How to migrate SMT to access SCC (SUSE Customer Center) and register SLES 12 servers

This document (7015836) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3 (SLES 11 SP3)
Subscription Management Tool 11

Situation

An SMT Server already exists and SLES 12 systems need to be registered against that existing SMT.

Resolution

First of all, the SMT Server has to be fully patched. The SMT version has to be at least:
smt-2.0.7-0.7.1
Please also note: there is no SMT for SLES 12. The base OS for SMT is SLES 11 (SP3).

Before starting the migration make sure that no smt-mirror is running.

On the command-line, with the latest SMT release two new scripts have been added:
smt-ncc-scc-migration #migration from NCC to SCC
smt-scc-ncc-migration #migration from SCC back to NCC
^ these scripts allow to switch the SMT to SCC/NCC as needed.
Important note: all SLES 12 repositories will have to be disabled before moving from SCC back to NCC

It is also possible to use the "yast2 smt-server" module to perform the migration. Simply select the "SCC" or "NCC" tick box here.

After the migration it is needed to sync with SCC (running "smt-sync").
Running "smt-repos" will now display the SLES-12 repositories. Enable these with "smt-repos -e" followed by "smt-mirror"

Further documentation can be found on the SMT server at:
/usr/share/doc/packages/smt/README-SCC

Cause

Additional Information

Please also note:
Before performing the switch between customer centers, make sure that the target customer center serves all products that are registered against SMT. Both YaST and the command-line tools perform a check to find out whether all products can be served with the new registration server.
If it is not possible, the only option is to install two parallel SMT instances and to synchronize products from both SCC and NCC.

As an example, if there is OES (Open Enterprise Server) Repositories mirrored on the SMT it wont be possible to migrate these to SCC. These have to be disabled first using "smt-repos -d" (or as specified above, install a second SMT instance).

If the migration still fails after removing these repositories and an error message like:

SCCSync - [info] 'OES2' not found in registration server. Migration not possible.

comes up, please run "smt-list-registrations". Check if any OES systems are registered against the SMT at that time.
These systems have to be deleted before starting the migration using "smt-delete-registration -g <guid>".

In case there are still problems the migration script can be run in verbose mode using:

/usr/sbin/smt-ncc-scc-migration --check-only -v 15

Disclaimer

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