Critical factor: Availability
Automatic determination of delta states after SAP system copy/recovery
The third-party providers have adapted their tools to various special areas. For example, the "Clone & Test" tool from Pecaso, which is now part of Accenture, specializes in transferring data from SAP's HR module. In addition to HR data, the "Data Sync Manager" from the provider Epi-Use makes it possible to select additional objects from the areas of accounting and logistics. As with TDMS, "Infoshuttle" from Gamma Enterprise Technologies gives users the option of selecting any data from the SAP system. For transport, the tool uses Idocs, which, however, can only be used to transfer small amounts of test data. SNP's "Data Distillery" can either write extracted data directly into the tables of the target system via RFC or generate an export file that can be imported into target systems multiple times. In the source system, users can select by objects, processes and transactions. Further selection options, for example by organizational units or fiscal year, allow a percentage of the data to be filtered out of the system as consistent test data.
Shutting down and copying virtualized systems, such as VMware instances, requires just a few mouse clicks. VMware is suitable for running multiple training, development and test environments on one physical system. Larger productive systems, on the other hand, are not so easy to virtualize. If users have to shut down the productive system during the copy, the runtime of the operation or the unavailability of the productive system becomes a critical factor.
Detailed checks for critical order contents
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.
Post system copy rework - The collected information from the system copy prework is evaluated and the corresponding transport requests are reimported. The development status before the system copy is thus restored. In addition, this package includes a tool that, when individual transports are released, checks whether there are any overlaps on the target system with transports that are still open there. This prevents a transport from unintentionally "overtaking" an earlier released one with the same objects.
Powerful and sophisticated automation tools for the creation of SAP system copies provide a remedy here and, in addition to time and cost savings, demonstrably also make it possible, for example, to increase the process quality in system copying or to maintain it at a consistently high level. In effect, they free up SAP Basis. With "Shortcut for SAP Systems", you can sustainably relieve your administrators of the time-consuming routine activities of an SAP system copy.
This prevents a transport from unintentionally "overtaking" an earlier released one with the same objects.
If you want to get more information about SAP basis, visit the website www.sap-corner.de.
Therefore, this task must be planned well and in advance.