License changes and restrictions

Only certain Premium Linux OS licenses are eligible to be appended, removed, or replaced. License changes are supported for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), RHEL for SAP, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), SLES for SAP, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Pro for the following use cases:

• Changing between BYOS and PAYG billing models for RHEL, RHEL for SAP, SLES, and SLES for SAP
• In-place upgrades from Ubuntu to Ubuntu Pro
• Adding or removing RHEL ELS add-on licenses

The license owner can change valid license changes for a given license. Before you change a license, confirm that the target license change is valid. This guide outlines how to find the current valid license changes for a particular license. It also outlines any restrictions that apply to changing that license.

Before you begin

• If you haven't already, then set up authentication. Authentication is the process by which your identity is verified for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:
  

  Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

  Console

  When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

  gcloud

  1. Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command:

     gcloud init

     If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  2. Set a default region and zone.

Review license information

In Cloud Shell, run the following command. Replace LICENSE_URL with the license that you want to investigate. For a list of common Linux license URLs, see the Valid licenses table.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" -H "Content-Type: application/json" LICENSE_URL

For example, to examine the RHEL 7 PAYG License:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/rhel-cloud/global/licenses/rhel-7-server

The output is similar to the following:

{
  "kind": "compute#license",
  "name": "rhel-7-server",
  "chargesUseFee": true,
  "id": "6080198135500386054",
  "licenseCode": "1000006",
  "creationTimestamp": "2013-08-19T17:17:57.000-07:00",
  "description": "RedHat Enterprise Linux 7",
  "transferable": true,
  "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/rhel-cloud/global/licenses/rhel-7-server",
  "selfLinkWithId": "https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/rhel-cloud/global/licenses/6080198135500386054",
  "appendableToDisk": true,
  "removableFromDisk": false,
  "allowedReplacementLicenses": [
    "1492188837615955530",
    "8475125252192923229",
    "601259152637613565",
    "489291035512960571",
    "1270685562947480748"
  ],
  "osLicense": false,
  "soleTenantOnly": false,
  "multiTenantOnly": false,
  "minimumRetention": {
    "seconds": "0",
    "nanos": 0
  },
  "updateTimestamp": ""
}

The response outlines the following key fields:

• removableFromDisk: if true, the license can be removed from the disk. If false, the license cannot be removed without replacing it with a valid license.
• allowedReplacementLicenses: this is a list of license codes for licenses that can serve as valid replacements. To find out which license code corresponds to which license, see valid licenses.
• minimumRetention: the minimum amount of time that the license needs to be present on the VM before another license change can be applied.

Example: Replace RHEL 7 PAYG with RHEL 8 PAYG

To replace a RHEL 7 PAYG license with a RHEL 8 PAYG license, use the following information to find the license code and license URL for RHEL 8 PAYG:

Since the license code for RHEL 8 PAYG (601259152637613565) was listed under allowedReplacementLicenses for RHEL 7 PAYG, this indicates that a valid license replacement is possible.

To perform the license replacement, use the following command:

  gcloud compute disks update DISK_NAME
      --replace-license=projects/rhel-cloud/global/licenses/rhel-7-server,projects/rhel-cloud/global/licenses/rhel-8-server
      --zone=DISK_ZONE

Valid licenses

Valid licenses for RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu Pro are listed in the following tables.