How to renew Maintenance License Automatically using Solution Manager

Brief about Maintenance License: With SAP NetWeaver 7.0, SAP had introduced the concept of Maintenance License which expires in every 90 days. If the system is not updated with a valid maintenance license, patching or Add On installation is not possible using SPAM/SAINT. Hence it is necessary to have the system updated with a valid maintenance license all the time.

General procedure which is vastly used to update any system with valid license is manually downloading license from Service Market Place (SMP) and apply the downloaded license using transaction code “slicense” in ABAP systems.

Concept of Automatic Renewal of Maintenance License: Solution Manager can be used to distribute maintenance license to all ABAP systems of landscape. If Automatic License Maintenance is activated, Solman becomes the agent between a satellite system and SMP.  As illustrated below in diagram: it checks with satellite system if the maintenance license is expiring, if yes solution manager receives maintenance license from SMP and makes it available in satellite system’s slicense.

Note: To receive maintenance license via Solman from SMP, it is necessary that a valid maintenance contract is active between SAP and customer.

Steps:

1.    SAP Solution Manager requests Maintenance License Certificate from Global Support Backbone of SAP

2.    Maintenance Certificates are generated for the managed system as per the details provided by Solman

3.    New Digitally encrypted certificate is passed to the Solman

4.    Certificate is saved and made available in Solman, next run of task Maintenance Package in managed system fetches the license and stores it in slicense.

Procedure to setup automatic distribution of maintenance license: To setup solution manager distribution of license, it is necessary that managed systems are configured for EWA report setup in SDCCN.

Once EWA is setup in Solution Manager, create job for fetching license data from managed systems:

Go to SDCCN –> Go to To do tab  -> Click on Create button on the menu bar -> Select “Get License Data” from the menu

This would schedule a daily job for collection license data from managed systems

To check the logs of job, click on Done tab – > click on log icon in Logs coloum

Second step is to activate license distribution from change management :

Go to SM_WORKCENTER:

Click on Change Management -> License Management ( in left Menu )

In the screen select a system and click on “Activate Distribution” select “Activate Automatic Distribution”

Solution Manager can fetch the license 30 days in advance.

References:

FAQs:     https://websmp204.sap-ag.de/~sapidb/011000358700000325262008E#6

SAP Help Link: https://help.sap.com/saphelp_smehp1/helpdata/en/89/a7c08d740c4cffb491f98801f17d30/content.htm

1280664 – SAP Note -Distribution of maintenance certificates: Troubleshooting

1293657– SAP Note -Error in distribution of Maintenance Certificates via SDCCN