Obtaining RHEL and a subscription
To be able to deploy RHEL, you will need a Red Hat subscription to obtain the images to be used, as well as access to repositories with software and updates. You can obtain, free of charge, a developer subscription from the developers’ portal site of Red Hat using the following link: https://developers.redhat.com/. You then need to follow these steps:
- Log in or create an account at https://developers.redhat.com/.
- Click on the Log in button:
Figure 1.1 – The developers.redhat.com home page, indicating where to click to log in
- Once on the login page, use your account or, if you do not have one, create one by clicking on Register in the top-right corner or on the Register for a Red Hat account button directly in the registration box, as follows:
Figure 1.2 – Red Hat login page (common to all Red Hat resources)
You can choose to use your credentials in several services (in other words, Google, GitHub, or Twitter) if you prefer to do so.
- Once you have logged in, go to the Products section in the top bar. You can find the Red Hat Enterprise Linux section in the navigation bar before the content:
Figure 1.3 – Accessing the Linux page at developers.redhat.com
Click on Download RHEL at no-cost, which appears as a red button on the next page:
Figure 1.4 – Accessing the RHEL download page at developers.redhat.com
Then, the ISO image for the x86_64 (8 GB) architecture will start downloading:
Figure 1.5 – Download dialog for RHEL 9
The ISO image is a file that contains an exact copy of the contents of a full DVD (even when we are not using a DVD). This file will later be used to install our machines, whether dumping it to a USB drive for bare metal installations, unpacking it for network installations, or attaching it for virtual machine installations (or using out-of-band capabilities in servers such as IPMI, iLO, or iDRAC)
Tip
To verify the ISO image, and ensure that the one we have obtained is not corrupted or altered, a mechanism called checksum can be used. Checksums are a way to review a file and provide a set of letters and numbers that can be used to verify that the file is precisely the same one as in the origin. Red Hat provides a list of sha256 checksums for doing so in the downloads section of the customer portal (access.redhat.com). An article describing the process is available here: https://access.redhat.com/solutions/8367.
We have the software, in this case, the ISO image, to install RHEL 9 on any computer. These are the same bits that are used in production machines worldwide, and that you can use yourself for learning purposes with your developer subscription. Now, it is time to give them a go in the next section.