Red Hat JBOSS Middleware Subscription Guide

Software publishers

Red Hat JBOSS Middleware Subscription Guide

This article is a guide to Red Hat JBOSS Middleware. See also our guide to Red Hat Enterprise Linux here.

Subscriptions

A Red Hat subscription is required for “each and every instance or installation”, in whole or in part, of a JBOSS product being used in your environment. These are acquired in increments of 16 or 64 processor cores.

Depending on your server configurations, you find yourself with “spare” capacity. For example, a server with 40 cores will require 3 x 16 core subscriptions – giving 8 “spare” cores, however these could be used to cover another server running the same JBOSS product.

JBOSS Middleware Portfolio

The JBOSS portfolio includes:

• Red Hat JBOSS Enterprise Application Platform (EAP)
• Red Hat JBOSS Web Server
• Red Hat JBOSS Data Grid
• Red Hat JBOSS A-MQ
• Red Hat JBOSS Fuse
• Red Hat JBOSS Fuse Service Works
• Red Hat JBOSS Data Virtualization
• Red Hat JBOSS BRMS
• Red Hat JBOSS BPM Suite
• Red Hat JBOSS Operations Network

Virtual Environment

Red Hat JBOSS subscriptions are based on the lesser of:

Number of virtual processor cores in use across the virtual machines

Or

Number of physical cores in the server.

Example – a server with 12 physical cores but only 8 allocated to VMs would require 8 core subscriptions.

 

Physical Environment

Here, a subscription is required for each physical processor core in use by the Red Hat JBOSS software; however, Red Hat recognise Operating System partitioning as a valid means of reducing the number of required subscriptions.

Example – a server with 16 physical cores, partitioned into 2 lots of 8 and JBOSS running in just one partition would require just 8 core subscriptions.

Ultimately, whichever is less – the total number of virtual cores or physical cores – is the amount of processor cores to be covered.

Multiple Servers

Where a single JBOSS product is deployed across multiple servers, the total number of processor cores is added together.

For example, if JBOSS Web Server is installed on 3 servers each with 12 cores, the total subscription required is 36 cores.

However, if different JBOSS products are deployed, each is sized separately.

Example – If JBOSS EAP is installed on a server with 12 cores, Web Server on a server with 8 cores and Fuse on a server with 16 cores – this would not be a total of 36 cores, rather:

• 12 cores for EAP
• 8 cores for Web Server
• 16 cores for Fuse

Development

Cores being used in a development environment are not required to be covered. Instead, every 16 cores of subscription purchased for other parts of the business allow use by up to 25 developers.

All subscriptions include development use for ALL products in the JBOSS Middleware portfolio, although support is only provided for the subscribed product.

Disaster Recovery

Test

This environment is typically used for things such as:

• Integration testing
• Functionality/Performance testing
• Scalability testing

And can also be referred to as:

• Quality Assurance (QA)
• Continuous Integration Platform
• Staging
• Pre-production
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

Subscriptions are required for all cores in this environment.

Hot/Warm Disaster Recovery (DR) & Failover

This environment typically mirrors the production environment and the JBOSS software is “actively running” and able to accept system traffic.

Subscriptions are required for all cores in this environment.

Cold Disaster Recovery (DR)

In this environment, the JBOSS product may be installed on the servers but cannot be active, other than infrequent (no more than quarterly) disaster recovery testing.

Subscriptions are NOT required for cores in this environment.

Example:

Public Cloud

The Red Hat Cloud Access program currently allows:

• Red Hat JBOSS Enterprise Application Platform
• Red Hat JBOSS Web Server

To be used within a certified public cloud environment. For any other JBOSS Middleware products, negotiation with Red Hat is required.

Support

There are 2 levels of support for Production environments, Standard and Premium.

Response times vary between the 2 levels of support, across the 4 different levels of incident severity.

 

JBOSS	Standard	Premium
Hours of coverage	Standard business hours	Standard business hours (24×7 for severity 1 & 2)
Support Channel	Web & phone	Web & phone
Number of cases	Unlimited	Unlimited
Response times	Initial & ongoing	Initial	Ongoing
Severity 1	1 business hour	1 hour	1 hour/as agreed
Severity 2	4 business hours	2 hours	4 hours/as agreed
Severity 3	1 business day	4 business hours	8 business hours/as agreed
Severity 4	2 business days	8 business hours	2 business days/as agreed

Patches

Organisations must be careful when it comes to what patches are applied and by whom. In most cases, applying patches/updates/bug fixes etc. that are not provided directly by Red Hat will invalidate the Red Hat support contract.

Some 3^rd party vendors such as IBM & HP are authorised Red Hat support partners while others, such as Oracle and Novell, are not.

All or Nothing rule

Appendix 1, section 1.2 of the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement covers what is known as the “All or Nothing” rule:

“While you have subscriptions entitling you to receive Subscription Services for a Red Hat Product, you are required to purchase Subscription Services in a quantity equal to the total number of Units of that Red Hat Product (including variants or components thereof).”

This means that, within a product family, you cannot pick and choose which installations are covered with active Subscription Services, i.e. if you have 19 JBOSS instances, you either have to purchase 0 subscriptions or 19.

3^rd Party Access

The Red Hat Enterprise Agreement also includes details of the types of use that are not permitted with these Subscriptions:

“A Software Subscription provides you with ongoing access to a variety of services for your personal (internal) use. Accordingly, providing our services to, or using for the benefit of, a third party (for example, using Subscription Services to provide hosting services, managed services, Internet service provider (ISP) services, or third party access* to or use of the Subscription Services) is a material breach of the Agreement.”

*Despite this, 3^rd parties such as “contractors, sub-contractors and outsourcing vendors” may use your Subscription Services, providing you remain responsible for all obligations under the Enterprise Agreement.

It then goes on to say:

“The foregoing sentence is not intended to limit your internal use of the Software to run a web site and/or to offer your own software as a service, provided such web site or service (a) does not include a distribution, sale or resale of any of the Subscription Services and (b) provides as the primary component of the web site or service a material value added application other than the Software and/or Subscription Service.”

Offering a chargeable service using Red Hat Subscription Services products is expressly prohibited. Any services being offered must be free of charge and offer additional value over the base Red Hat product. For organisations looking to offer chargeable services based on Red Hat technologies, they should look at the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program.

Overall terms are contained within the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement; region specific versions of which can be found here – https://www.redhat.com/en/about/agreements

 

Image credit

Can’t find what you’re looking for?