Red Hat Developer Subscription For Individuals

This lab needs Red Hat subscription content that is not available from community or upstream-only sources. If you do not already have an active Red Hat account with entitlements, the Developer Subscription for Individuals is the easiest zero-cost path to everything the project requires.

What The Developer Subscription Gives You

• CDN access to RHEL content, including the fast-datapath repository required for openvswitch3.6 on the metal host
• a pull secret for OpenShift container image content
• RHEL guest images in qcow2 format
• access to the OpenShift installer and client toolchain
• Red Hat Insights registration for host and guest telemetry

How To Set It Up

1. Create a Red Hat account

Go to the Red Hat Developer portal and create a free account:

• https://developers.redhat.com

If you already have a Red Hat account from a prior engagement, training, or certification, you can use it. You do not need a separate developer account.

2. Activate the developer subscription

Once logged in, visit:

• https://developers.redhat.com/register

Accept the terms. The Developer Subscription for Individuals will appear in your account subscription inventory. If it does not show up immediately, log out and back in.

Verify it is active at:

• https://access.redhat.com/management/subscriptions

You should see a subscription named Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals with a status of Active.

3. Get your pull secret

The OpenShift pull secret is available at:

• https://console.redhat.com/openshift/install/pull-secret

Download it and save it locally. The automation expects a path to this file, configured in your local lab_credentials.yml or passed via lab_execution_pull_secret_file.

4. Get RHSM credentials

You need one of:

• an activation key plus organization ID, or
• your Red Hat account username plus password

For the activation key path, create one at:

• https://console.redhat.com/insights/connector/activation-keys

Your organization ID is visible at:

• https://console.redhat.com/settings/sources

Or retrieve it with:

curl -s -u '<username>' \
  https://subscription.rhsm.redhat.com/subscription/users/<username>/owners \
  | python3 -m json.tool

The key field in the response is your organization ID.

5. Get the RHEL guest image

Download the RHEL 10.1 KVM guest image from:

• https://console.redhat.com/insights/image-builder

Or from the direct downloads page:

• https://access.redhat.com/downloads/content/rhel

Look for the KVM Guest Image artifact in qcow2 format. The automation expects either a local copy at <project-root>/images/rhel-10.1-x86_64-kvm.qcow2 or a direct-download URL in lab_execution_guest_base_image_url.

6. Get the RHEL AMI for the metal host via Red Hat Cloud Access

The current CloudFormation stack expects a private or shared RHEL AMI ID. The preferred way to get this is through the Red Hat Cloud Access program, which shares Gold Images directly into your cloud provider account at no additional image cost beyond the underlying compute.

What Cloud Access is

Cloud Access lets you use your existing Red Hat subscriptions — including the Developer Subscription — in supported public clouds. Instead of paying a per-hour RHEL premium through the cloud provider marketplace, Red Hat shares pre-built Gold Images into your account and you bring your own subscription entitlement.

This is supported on:

• AWS (EC2 AMIs)
• Microsoft Azure (VM images)
• Google Cloud Platform (Compute Engine images)

The mechanics differ slightly per provider, but the model is the same: you enroll the subscription, link your cloud account, and Red Hat shares the image catalog into it.

How to enroll

1. Log in to the Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console:

   • https://console.redhat.com

2. Navigate to the Cloud Access management page:

   • https://console.redhat.com/settings/integrations

3. Add a new cloud provider source:

   • choose AWS (or Azure / GCP if adapting this project for another cloud)
   • provide your AWS account ID
   • Red Hat will share RHEL Gold Images into your account

4. Wait for the images to appear. This can take up to an hour on the first enrollment. Once active, the shared images refresh automatically as Red Hat publishes new builds.

5. Find the shared AMI:

   aws ec2 describe-images \
    --owners 309956199498 \
    --filters "Name=name,Values=RHEL-10.1*" \
    --query 'Images[*].[ImageId,Name,CreationDate]' \
    --output table \
    --region us-east-2
   

   Owner 309956199498 is the Red Hat image-sharing account for Cloud Access. Adjust the region to match your deployment target.

6. Use the AMI ID as the RedHatRhelPrivateAmiId parameter in the host CloudFormation stack.

If Cloud Access is not available

If you cannot enroll in Cloud Access, the fallback is a RHEL Marketplace AMI from the AWS Marketplace. Marketplace AMIs work but carry an additional per-hour RHEL usage charge on top of the EC2 compute cost. They also typically register against RHUI content, so you will need to manually switch the host to CDN subscription after first boot.

Where These Inputs Land In The Project

What To Do Next

Once you have the subscription active and the inputs staged:

• PREREQUISITES — verify the full checklist
• SECRETS — set up lab_credentials.yml safely
• AUTOMATION FLOW — start the build