An SAP engineer has deployed an SAP S/4HANA system on an Amazon EC2 instance that runs Linux. The SAP license key has been installed. After a while, the newly installed SAP instance presents an error

Question

Options

• APerform SAP kernel patching.
• BApply a new SAP license that uses a new hardware key. Install the new key.
• CSet the SLIC_HW_VERSION Linux environment variable.
• DReboot the EC2 instance.

• A
  19% (6)
• B
  3% (1)
• C
  69% (22)
• D
  9% (3)

Explanation

On AWS EC2, SAP derives its hardware key from underlying host hardware identifiers. Because AWS uses a shared infrastructure model, the physical host can change beneath a running instance during maintenance or live migration events-even without any user-initiated changes. This causes the hardware key to shift, invalidating the existing SAP license. The solution is to set the SLIC_HW_VERSION Linux environment variable, which instructs the SAP license manager to use a stable, virtualization-aware method for computing the hardware key instead of relying on volatile physical hardware identifiers. This is the AWS-recommended and SAP-supported fix that permanently stabilizes the key. Option A (kernel patching) addresses software bugs, not hardware key instability. Option B (new license) is only a temporary fix because the key would change again under the same conditions. Option D (reboot) does not change the root cause.

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