Scenario with system copies for updating
Automation of homogeneous SAP system copies
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Such system copies, with their enormous manual effort and SAP checklists that are often hundreds of items long, must be performed before every refresh. Usually, three to four days have to be planned for this, during which the QA system - which in two-tier SAP environments is also the development system - is not available for the actual work. The delay is actually only caused by the meticulous matching of trivial things, such as directory names. Because such SAP system copies have to be created for each SAP application on the QA system and can thus quickly require dozens of system copies, they tie up a lot of resources and staff.
Conclusion
The solution described in this document can be summarized as follows: The goal is to create a homogeneous copy of an SAP system. The source of the system copy is a production system. The target of the system copy is an existing non-production system. The focus is on a specific use case, a system copy created for updates. Backup and restore are performed at the SAN device level and supported by HP System Copy software. Pre- and post-processing is automated using the UC4 Automated System Copy for SAP solution. Thus, the proposed solution allows you to optimize the automation and acceleration of SAP system copies generated for upgrades and reduce IT administration costs. Automated, fast and powerful upgrade capabilities enable shorter and more flexible SAP software lifecycles, enabling more agile business processes.
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Quasi tick boxes instead of time-consuming handling of programming lines, so that the use is also possible for less experienced experts who have never or only few SAP system copies created. And this after little system training.
With "Shortcut for SAP Systems" any tables can be saved and restored. This is especially useful in the context of an SAP system copy - quite a few tables are system-specific and must exist unchanged in the system after a system copy.Shortcut for SAP Systems uses R3trans - a utility from SAP that is essentially used in the Transport Management System (TMS) environment. With "Shortcut for SAP Systems" it is now also available outside the TMS and enables completely new and diverse application possibilities. Among others in the environment of a system copy. R3trans works database independent. I.e. even in the case of a system refresh from an SAP system with an Oracle DB to a system with HANA, the backup and restore process works!
Such a copy is always required when the QA system of a multi-level SAP architecture has to be brought up to the status of the current production system: Be it for testing new applications or during a release upgrade, for maintenance purposes or for updating the quality assurance and test system.
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In practice, customers have either built their own tools to make the appropriate configurations, or there are extensive lists of steps to be processed manually.