SUSE Customer Center - Help

Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the SUSE Customer Center?

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The SUSE Customer Center is an online tool designed to make it easy for you to manage your business and technical interactions with SUSE. The data from Novell Customer Center for SUSE products has been consolidated into the SUSE Customer Center. SUSE Customer Center brings together customer information to provide an overview of subscriptions, entitlements, systems, and organizations. As a result, you can better manage your subscriptions, check compliance, and stay informed about your account.

Who should use SUSE Customer Center?

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SUSE Customer Center focuses on the following roles within your organization:

• Purchasers of SUSE products
• IT managers
• System administrators
• Resellers

Anyone responsible for purchasing, installing, or updating SUSE products can benefit from the SUSE Customer Center. To use the SUSE Customer Center, you need to be given access rights by an administrative user for the organization. If you do not know who this user is, contact your internal support organization. For further details, please contact our Entitlements team at entitlements@suse.com.

SUSE Customer Center defines two types of users:

• Organization administrators control rights for the entire organization. They can add users, grant administrative rights to others, and have administrative rights to all subscriptions for that organization.
• Organization users have activated a system by using a subscription owned by the organization or have been granted rights to other subscriptions by a group or organization administrator.

What are the key features and benefits of using SUSE Customer Center?

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When you install a SUSE Linux Enterprise product such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, the install process provides an opportunity to automatically register the system with SUSE Customer Center. Registering helps you lower your product maintenance cost by providing the following features:

• Entitlement management
• An overview of available and used subscriptions within an organization
• Automatic access to the latest updates and patches
• Access to additional information about any SUSE Linux Enterprise product

Key Features and Benefits for Purchasers

If you are responsible for purchasing SUSE products, SUSE Customer Center helps you do the following:

• Review expiration dates
• Review the usage
• View entitlements

Key Features and Benefits for IT Managers

If you are an IT manager, SUSE Customer Center helps you do the following:

• Compare active subscriptions
• Activate subscriptions
• View a list of registered systems
• View a list of available products based on the purchased subscriptions

Key Features and Benefits for System Administrators

SUSE Customer Center has introduced a set of APIs that allow you to access the available products and their repositories directly via your management tools (e.g. SUSE Manager or SUSE Subscription Management Tool)

More details about the API can be found at https://github.com/SUSE/connect/wiki/SCC-API-(Implemented)

How can I be added as an authorized user for my organization in the SUSE Customer Center?

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If you know of an existing administrator in your organization, that administrator can add you as an authorized user. If you do not know your administrator, or are the first authorized user in your organization, please contact entitlements@suse.com.

How do I log in to SUSE Customer Center?

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To access SUSE Customer Center, you need a login account.

• If you do not have an account, click Create an account and follow the instructions presented.
• If you do have a Novell Customer Center account, please use its credentials.

To see information about your account or subscription, you either need to register the product or ask an organization administrator to give you access to the information about the organization.

For more information, refer to the SUSE Customer Center User Guide

How can I check my order history?

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After logging in, select the Subscriptions tab in the top menu, click on the three dots icon on the right-hand side of the subscription, select Details, and then click on Order History.

What happens if I don’t see all my subscriptions in the SUSE Customer Center?

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Send an e-mail to entitlements@suse.com and provide us with as many details as you can. We’ll get in contact with you.

How do I submit a service request?

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In the sidebar on the left under "My Tools", click on "Support" and "Create new". If you are unable to create a service request, you have either not been granted Support rights by your administrator, or your organization does not have any Support entitlements. Click on the Organization tab in the top menu to see a list of Administrators in your organization and request Support access.

How do I add or remove users from my organization?

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To add a user, select the Organization tab in the top menu and then click on "Invite New Users". Invited users must create a SUSE Customer Center account in order to receive access and can create an account here.

To remove a user, select the blue minus icon next to the user and confirm.

What do Admin privileges do?

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• Add and remove users.
• Update Access Level (Admin/User).
• Update Support Access Level.

What happens with my data in the Novell Customer Center, and can I continue working with it?

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All SUSE customer data has been exported from the Novell Customer Center to the SUSE Customer Center. All SUSE customer data can be found in the SUSE Customer Center only.

The existing Novell Customer Center has been replaced by a new version dedicated to Novell and NetIQ products only.

For SUSE customers, the new customer center is the SUSE Customer Center.

What happens with the systems I have registered with Novell Customer Center?

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All your system information will be now available in the SUSE Customer Center. There are no changes to your systems. The systems will continue working with the Novell Customer Center credentials.

Do I have to update my systems in order to connect to SUSE Customer Center?

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No, there is no need to update your existing systems to connect to the SUSE Customer Center:

• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4, your system info is available in the SUSE Customer Center, and you will continue to receive updates as of today, without the need to upgrade. If you are using SLES 11 SP3 or earlier, a Long-term Support Pack agreement is required to receive full patches and support.
• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 without a proxy, you will be automatically connected.
• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 in connection with SUSE Manager and/or SMT, you need to update your SUSE Manager and SMT server(s) in order to connect.

What are the changes if I’m a SLE 12 customer?

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The SUSE Customer Center has been fully optimized for SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, which now comes with five optional modules at no extra charge. Some of those packages require a different frequency of updates. The SUSE Customer Center now provides module-specific update repositories to adapt to the new structure of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.

In addition, SUSE update repositories will be available at a new location.

• Old URL: nu.novell.com
• New URL: updates.suse.com

What if I have SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and older versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in my data center?

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All your systems will directly connect to the customer center:

• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4, your system info is available in the SUSE Customer Center, and you will be able to continue to receive updates as of today, without the need to upgrade. If you are using SLES 11 SP3 or earlier, a Long-term Support Pack agreement is required to receive full patches and support.
• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 without a proxy, you will be automatically connected.
• If you are using For the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, in connection with SUSE Manager and/or SMT, you will need to update your SUSE Manager and SMT server(s) in order to connect to the SUSE Customer Center.

What if I have SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and SMT in my data center?

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Customers with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and SMT need to update their Subscription Management Tool (SMT) server(s) in order to connect to SUSE Customer Center:

• SMT 11 SP4: Please check out the SMT release notes for further information on updating your server(s).
• SMT 11 SP3 and earlier: Please update your SMT server to SMT 11 SP4

After the update all your systems will be automatically connected to SUSE Customer Center. The updated SMT server(s) will continue to work as proxy server(s) for all SUSE products.

Please note: In all cases SMT can be rolled back to Novell Customer Center.

What if I have SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 and SUSE Manager in my data center?

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Customers with the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and SUSE Manager need to update their SUSE Manager server(s) in order to connect to the SUSE Customer Center. Updates for SUSE Manager will be available via update repositories soon.

What happens to my SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4 and earlier systems once I have updated SUSE Manager and/or SMT?

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After the update of SMT and/or SUSE Manager there will be no change in connecting to SUSE Customer Center. All systems will be automatically connected to SUSE Customer Center.

What happens if I am an OES customer?

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All your system data will be in the new Novell Customer Center. No OES information is displayed in the SUSE Customer Center.

Please note:

• If you are using SMT: You need to run a separate SMT server for your OES products in order to connect to the update repositories.
• If you are using SUSE Manager: SUSE Manager (updated version) will manage both OES and other SUSE products including SUSE Linux Enterprise 12.

What happens if I place a new order?

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The flow for creating a purchase order has not changed; however, products will be delivered via different customer centers:

• SUSE Customer Center for SUSE products
• Novell Customer Center for Novell products
• NetIQ Customer Center for NetIQ products

What if I have new OEM registration key(s) from a SUSE partner, and what happened to my existing OEM registration keys?

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If you have a new OEM registration key from a SUSE partner, please go to SUSE Customer Center and activate the key in order to register your system(s), as follows:

• 1. Log in to SUSE Customer Center.
• 2. Click "Activate subscriptions" in the "My Tools" section on the left.

You have the option either to copy and paste a Registration Code, or to upload a list of Registration Codes and activate them at once.

If you have questions about the OEM process or have issues contact entitlements@suse.com.

How can I get help?

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Please contact our customer operational teams at entitlements@suse.com for any other questions.

I received a notification saying some of my systems have been re-registered. What does that mean? What do I do now?

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You'll see this notification if you have de-registered one or more systems on the SUSE Customer Center, and these systems continue to use our update repositories. This re-registers the system.

To permanently remove a system from the SUSE Customer Center, make sure it is decommissioned or unsubscribed from our update repositories. Then, de-register the system on the SUSE Customer Center.

You may dismiss this notification once, until another system is re-registered as above, or permanently.

Do you think this notification has occurred in error? If so, please contact our support.