How do you switch from PAYG to BYOS for existing Red Hat servers

Question

I started with RHEL from Marketplace on Azure and worked on it for a while. Now, I would like to switch to bring-your-own-subscription. I have added Azure Subscription ID to Red hat, which gives me a new resource to create VM with BYOS. However, what I need is to switch the current PAYG service to BYOS. I cannot find a straight answer, but I believe there must be a way. Please help.

Answer 1

Hi Kei,

Apologies for the delay. As discussed in your support case,

1. Question regarding attaching the Linux RH license to a deployed instance of Red Hat - There is no BYOL setting for Red Hat VM. What would have to be done is that you would need to attach the Linux Access Account to a Azure Hybrid Benefit. Here is the guide to performing the steps to do this: Azure Hybrid Benefit and Linux VMs - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn
   2. Question about the price difference between PAYG and BYOS - With the PAYG, the cost of the subscription for RHEL is included in the cost incurred with the VM resource. With BYOS, the price on the subscription is managed outside of Azure and is not included in the monthly incurred price of the VM so you would be just paying for the VM resources and not the license.

As shared in the article Red Hat Enterprise Linux BYOS images now available | Azure updates | Microsoft Azure:

This will benefit RHEL users who currently have entitlements for on-premises environments and would like to migrate to Azure without paying extra for PAYG images. The BYOS images available are fully supported and are identical to the PAYG images, but are "unentitled", that is, not connected to any source of updates. Additionally, these BYOS images do not charge the RHEL billing premiums that the PAYG images have.