Migrating a SLES to SLES4SAP within minutes!

Working in Support we see a lot of customers trying to use the powers of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications but failing already during product registration.

So why is that?

It has to be explained that although SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and SUSE Linux Enterprise server for SAP Applications (SLES4SAP) use the base OS and even share the Pool- & Updates repositories, we are talking about two different products here.

To activate a product (and receive patches) each subscription comes with an “Activation Key”. You can choose to register your server via:

• YaST (https://www.suse.com/documentation/sled-12/book_sle_deployment/data/sec_i_yast2_conf_manual_cc.html)

or use the command line tools:

• suse_register on SLES 11 ( as explained here: knowledgebase article)
• SUSEConnect on SLES 12 (as explained here: knowledgebase article).

Tools like SMT (Subscription Management Tool) and SUSE Manager can also be used.

Having downloaded the likely correct ISO the server is installed and configured and at the end the registration with a valid activation key returns an error: “An improper code was supplied.”

That happens if a SLES4SAP key has been purchased but the regular SLES ISO image was used to install the server.

To avoid having to re-install the server from scratch, the SUSE Support team has put together scripts for all various SLES 11 and SLES 12 Service Packs together with step by step instructions that will migrate the server into the correct product.

To make it even easier the following technical document has a collection of all the existing knowledgebase articles that exist to date:

• Knowledgebase Article 7018744

^^ The “Additional Information” section also holds information on how to migrate an old “SLES for VMware 11 SP3” to a regular SLES.

Happy migrating !