Understanding RHEL patch add-ons

This topic gives you a brief introduction about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Patch Add-Ons.

BigFix content supporting Red Hat’s Extended Update Support (EUS) and Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) patching program is available as an add-on to the BigFix Patch, BigFix Lifecycle and BigFix Compliance products.

This guide describes how to enable and use the BigFix EUS/ELS patch content for RHEL.

BigFix ELS Fixlet content is available for RHEL 5 and 6 under BigFix Extended Patch For RHEL 5 & 6 and supports keeping your RHEL 5.11 and 6.10 endpoints up to date with ELS patches released by Red Hat.

BigFix EUS content is available for Red Hat 5, 6, 7 and 8 under BigFix Extended Patch For RHEL and supports keeping your RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 boxes secure at specific minor release patch levels, such as RHEL 8.1.

Red Hat’s EUS/ELS patches are treated the same as standard Red Hat patches in that they require a paid subscription from Red Hat. Access to Red Hat patches is controlled via subscription certificates via the Red Hat Subscription Management plugin. The goal of the BigFix patch add-on products is to allow a relatively seamless continuation of your organization’s current patch process into the extended support period.