Year-End Health Check

and 2010 Planning for

your SAP Environment

Josh FisherBasis Expert

December 9, 2009

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Symmetry Knowledge Center

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Agenda

Year-End Health Check

2010 Planning

Managing Database Growth

Upgrades

Enhancement Packs

Virtualization

YEAR-END HEALTH CHECK

Josh Fisher – Basis Consultant

Performing a Year-End Health Check

Check beginning and end of life dates

Assess your backup and recovery procedures

Capacity planning – take stock of your database growth

Beginning and End-of-life Dates

For SAP Enterprise releases 4.7 and lower, SAP note 505060

covers dates and additional costs for extended support

SAP ECC 5.0 standard maintenance ends 3/31/2010 and extended

maintenance ends 3/31/2013

Same dates hold true for all SAP NetWeaver® 04 products

Beginning and End-of-life Dates

SAP NetWeaver 7 / ECC 6 is a bit more complicated…

Going Forward

If your products are not on a SAP NetWeaver 7.0 release, upgrade

to stay in standard maintenance

If you’re already running SAP NetWeaver 7.0, apply the latest

Enhancement Packs and Support Stacks

Backup and Recovery

It’s important to re-assess your backup and recovery methodology

as your landscape changes and databases grow

Could your current solution be adjusted to further minimize

downtime or expanded to cover other systems?

Backup and Recovery

Planning Considerations

Are recently implemented SAP landscapes included in DR scenarios?

How has database growth affected the runtime?

Are upgrades to the network, disk or tape device feasible?

Backup and Recovery

Readiness Considerations

How frequently are DR tests performed?

Is DR documentation up-to-date and complete?

If outsourced support staff are to be included in the process, have they

gone through a DR test with the current documentation?

Capacity Planning

As users are added to SAP and the database grows, is your

infrastructure keeping up with the load?

Capacity Planning

A free and effective solution to monitor your systems is through

EarlyWatch Alerts processed by SAP Solution Manager

EarlyWatch Alerts are effective as a starting point to determine

necessity of adding hardware such as application servers to your

landscape

Capacity Planning

Features of the EarlyWatch alerts include

DB growth analysis

Exception Analysis

User load

SAP support pack / kernel patch checks

Profile parameter suggestions

For more information-https://service.sap.com/ewa

Goals for 2010

Upgrade to SAP NetWeaver 7 plus EHPx

Stay current on Enhancement packs

Get your landscape converted to Unicode

Install Solution Manager and configure solutions to use Maintenance

Optimizer, EarlyWatch Alerts at a minimum

MANAGING DATA BASE GROWTH

Tyler Constable – Basis Consultant

Database Growth

Plan ahead

Transaction DB02

History over the past year

Review any months that may be abnormally large

Watch for trends

Consider an archive plan

What to Keep in Mind

Standard growth rate

Recurring business trends

Trends of high peaks

Expansion plans

New plants or offices

Acquisitions

Plan on utilizing more SAP components

Any upgrades or add-ons planned

Archive

Data that is not needed in the immediate system

Improve system performance

Recover disk space

Archiving

Transaction: sara (archiving administration)

Define what needs to be archived

Configure a “write” job

Manage the archive process

Configure a “delete” job

Document the archive sessions

Keep in Mind

Space to archive

Industry retention standards

Other business processes that are running during archiving

UPGRADING

Tom Tearpock – Senior Basis Consultant

Upgrades

Planning and executing – quick overview

Business drivers and ownership

Sandboxes – value of experience

Upgrades

Upgrades

Upgrades

Upgrade Information Resources:

http://service.sap.com/upgrade - main link for all things upgrade

related

http://service.sap.com/upgrade -> Upgrade FAQ - good starting

point for common questions

http://service.sap.com/upgrade -> Media Library -> Publications and

Presentations – detailed information on upgrade topics

ENHANCEMENT PACKS:

THE NEW MINI-UPGRADE

Dan Porath – Basis Consultant

Support Packs vs. Enhancement Packs

Clear separation between enhancement packages and support

packages

Support packages contain only corrections and legal changes.

SAP enhancement package contains new versions of existing software

components to add new functionality.

Able to apply enhancement packs with Support pack stack with

minor additional effort

New Functionality w/o Full Upgrade

Only update software components you want to use.

New functionality must be explicitly switched on in the system.

Reduced effort for testing and no end-user training required.

Prerequisites / Optional Items

Add a support pack stack to an SAP Enhancement Package

installation with minor additional effort.

Upgrade Business Suite Components and SAP NetWeaver

Component Usage Types Independently.

Solution manager System Required for EHP or Support Packs.

© SAP 2008 – Introducing SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP

VIRTUALIZATION

Nick Miletich – Client Manager

Virtualization – What can it do for me?

Cost Savings

Bigger servers, but fewer of them

Same rules apply for physical and virtual environments

You have three physical systems that you want to migrate to virtual systems.

Each requires the following resources as stand-alone systems:

4 CPUs, 16 GB of memory, 30 external disk spindles

Then you should consider a server that has more that 12 CPUs, 48 GB of

memory, and 90 external disk spindles

The extra CPU, and memory is to run the virtual host

General rule is 20% overhead for virtualization

Virtualization – What can it do for me?

Cost Savings (cont’d)

Fewer servers = Less energy

Smaller footprint

Additional server room real estate

Failover Capabilities

VM Farm

Clustering capabilities

Fault Tolerance

Seamless failover with latest VMWare version

Currently has CPU limitations

Can only allocate 1 vCPU per instance

Virtualization – What Can it do for me?

Flexibility

On-the-fly allocation

Redistribute memory and CPU between instances

Additional systems can be created

Ideal for creating a sandbox environment

Reduces project costs – no need to purchase additional hardware

SAP’s View – DO’s and DON’T’s - Support

SAP will support many systems in a virtual environment provided

you use SAP approved hardware, OS, and database products.

Always check that the database provider also supports virtualization.

In general SAP may support a system in VMWare, but Oracle may not.

(note: 1173954)

SAP Fallback position

Although unusual, if SAP is unable to debug a problem in a instance

that is virtualized, you may need to move that system to a stand-alone,

physical machine.

SAP’s View – DO’s and DON’T’s - Support

Recommendations

Get SAP validation of support prior to beginning the project.

For example, a virtualized TREX environment has different requirements

than an ECC 6 landscape

Place non-productive systems in virtual environments.

Place productive systems in physical environments.

Download the presentation recording with audio from the

Symmetry Knowledge Center

www.sym-corp.com/knowledge-center