PAYG SAPCAL image fails to register against the Azure Update Infrastructure

This document (000019801) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3
Azure Public Cloud

Situation

Pay-As-You-Go SAPCAL image does not register against the Azure Public Cloud Update Infrastructure even after performing the standard registration cleanup steps.

Resolution

Migrate the base system product from regular SLES to SLES for SAP.

As a prerequisite, download the SLES_SAP-release and SLES_SAP-release-POOL packages from the SCC. If SCC access is not available to the system administrator (e.g. no direct SUSE entitlement), please open a ticket with Microsoft Azure support for help with this step. Copy these packages into the root user's home directory on the VM before proceeding with the next steps.

1. Remove the sles-release and sles-release-POOL packages. The --nodeps flag is required here as several important base system packages are dependent on these release packages.

hostname:~ # rpm --erase --nodeps sles-release sles-release-POOL

2. Install the SLES_SAP-release and SLES_SAP-release-POOL packages.

hostname:~ # rpm -ivv
SLES_SAP-release-12.3-5.3.1.x86_64.rpm  SLES_SAP-release-POOL-12.3-1.2.x86_64.rpm

3. Verify the product symlink is fixed in the /etc/products.d. The /etc/products.d/baseproduct file should now point to SLES_SAP.prod

hostname:~ # ls -l /etc/products.d

4. Attempt registration again, and if it fails, clean up registration per the standard cloud repo cleanup procedure. TID* link provided in Additional Information section below.

hostname:~ # /usr/sbin/registercloudguest --force-new

Cause

The image in question was created with an incorrect billing tag. SAPCAL images are supposed to use the standard SLES product type on the OS and the corresponding SLES billing tag in Azure, but the affected image uses the SLES for SAP billing tag. This creates a conflict with the cloud RMT servers which reject the registration attempts as invalid.

Additional Information

Image Name affected: SUSE|SLES-SAPCAL|12-SP3|2019.07.01

This is one of very few use cases where the --nodeps flag is appropriate with the rpm --erase command as the installation of the SLES_SAP-release and SLES_SAP-release-POOL packages satisfies the same dependencies lost by the removal of sles-release and sles-release-POOL.

Since the billing tag is SLES for SAP, customers who continue to use these images will be billed for an SAP image rather than a standard SLES. It may be advantageous, from a cost perspective, to migrate the workload to a standard SLES image at a later time.

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.