Managing many RHEL "Installation Numbers"

When you install RHEL, it asks you for an "Installation number" before proceeding.  After you enter that number, it validates it.  I believe it connects to RH's servers to see if you have any open entitlements.

Now, as I described, in my situation, we have several systems that have been installed over time.  Each time we purchase a new entitlement (or a group of them), we have yet another "installation number" to keep track of.   It's really a stupid system, but I digress.

As I review my question, I'm seeing that this is pretty moot -- as there really isn't anything you can do about -- unless of course you chose to surreptitiously create a local cache of RH rpms and point your systems there instead... which would probably not be kosher.
 

We actually deployed Red Hat's Satellite server internally, thus it handles all of the installation numbers as it can be used for kickstarting, provisioning, deploying packages & updates as well. We combined our setup with CFengine, thus can deploy additional packages not found in the Red Hat repository (i.e. EPEL, RPMForge, etc). The RHEL channels are actually created by yourself, thus you can limit the number of 'Installation Numbers' you want to keep up with:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
    Server (v5)             :    123-xxx-456-abc
    Advanced Platform (v5)      :    123-xxx-456-def
    Desktop (v5)            :    123-xxx-456-ghi

Red Hat Network Satellite
http://www.redhat.com/red_hat_network/

I've heard of the Satellite Server a couple of years ago.  I think our reason for not pursuing it was it's cost - there was also some concern about adding yet another dependency to our production environment (kindof a given, it happens).

I just checked RH's website and they don't really post any current pricing.

I'll read up more on this and see if it may be worth pursuing.

I wonder if there is another alternative.   For CentOS, in example, you can simply cache the RPMs locally, set up your own yum repository and off you go.   Doing that under RH is probably a violation of the license?

Thank you!

Thank you guys for these excellent suggestions and input.  I didn't realize that Satellite was derived from an open source project -- this may open up avenues for us.

You rock :-)

The suggestions went beyond what I was asking for and opened up other possibilities I hadn't been aware of.

Actually it's vice-versa...

Red Hat Network (RHN) first started in 2001 as a hosted service. RHN later spawned a stand-alone product called Red Hat Network Satellite. Spacewalk as a project officially became an open source, community driven project in June 2008 -- it is the upstream for the Red Hat Network Satellite & Proxy products.

Reference:
http://www.redhat.com/spacewalk/faq.html#howlong

This is their typical business model -- it allows them to outsource coding, debugging and other development to a public base, then take the product refined and charge for support, etc.