PAYG Client connections and Client Registration

1. Managing connections and registering PAYG and BYOS images

PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) Images

Connecting and registering PAYG images is supported and can be done without additional prerequisites.

BYOS (Bring Your Own Subscription) Images

Registering BYOS images requires SCC (SUSE Customer Center) credentials beforehand. If a user attempts to onboard a BYOS image without providing SCC credentials, the operation will fail, as these credentials are required to verify your subscription.

  • Always verify the type of image (PAYG or BYOS) prior to initiating the registration process with SUSE Manager to ensure a smooth and error-free connection.

  • If you have SCC credentials ensure your SCC credentials are valid and have the necessary permissions for utilizing BYOS images.

Do not register PAYG instances with the SUSE Customer Center. Only BYOS instances should be registered against the SUSE Customer Center.

Registering PAYG instances with the SUSE Customer Center or your own RMT server will create conflicts that are not easily solved. PAYG instances are automatically registered against the correct update server when added to your cloud service provider SUSE Manager instance.

2. Starting up additional PAYG SUSE products in Microsoft Azure

For more information on using SUSE PAYG products such as SUSE Linux Enterprise in the public cloud see: SUSE Linux Enterprise Public Cloud Guide

3. Establishing a PAYG SUSE Linux Enterprise connection with SUSE Manager PAYG

It is important to recognize that there is a difference between Pay-as-you-go connections and bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is also known as client registration.

Once you have started up your SUSE Manager PAYG instance and refreshed products you can add Pay-as-you-go connections via the Admin  Setup Wizard  Pay-as-you-go +Add Pay-as-you-go button. This action links your SUSE Manager PAYG instance with additional PAYG products on Microsoft Azure.

Bootstrapping or client registration is the process of onboarding clients in SUSE Manager. The registration process installs the appropriate client tools and provides full management functionality.

To manage your clients, start by establishing connections and then proceed to bootstrap your clients. These two actions are the steps required for initiating and completing the client onboarding process.
Procedure: Connecting SUSE Linux Enterprise PAYG instances to SUSE Manager PAYG

  1. Return to the SUSE Manager Server WebUI.

  2. Navigate to Admin  Setup Wizard  Pay-as-you-go and click the +Add Pay-as-you-go button.

  3. Add a description.

  4. Complete the instance SSH connection data:

    • Host: CSP URL of the machine

    • SSH Port: 22

    • User: root

    • Password: <password>

    • SSH Private Key

  5. Click Create and wait for the sync to finish.

  6. Proceed to Admin  Setup Wizard  Products to access your PAYG SUSE Linux Enterprise products.

4. Registering Clients

Now that you have established connections to the SUSE Manager PAYG instance you can register them as clients. To learn how to register various clients see: Client Registration Methods

4.1. Minion Timeouts

Inbound and outbound connections to Microsoft Azure are released after 4 minutes of being idle. This affects minion connectivity, especially when your SUSE Manager server is in Microsoft Azure and you have some on-premises minions. If a connection is idle for more than 4 minutes, connectivity is lost.

To resolve this issue on your minions:

Procedure:

  1. Create a new configuration file at i.a. /etc/venv-salt-minion/minion.d/keepalive.conf and enable keepalive:

    tcp_keepalive: True
tcp_keepalive_intvl: 5
tcp_keepalive_idle: 10
tcp_keepalive_cnt: 3

  2. Restart the venv-salt-minion service.