Red Hat Licensing the complexity

•Red Hat products are only available through subscriptions this adds complexity as you have to manage your subscriptions in terms of contract start and end dates.

•Red Hat offers support across its whole range of licensable products

A subscription is required for each and every instance or installation”.

It is often hard to track all of the active Red Hat Subscription and analysis is needed once subscriptions expire as customers Red Hat environments are often very different than when the licenses were purchased.

The main metric used is based on socket pairs so complete hardware inventory is needed to accurately license Red Hat.

•The subscription model does allow for benefits such as one all-inclusive price with no Client Access Licenses and unbudgeted costs for example.

•The support levels vary in cost so when purchasing Red Hat licenses customers should be  aware of which applications are mission critical.

•Beware of the backlog of support that could be requested in the event of an audit.