Installations requiring more than one license type per installation (RedHat Enterprise Linux)

[dimitrisala]

Hi,

I have the scenario where we have purchased RedHat Enterprise Linux Subscriptions (Standard/Premium) + the Extended Support Lifecycle License which is required in addition to the Standard/Premium subscription.

The entitlements have been created using the PPN provided (e.g RH00009 [RHEL Server license] + RH00270 [RHEL Extended Lifecycle Support]).

The issue I am having is that the Extended Lifecycle Support licenses are being counted as additional entitlements for RHEL as opposed to an "add-on", where a single server installation (per socket pair) needs to consume both licenses.

What is the best practice when configuring this?

Can suites be used in some way, or will configuring the Extended Lifecycle Support license with a license type of 'Upgrade' achieve the desired outcome?

To summarise more generally, where we have a single installation that requires more than 1 type of license entitlement to be considered 'compliant' what is the best practice?

[dreinhardt]

Hi @dimitrisala,

A really interesting use case, thanks for the question.
The setup is actually a bit more complicated because both PPNs refer to the same product/software model. As you have already noticed, both entitlements appear under one software model and only increase consumption.

I briefly considered using a second software model including the condition name to link the ELS entitlements, but here too we come up against the design of SAM Pro and its limitations. The Reconcile recognizes two identical software models (for the same product with not varaition) in this setup and then decides “randomly” which one to assign the consumption to - thus not helpful.

I can only think of the following two options at the moment:
1) You change the ELS type to “Maintenance” and link it to the base license. This way, the consumption will continue to be counted only on the base license, but we won't have any license duplication. The interpretation would then be that as long as the maintenance license is valid and linked to the base license, all detected servers are covered by both license types (Server & Support).

2) You need an additional software model including condition so that the correct consumption are not automatically recognized. And in the second step, you have to manually enter all covered devices as an allocation to the entitlement - this way you create a corresponding consumption for both entitlement types. However, I find this solution more prone to errors because you have to regularly check and update the allocations.

Best, Dennis

[dimitrisala]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for the suggestions. I was also thinking of going with option 1 to set up the ELS with a License type of Maintenance, however the issue I am having is that the ELS only applies to subset of the server fleet (e.g 500 subscription licenses for standard/premium support + 200 ELS to cover the additional support on 200 of the 500 required). By setting up the standard/premium license as perpetual and the ELS as Maintenace I then have the issue with only the qty of 200 being complaint.

Creating a separate software model seems to be the only viable option given the design of SAM Pro. I don't quite get your point on needing to manually allocate though. If a separate software model is created with the same discovery map (or similar perhaps with just some additional version filters) would these not show up in the license workbench as a separate line item, or would I also need to create a custom 'Product' for this new software model as well so it doesn't reconcile and roll-up to the 'RedHat Enterprise Linux' product?

[IT-SAM]

It has been over a year since the initial post.  Does ServiceNow have a solution for this yet?

[MikeW0609686430]

The way I handle this is to create a 'generic' software model (RedHat Enterprise Linux) for ESU  and link the ESU software entitlement to this model. I then add a sw install condition on the software model so that the license calculator only counts pre-RHEL 8 installs against this software model.