core multiples including 2-core, 4-core, 16-core, and 64-core units. In addition, some products may be available for partner embedded use in single-core multiples.
- If you are deploying any Red Hat Applications on physical hardware, your subscriptions are based on the number of partitioned cores the server is deployed on.
- If you are deploying Red Hat Applications in a virtual environment, your subscriptions are based on the number or vCPUs. For every 1 core of Red Hat Applications purchased, this translates to 2vCPUs in the private or public cloud.
How Red Hat is Licensed for the Cloud
Lastly, this section applies to public and private cloud environments.
Public Cloud — Red Hat allows you to migrate your subscriptions into the public cloud, with Red Hat certified cloud providers. However, this must happen through the Red Hat Cloud Access Program and requires pre-approval from Red Hat.
• To license Red Hat OS products in the cloud environment:
- In a highly virtualised environment where it is difficult to determine the spec of the underlying physical host, Red Hat OS is licensed based on the number of virtual instances.
• To license Red Hat Application products in the cloud environment:
- These products fall under the per core subscription metric. This means 2 vCPU in the cloud is equal to one Red Hat core.
- This allows you to multiply your existing per core Red Hat subscriptions. Red Hat also allows you to stack your subscriptions. This also makes migrating into public cloud very attractive.
Summary
Purchasing Red Hat subscriptions is easy and relatively inexpensive compared to other software licenses however, this can lead to inefficient licensing, non-compliance, and poor license management.
Also, as incursions into public cloud increase either via migrating existing servers or provisioning cloud-native environments, it is necessary to not fall into licensing pitfalls, such as:
- License gaps created from decoupling VMs from hosts when migrating into the cloud.
- Choosing incorrectly between BYOL and PAYG especially with regards to support channels.
- Excessive spending due to using less efficient metrics or purchasing more expensive SKUs when they are not needed.
- Poor management of the Red Hat customer portal.
As enterprise licensing specialists, the Version 1 SAM Team can advise and guide you on the most appropriate cost optimisation opportunities for your enterprise software estate, resulting in reduced cost and risk, and improved vendor relationships.
Visit our website for more information or contact us with a question.
About the Author:
Richard Ojo is a SAM Licensing Consultant here at Version 1.
