Oracle Cloud Infrastructure customers now have a second way to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. They could already bring their own RHEL subscriptions through the Bring Your Own Subscription program. Now Oracle also sells RHEL platform images directly, so image selection, purchase, updates and support all sit inside one OCI-native experience.
Customers can pick a RHEL image through the OCI Console, command line interface or API, and they pay for usage with Oracle Universal Credits. Those RHEL charges come on top of normal OCI infrastructure costs, and pricing appears in the Oracle Cloud Price List. After an instance starts, customers pull software packages and updates from OCI-hosted Red Hat Update Infrastructure, with support shared between Oracle and Red Hat.
At launch, Oracle offers images for RHEL 9.8 and RHEL 10.2, and it plans to add more versions and shape configurations as they finish certification. The images run on x86 virtual machine shapes. Standard Flex options include VM.Standard3.Flex and the E4, E5 and E6 flex shapes, while Dense I/O choices include VM.DenseIO.E4.Flex and VM.DenseIO.E5.Flex. Availability covers OCI commercial regions today, and Oracle expects to extend it to Oracle Alloy and OCI Dedicated Region soon.
Updates follow a clear chain. The images connect to a regional RHUI service, which synchronizes content from Red Hat. Customers can apply updates to running instances, and Oracle publishes refreshed images as Red Hat releases new builds. For new instances, customers should choose the latest image in each version family and check the OCI images catalog and release notes for details.
Support deserves attention too. Oracle provides Tier 1 and Tier 2 support for the platform images, covering installation, configuration, usage and troubleshooting. If a problem needs deeper investigation or a fix from Red Hat, Oracle works with Red Hat while the customer stays in contact with Oracle Support. By contrast, BYOS deployments work differently, since RHEL licensing and operating system support stay with Red Hat under the customer’s existing subscription, while Oracle supports the OCI infrastructure.
For teams weighing the two routes, the choice may come down to billing and support preferences. Buying through OCI keeps everything on one bill and one support path, whereas bringing a subscription preserves an existing Red Hat relationship.
