Frequently asked questions

New Red Hat® Store subscription orders are associated to the user account and login used at the time of purchase. New web store subscriptions are ready to use and activated immediately upon purchase. We don't provide refunds or accept returns, and can't accept returns or offer refunds on products that were not purchased directly from us. Learn more about Red Hat Store's return policy.

A Red Hat subscription gives you technology, assurance, and expertise. It gives you access to enterprise-ready software, updates, and information and support services that span your entire application infrastructure, life cycle, and architecture, and you can receive the latest product versions. A Red Hat subscription gives you access to multivendor support with thousands of software vendors, hardware vendors, and cloud and service providers that certify their technologies for our environments. And—through discussions, articles, documentation, and other knowledge content available in the Red Hat Customer Portal—you get the full expertise that our engineers have to offer. Learn more about the value of Red Hat a subscription.

Subscriptions are typically 1 year in length and are provided on a per-instance or per-installation subscription basis. Subscription start dates are governed by the original purchase date (if not specified otherwise in a contract). Subscriptions purchased online activate immediately. We'll adjust subscription start dates in the case of a Red Hat error, but won't adjust them due to delayed hardware or software deployments on the customer's end.

Yes. You can find information on production support and on the different severity support levels in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

In general, we support our products through installation, use, configuration, and diagnosis, as well as bug reports (dependent on product life cycle) and bug fixes. There are a number of instances we don't support—such as select third-party software/drivers and uncertified hardware/hypervisors and community projects upon which enterprise releases are based—which you can view in full in the Red Hat Customer Portal.

We'll send renewal notices before your subscription ends, with links and information on how to renew your product subscription.

Yes. Please send your request to renewals@redhat.com.

If you want to upgrade your subscription support level, you must place a new product order. For example, if you want to upgrade your subscription support level at the time of renewal, don't renew your existing subscription. Instead, purchase a new subscription with the upgraded support level. If you choose to downgrade your subscription support level, just place a new product order.

The Red Hat Store accepts Visa, American Express, and Mastercard.

The contact and credit card information you use in the Red Hat Store are transmitted securely and confidentially using industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology. A full explanation of how the information is secured and kept confidential is available in our privacy policy. Of course, if you prefer not to send personal information over the internet, please contact a sales representative to discuss alternative purchase methods.

No, Red Hat Store products are all subscription-based, which gives you an entitlement to download the bits and bytes of the products online.

Yes. Please review Red Hat's Export Compliance Policies and Guidelines, including the list of prohibited destinations. Please note that this list is subject to change.

Subscriptions purchased in the Red Hat Store are applied to the Red Hat Network account that you're logged in to at the time a purchase is made.

If a product's list price changes on our website—even if it's just a promotion—we'll apply an adjustment to your bill if you contact us within 30 days of when you originally purchased the product.

A socket is a physical connector on the motherboard that houses a single central processing unit (CPU).

A physical host is the bare-metal hardware on which the operating system is directly installed. A virtual host is an abstracted environment that exists on top of the bare-metal hardware. For example, when Red Hat Virtualization is installed on a bare-metal system like a laptop, the laptop is the physical host. When Red Hat Virtualization partitions virtual machines (VMs), the VMs are the virtual hosts.

A physical host is the bare-metal hardware on which the operating system is directly installed. A virtual host is an abstracted environment that exists on top of the bare-metal hardware. For example, when Red Hat Virtualization is installed on a bare-metal system like a laptop, the laptop is the physical host. When Red Hat Virtualization partitions virtual machines (VMs), the VMs are the virtual hosts.

Yes, self-support subscriptions are designed to be deployed on physical hosts, not virtual hosts.

Desktop variants are designed for single users accomplishing straightforward computing tasks. Workstation variants have more client/server capabilities, such as developer tools and basic hypervisor functionalities.

Yes. Red Hat Enterprise Linux® for Virtual Datacenters subscriptions allow a single host or supported* hypervisor to provision an unlimited number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests and VMs on the subscribed physical host. Guests and VMs can reside only on hosts and hypervisors containing a Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Virtual Datacenters license.

*For more information on our policy regarding third-party software, drivers, and/or uncertified hardware/hypervisors or guest operating systems, please visit Red Hat Customer Portal.

An LPAR is a logical partition on an IBM Power system, virtualized as a separate computer.

No, desktop and workstation variants aren't developed to function on servers, and are developed for individual use only. Server variants include more packages that allow them to be used by multiple clients.

Add-On subscriptions are supplemental subscriptions that extend the functions of the primary software.

No. Add-On subscriptions offer no functionality by themselves. They require a primary subscription, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

No. Unlike Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions—which can be run as 1 physical instance or 2 virtual instances—Add-Ons must be attached to either a single physical or virtual instance.

Add-Ons are per-instance subscriptions, so the number of Add-On subscriptions you need is equal to the total number of Red Hat Enterprise Linux instances that require an Add-On. For example, if 4 physical and 6 virtual systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux all need to be managed by Red Hat Satellite, you need 10 Red Hat Satellite subscriptions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Life Cycle Support Add-On extends the support period of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update once a product has been retired, 1 year at a time. It lets you continue receiving security fixes and selected urgent priority bug fixes on major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a defined period of time. Extended Life Cycle Support is only applicable to the last minor release of the given major release. This Add-On is applicable to standard or premium subscriptions only and can't be applied to self-support subscriptions. Learn more about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Life Cycle Support Add-On.

Red Hat Satellite is required for each Red Hat Enterprise Linux system you want to manage. It lets users group sets of systems and manage them as 1 instead of treating them individually. This Add-On includes modules to manage, patch, configure, and control development, test, and production systems run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability Add-On allows a service to fail over from 1 node to another with no apparent interruption to cluster clients, evicting faulty nodes during transfer to prevent data corruption. This Add-On can be configured for most applications (both off-the-shelf and custom) and virtual guests, and supports up to 16 nodes. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability Add-On features a cluster manager, lock management, fencing, command-line cluster configuration, and a Conga administration tool.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Resilient Storage Add-On lets users access the same storage device over a network—using either shared storage or a clustered file system—through a pool of data that's available to each server in a group. Each server in a cluster has direct access to a shared block device over a local storage area network (SAN) of up to 100 terabytes. This Add-On includes the Global File System 2 to support concurrent access, a cluster-wide locking mechanism to arbitrate storage access, a POSIX-compliant file system across 16 nodes, and Clustered Samba or Common Internet File System for Windows environments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Update Support Add-On extends the support period of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update for approximately 2 years beyond the standard 7-year life cycle. An Extended Update Support system receives the same updates as the base system until the next minor release, at which point the system tied to this Add-On is restricted to only critical security advisories and prioritized bug fixes. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Update Support Add-On also lets users skip specific Red Hat Enterprise Linux minor releases and instead implement the minor releases of their choosing.