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Maintenance Certificate

Optimized Maintenance Procedure

The maintenance certificate was introduced to enable SAP's software logistics tools (such as SPAM, SAINT, JSPM and more) to identify your system and the exact scope of your corresponding SAP maintenance agreement. It also enables the tools to deliver tailor-made services based on your specific requirements and improves the quality of your SAP solution by preventing patches from being accidentally deployed to the wrong system.

More Information

Overview Presentation

How to Request a Certificate

Details about the Maintenance Certificate

Coverage of SAP Applications and Versions

  • All SAP products based on SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and higher (excluding SAP BusinessObjects products)

How to activate Maintenance Certificates

The Maintenance Certificate can be installed in your system landscape in two different ways:

  • Set up a completely automated distribution through SAP Solution Manager
  • Request the Maintenance Certificate via the Support Portal and distribute it manually within your system landscape

Automatic distribution of Maintenance Certificates via SAP Solution Manager

License Management in SAP Solution Manager

The License Management in SAP Solution Manager provides a complete view of all systems, licenses and their respective status. It also provides an overview on the status of the automated transfer of maintenance certificates from SAP to the customer's SAP Solution Manager system.

Should you have any questions, create a thread on the forum on the SAP Community Network (Forum: SAP Solution Manager).

If you have any troubles with the distribution of the maintenance certificate, please open a customer case under the component License Management / Maintenance Certificate (SV-SMG-LIC).

Frequently Asked Questions

The Maintenance Certificate enables SAP's software logistics tools (SPAM, SAINT, JSPM,…) to identify your system and the exact scope of your corresponding SAP maintenance agreement. It ensures that only customers with a valid maintenance contract can apply Support Packages. SAP's software logistics tools will only apply maintenance items if a valid Maintenance Certificate is available.

A Maintenance Certificate will be required for all customers using SAP products (currently not including BusinessObjects and Sybase products).

Details:
As of SPAM/SAINT- version 0034, the Maintenance Certificate will be required to import support packages. Java support packages (imported using JSPM) will require a Maintenance Certificate in the near future. Currently a warning is displayed.

All SAP products based on SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and beyond require a Maintenance Certificate.

A Maintenance Certificate has a validity of 3 months, then it has to be renewed.

In order to minimize the effort for customers an automated deployment for Maintenance Certificate via SAP Solution Manager 7.0 is offered. In addition a manual deployment option is available via SAP Support Portal.

At least SAP Solution Manager 7.0 SP 16 is required to benefit from automatic deployment. See details here.

Yes, to use the automatic deployment of Maintenance Certificates with SAP Solution Manager, a connection to SAP as well as a connection to the satellite systems is required.

No, the automated deployment option is recommended but not required. It is possible to use automatic deployment for some systems and manual deployment for other systems.

Yes, SAP Solution Manager will request a new Maintenance Certificate 30 days (can be customized) before the end of validity of an existing certificate.

No, this is not required. You can use the manual deployment option.

The Maintenance coverage is visible in the SAP Support Portal in the system data.

A self-service ia available in SAP Support Portal, which enables you to request Maintenance Certificates for all systems. The Maintenance Certificate has to be downloaded, distributed to the server and imported manually. See details here. 

During the installation, there is no step to import Support Packages, therefore the Maintenance Certificate is not checked. Afterwards, when applying Support Packages, a Maintenance Certificate is required.

During the upgrade, a Maintenance Certificate is not required. This allows, for example, an easy upgrade from 4.6c to current releases with the inclusion of Support Packages.

In the relevant system, run transaction SLICENSE, then click the New Licenses button (to switch to the display of Digitally-Signed License Keys). Then check whether an additional license key is visible with:

  • Software Product : Maintenance_ in the Sware Prod column (DE: SW-Produkt)
  • Valid from: date when the Maintenance Certificate was requested
  • Valid until: date of request + approx. 3 months

Yes, SAP Solution Manager can be used to serve several customers. In addition please apply SAP Note 1229904 - Maintenance certificate distribution for service provider.

No, this is not required. As of today you can download Support Packages once and deploy and use them in many systems.

No, the usage is optional.