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Virtualization Entitlements

Assumptions:

  • Some guests don’t have information identifying their host machines
  • There’s no single consumer fact that identifies guest as such (distinct virtualization platforms can be identified by different facts)
  • For Guest+Host model, if guest consumes an entitlement first, the free RHEL host entitlement is not going to be used.

In this light:

  • RHSM client will have to be updated to query host for its host id, possibly to collect more facts about the consumer (might be virtualization-platform specific)
  • a subset of rules will have to be run to identify if a given consumer is a guest or a host for rules that require this distinction

The logic below is going to be shared for all virtualization platforms:

Guest Only

After rules identifying guest/host have been run, execute the guest-only rule using the result. No changes for registration/consumption of an entitlement are necessary.

Physical Only

After rules identifying guest/host have been run, execute the host-only rule using the result. No changes for registration/consumption of an entitlement are necessary.

Guest+Host

There are two possible workflows, depending on whether RHEL host is used or not.

With RHEL host:

A user installs RHEL host, and registers it. Upon consumption of a G+H:4 entitlement:

  • Host part of G+H is consumed by the physical host;
  • A pool consisting of 4 Guest entitlements with “host_id_restricted” set to physical host id is created.
  • On guest registration, rhsm client may have to query the host for its id, and set host_id in facts
  • Guests consume entitlements from this pool as usual, but an additional check of host id is performed by the rules engine.

With only Guest entitlements of G+H being consumed (such as in the case with VMWare host):

  • On guest registration, rhsm client may have to query the host for its id, and set host_id in facts

Upon consumption of the first G+H:4 entitlement by a Guest:

  • A pool consisting of 4 Guest entitlements with “host_id_restricted” set to physical host id is created.
  • An entitlement from the pool above is consumed by the guest.
Last modified on 28 March 2024