Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) for RHEL 7 virtual machines in AWS EC2

Documentation
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January 5th, 2025 - As Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (RHEL 7) has reached EOL on June 30, 2024, Red Hat, Inc. announced a 4 years Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) for RHEL 7.

The RHEL 7 ELS is an Add On that can be purchased from AWS Marketplace as well, and can be used together with any RHEL 7 virtual machine running in AWS EC2.

The Pay As You Go (PAYG) price for the RHEL 7 ELS is in addition to the price for the marketplace image, and will be charged by AWS on your monthly marketplace invoice.

In order to be able to use the RHEL 7 ELS Add On in AWS EC2, you will need to create an account on the Red Hat portal (or use your existing one), and link the AWS account ID running the virtual machine with this Red Hat account.

Please note that as of December 31st, 2024, there are no ProComputers packaged RHEL 7 images publicly available in AWS Marketplace. All existing ones were either upgraded to newer RHEL 8 version or restricted. Existing ProComputers customers can use their RHEL 7 marketplace subscriptions without any restrictions, however new customers will not be able to subscribe.

RHEL 7 ELS can be used with any RHEL 7 virtual machines running in AWS EC2, including ProComputers packaged RHEL 7 virtual machines.

Follow the steps below in order to purchase the RHEL 7 ELS and enable it in your virtual machines:

  1. Login in Amazon EC2 console using the account that is running your RHEL 7 virtual machine.

  2. Click one of the following options (please select the link that corresponds to your region; any of the two options available for each region provides the ELS, however the 2nd one, with the Third Party Linux Migration included, costs more):

  1. Check the ELS Add On price by clicking on the “Pricing” menu option on the top of the page. The price is based on the number of vCPUs used per hour. If all is okay, click “View purchase options” in the upper right corner of the page.

  2. Keep all options with their default value, scroll down and click “Subscribe”.

  3. Wait for the text “Your subscription is in progress. […]” to change into “Your purchase of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) is complete” (it might take up to 5 minutes), then click “Setup your account” button in the upper right corner.

  4. The above step will open a new browser tab and will take you to the Red Hat portal, where you have to login using your Red Hat username and password. If you do not have an Red Hat account, create one.

  5. If you get any error after the Red Hat portal login, please refresh the page or close the browser tab and click again “Setup your account” in the step 5 above.

  6. In the “Complete your account connection” Red Hat portal page, verify that your “AWS account ID” is the one used to run the RHEL 7 virtual machine, and that the “Subscription(s)” line shows “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS)”.

  7. Check “I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions” and click “Connect account” button. This will basically link your AWS account ID with the Red Hat account and with the ELS subscription.

  8. You are then redirected to the following Red Hat Knowledgebase article: Enabling Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Life-cycle Support via Cloud Marketplaces

  9. Now, using ec2-user and the ssh key specified at launch time, login into your RHEL 7 virtual machine.

  10. Register your RHEL 7 virtual machine with the Red Hat subscription server. For this step your will need your Red Hat account username and password:

$ sudo subscription-manager register
Registering to: subscription.rhsm.redhat.com:443/subscription
Username: <username>
Password: <password>
The system has been registered with ID: abcd1234-1234-5678-90ab-cd123456
The registered system name is: ip-123-45-67-890.us-west-1.compute.internal
  1. Configure subscription-manager to use CDN-delivered content in addition to the internal Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI) repositories available within the AWS cloud platform:
$ sudo subscription-manager config --rhsm.manage_repos=1
  1. Enable RHEL 7 ELS repos:
$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-els-rpms
Repository 'rhel-7-server-els-rpms' is enabled for this system.
  1. Update your RHEL 7 virtual machine with the latest RHEL 7 ELS security updates:
$ sudo yum update
Loaded plugins: amazon-id, product-id, search-disabled-repos,
              : subscription-manager
rhel-7-server-els-rpms                            | 4.1 kB     00:00
rhel-7-server-rhui-rh-common-rpms                 | 3.8 kB     00:00
rhel-7-server-rhui-rpms                           | 3.5 kB     00:00
rhel-7-server-rpms                                | 3.5 kB     00:00
rhui-client-config-server-7                       | 1.5 kB     00:00
(1/13): rhel-7-server-els-rpms/x86_64/group         | 631 kB   00:00
(2/13): rhel-7-server-els-rpms/x86_64/updateinfo    | 4.5 MB   00:00
[...]
rhui-client-config-server-7                                        10/10
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package audit.x86_64 0:2.8.5-4.el7 will be updated
---> Package audit.x86_64 0:2.8.5-4.el7_9.1 will be an update
---> Package audit-libs.x86_64 0:2.8.5-4.el7 will be updated
[...]
---> Package tzdata.noarch 0:2024b-2.el7 will be an update
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=========================================================================
 Package           Arch   Version           Repository              Size
=========================================================================
Installing:
 kernel            x86_64 3.10.0-1160.129.1.el7
                                            rhel-7-server-els-rpms  52 M
Updating:
 audit             x86_64 2.8.5-4.el7_9.1   rhel-7-server-els-rpms 256 k
 audit-libs        x86_64 2.8.5-4.el7_9.1   rhel-7-server-els-rpms 102 k
 audit-libs-python x86_64 2.8.5-4.el7_9.1   rhel-7-server-els-rpms  77 k
 bind-export-libs  x86_64 32:9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.17
                                            rhel-7-server-els-rpms 1.1 M
 ca-certificates   noarch 2024.2.69_v8.0.303-71.el7_9
                                            rhel-7-server-els-rpms 974 k
 krb5-libs         x86_64 1.15.1-55.el7_9.3 rhel-7-server-els-rpms 810 k
 [...]
 tzdata            noarch 2024b-2.el7       rhel-7-server-els-rpms 498 k

Transaction Summary
=========================================================================
Install   1 Package
Upgrade  17 Packages

Total download size: 151 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
Delta RPMs disabled because /usr/bin/applydeltarpm not installed.
(1/18): audit-2.8.5-4.el7_9.1.x86_64.rpm            | 256 kB   00:00
(2/18): audit-libs-2.8.5-4.el7_9.1.x86_64.rpm       | 102 kB   00:00
(3/18): bind-export-libs-9.11.4-26.P2.el7_9.17.x86_ | 1.1 MB   00:00
[...]
(17/18): systemd-sysv-219-78.el7_9.11.x86_64.rpm    |  98 kB   00:05
(18/18): tzdata-2024b-2.el7.noarch.rpm              | 498 kB   00:06
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                       8.6 MB/s | 151 MB  00:17
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
  Updating   : audit-libs-2.8.5-4.el7_9.1.x86_64                    1/35
  Updating   : systemd-libs-219-78.el7_9.11.x86_64                  2/35
  Updating   : systemd-219-78.el7_9.11.x86_64                       3/35
[...]
  Verifying  : systemd-libs-219-78.el7_9.9.x86_64                  34/35
  Verifying  : ca-certificates-2023.2.60_v7.0.306-72.el7_9.noarc   35/35
rhel-7-server-els-rpms/x86_64/productid           | 2.3 kB     00:00
rhel-7-server-rhui-rpms/7Server/x86_64/productid  | 2.1 kB     00:00
rhel-7-server-rpms/7Server/x86_64/productid       | 2.1 kB     00:00

Installed:
  kernel.x86_64 0:3.10.0-1160.129.1.el7

Updated:
  audit.x86_64 0:2.8.5-4.el7_9.1
  audit-libs.x86_64 0:2.8.5-4.el7_9.1
[...]
  tzdata.noarch 0:2024b-2.el7

Complete!
[root@ip-172-31-44-187 ~]#

References

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