Re-import backup transports (exports), set up locally in 000 client for isolated systems (sandbox)
Critical factor: Availability
Nowadays, companies are required more than ever to react agilely and flexibly to the demands of the global market. It is not unusual for them to have to introduce new processes and projects particularly quickly and securely for the benefit of their own competitiveness. At the same time, their system landscapes are becoming increasingly complex due to mergers and acquisitions and the use of new technologies.
Even if the target system is not used for production in an update scenario based on a system copy, it is of central importance for developers and thus also the software lifecycle of the production system. That's why you should avoid upgrade downtime in both the production source system and the non-production target system. Production system downtime depends primarily on the method you use to create the image of the production data to be used in the target system. This image must be a transferable database image - for example, a database export, a backup copy, or an array-based reconciliation. To eliminate downtime in the production system and minimize the impact on application performance-regardless of the size of the production data reconciliation-you can use, for example, HP StorageWorks System Copy for SAP (HP System Copy), which has a disk array-based replication capability. Downtime in the target system depends on the following factors, among others: The time required to restore production data reconciliation in the target system The amount of pre- and post-processing in the target system With HP System Copy, images of production data can be created in minutes, with each step between shutdown and reboot of the target system occurring automatically. However, after the reboot, the target system is not immediately ready for use, as additional steps must first be performed (see description below).
Conclusion
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.
By using the automation solution, errors that typically occur with manual process steps - just like additional costs due to repetition - can be avoided. To date, the IT team has created 88 SAP system copies. "If we had wanted to do this with SAP board resources, we would not have been able to pay for it as a medium-sized company," Rudi Scharf knows.
A solution such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" offers an automatable solution for many of the activities involved in an SAP system copy.
Powerful and sophisticated automation tools for the creation of SAP system copies provide a remedy here and demonstrably make it possible, in addition to time and cost savings, to increase the process quality of system copying, for example, or to maintain it at a consistently high level.
Increasingly, ad hoc requests are coming from IT or SAP Basis to provide an SAP system copy as quickly as possible, for example of an SAP ERP, BW or HCM system.