Switching Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) VMs from PAYG to BYOS model

In Azure, you have two deployment models to choose from when deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux VMs (RHEL):

• PAYG - Pay as you go
• BYOS - Bring your own subscription

If you selected Pay as you go in the beginning and want to switch to bring your own subscription (i.e. BYOS) model and do not want to do this per VM manually, then you can leverage the code sample from this post to automate the process easily.

Cost difference: We did the math and found that BYOS works out to be cheaper. Although, the difference is not huge.

Advantages with BYOS: Other than the cost difference there are two main advantages that you get with BYOS:

1. You get direct support from the Red Hat support team. With the Pay-as-you-go model, you need to open a ticket with Microsoft, and then when Microsoft support deems that the issue pertains to RHEL OS, then RHEL subject matter expert is involved to help you.
2. You get extended support for the OS versions that are out of general support.

The second advantage itself is huge that even if you need to pay extra you would want that in your enterprise environments.

Switching to BYOS from the Portal

You can switch a VM from PAYG to BYOS directly from the Azure portal. To do this navigate to the VM within the Azure portal and navigate to the Configurations section. Then in the drop-down select the option for "Red Hat Enterprise Linux". Review and select the "Yes" radio button to use an existing RHEL subscription. Select the checkbox to confirm that you have an eligible RHEL subscription that you can attach to this VM.

Automating the Process

In the next post, we will look at the code sample for automating the process of upgrading the licensing from PAYG to BYOS. You can check this out here: Automating the enabling of BYOS licensing for all Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) VMs in Azure - Code Sample

Official Reference: How Azure Hybrid Benefit for PAYG Marketplace VMs applies for Linux virtual machines