ECC6 Technical Upgrade Scenarios

Upgrade scenarios from ECC5 to ECC6Concerning Development Freeze, System Landscapes and Hardware Infrastructure

SPIKZoran Popović

Senior System EngineerBC Team

01.08.2008.

Basic Scenario – SCENARIO 1

Official (ASAP) Upgrade Roadmap document available on Marketplace (service.sap.com/upgrade), Upgrade Master, SDN and other official SAP sources offer several upgrade scenarios – from which the most simple one, let us call it SCENARIO 1 (“by the book”), to the more sophisticated ones (like CBU, switch scenarios, etc. which are not discussed here). I will not discuss here all the technical details of an upgrade process, only those which affect the decissions about project timeline, development freeze duration and possible hardware purchase/borrowing

What is here discussed is the possibility of variants of SCENARIO 1 by using parallel Transport Management lines (or so called Support Pipelines, or just Lines) with some degree of additional hardware usage or consolidation in order to make development freeze as small as possible and support the upgrade project.

In almost any standard upgrade procedure scenario we must have a test SANDBOX (CRP ?) system (as described in references). By a standard upgrade SCENARIO 1, a sandbox system as a heterogeneous copy of the production system is needed for:

• Initial technical upgrade (from ECC5 to ECC6): prepare, start of upgrade, SPAU/SPDD, modifications, support packs, etc.

• Functional tests needed to improve procedures, correct problems, create and plan all necessary activites – this can be iterated until achiving satisfying results

• Generating upgrade script (a detailed set of upgrade activites, participants and dependencies e.g. as given in )

In business environments without so strict validation practices it is possible to use this system as a future upgraded D (development) system (as proposed, if I have understood well as I wasn’t present on his presentation/workshop), or it could be used as a place for formal functional tests (as proposed in references, upgrade/business case) and a future Q (Test and QA) system - thow they also propose creating a new (P) production system. Company needs three-tired (D-Q-P) lines in the landscape for validation purposes. In all cases, without taking into account which servers are physically used for ECC6, three-tiered systems (D-Q-P) and any upgrade scenario need this series of events (as given in reference and ADM326) - the UPGRADE LINE:

Fig. 1 – upgrade steps in the basic scenario – UPGRADE LINE

Parallel Hardware Infrastructure – SCENARIO 1A

In a variant of such a scenario (one of many which involve system copies or original systems and landscapes), whether we could use a parallel h/w infrastructure for ECC6 – let us call it SCENARIO 1A:

Fig. 3a – „parallel“ h/w landscape

D5-Q5-P5 is the existing ECC5 line of systems / physical servers which is both the maintenance and the upgrade line later on, and D’6-Q’6-P’6 is the ECC6 sandbox line made by heterogeneous system copy of each system established as a separate line in TMS on new set of servers. On the other hand, as in SCENARIO 1, there is only D5-Q5-P5 line.

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline

D5 Q5 P5

D’6 Q’6 P’6

ECC5 production maintenance line

ECC6 – temporary “sandbox“ upgrade line

DevelopmentFreeze

D6 Q6 P6 ECC6 - the main UPGRADE line

At one point, the following series of events (*) is inevitable in any of the previous scenarioss (SCENARIO 1 and SCENARIO 1A) – the place of the beginning of development freeze is same:

1. Development freeze2. D: Upgrade D5 to D6, corrections, formal unit testing, possible repeating step 2.3. Q: Transports generated by upgrade in step 2 from D5 upgrade. Including

corrections (somewhat faster than complete upgrade of Q5 system instead of using transports of changes), formal integration tests, possible repeating step (2. and) 3. If successful, we have Q6 as result.

4. P: optional testing upgrade on renewed sandbox and possible repeating steps 2. or 3.

5. Transports from D5/Q5 upgrade, Final upgrade of P5 to P6 and GoLive

The thing here is that integration tests should take at least few weeks (with all the performance impact on new Q6 system), without the days needed for the pure technical upgrade itself. In all scenarios here mentioned the D’6-Q’6-P’6 line plays actaully the role of the sandbox system expanded to whole landscape, which might give some downtime decrease in the development freeze phaze - but whith extra hardware and effort which is not justified (at least I seriously doubt so, if h/w not borrowed I am certain). This downtime is not important if it is not influencing Development Freeze, as explained in the next scenario – SCENARIO 1B – and this is the only important difference between these two scenarios. Hardware can be even more consolidated as in the scenario to be proposed here bellow:

Parallel Hardware Infrastructure – SCENARIO 1B

An alternative solution (with variants) is given in where an additional support line made of heterogeneous system copies of D and Q (or renewed copies from the SCENARIO 1A) is used:

Fig. 4 – Temporary Support (pipe)line scenarios

In that manner, production system stays intact until the previously described step 5 – let us call this SCENARIO 1B. Formal validation (unit and integration) tests can be done without development freeze (**). In this case we have hardware performance-ready with optionally minimal additional hardware needed for D and Q copies instead of whole parallel h/w infrastructure as in SCENARIO 1A. Therefore, I propose for SCENARIO 1B.

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline

consolidation

forERC + SANDBOX

ERP (CI+DB)MSCS

BWP (CI+DB)MSCS

sandbox

SCENARIO 1B could be OPTIONALLY more comfortably realized with following addtional hardware (but this is not a mandatory requirement) which could be leased/borrowed (or bought) during the initial upgrade phaze as project support resources:

• 1 HP rx2620 (or rx4640) for D copy, minimal configuration with 8GB RAM – one server, AND/OR second:• 1 HP rx4640 for Q copy, minimal configuration with 8GB RAM (this is OPTIONAL, as explained w/Fig. 5)

In this case it is even possible to make several levels of h/w consolidations with existing hardware infrastructure (and our future SAP systems if bought, depending on business needs, e.g. additional D/Q Solution Manager system, BI requirements, additional archiving solution with SAP Content Server, etc) – our existing SAP hardware was recently upgraded with additional RAM, so ERQ (and BWQ is needed just for a physical node) in the support line servers (ECC5) might even be temporarily left on only one cluster node with functionally intact performing system copy. The performance pressure can only be expected on new ERQ (Q5/Q6) servers. Sandbox system can be established on one of our integrity servers (also upgraded with RAM, SAP5 or SAP6). MSCS switchover tests are necessary only on new (ECC6) ERQ servers.

If possible, borrowing servers or some RAM from our hardware vendor (HP, Belgrade) or his partners could significantly simplify this scenario. This would save a lot of time, effort and minimize the risk about these activities. Nevertheless, it is possible to make sufficient hardware consoloditions by replacing existing RAM modules from our existing servers which are less loaded in order to improve performance on critical servers (e.g. Q5 systems for testing, D5 for upgrade to D6), with insignificant risk of performance issues on old development and sandbox systems.

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline

consolidation

forERC + SANDBOX

ERP (CI+DB)MSCS

BWP (CI+DB)MSCS

sandbox

Possible h/w Consolidations with SCENARIO 1B

The SCENARIO 1B could be compared with SCENARIO 1A with a diagram on Fig. 3b similiar to Fig. 3a:

Fig. 3b – Upgrade and Temporary Support (Production Maintenance) lines

But here D5 and Q5 are copied into D’5 and Q’5 (and so is P5 into SANDBOX system), which together with P5 form the new Temporary Support (Production Maintenance) line: D’5-Q’5-P5 - which is used for urgent changes in the system (so called „fast-tracks“, minimized in number as much as possible). These additional changes need to be taken care of in the post-GoLive phaze or during upgrade. Physically same servers D5 and Q5 are then upgraded to D6 and Q6 by the upgrade script generated on SANDBOX system. Development freeze is smaller than in SCENARIO 1A.

The bottom line here is that it is possible to buy NO NEW HARDWARE for project support (no servers at least) with only potential performance issues with new ERD (and sandbox) consolidated on one of our existing servers which could be handled successfully. In the Fig. 5 bellow is a diagram of SAP System Landscape in our company with systems, transport lines and physical server names. The idea is to „borrow“ two servers from ERQ and BWQ servers, using existing clusters and leaving temporary support line out of the cluster (which should not be an issue).

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline

BWQ (MSCS)

ERQ (MSCS)

consolidation

for

SAP Router +Web DispatchersMSCS

ERC + SANDBOX

ERP (CI) ERP (DI)

ERP (CI+DB)MSCS

ERD

SAP-ERQ1

SAP-ERQ2

SAP3

SAP-ERP1

SAP-ERP2

SAP-ERP3

SAP-ERP4

BWP (CI+DB)MSCS

BWD

SAP-ERQ1

SAP-ERQ2

SAP3

SAP-ERP5

SAP-ERP6

SAP5

SOL (migrated, upgraded- to be … )

SAP6

SOL + CEN

SAP1

ERA(ECC5 IDES)SAP2

sap-gateway-n2

sap-gateway-n1

D5 Q5 P5

D’5 Q’5

ECC6 main UPGRADE lineECC5 – Temporary Support (Pipe)line

D6 Q6 P5

sandboxP6

DevelopmentFreeze (**)

Q’5D5 / D6

possible consolidation

for

D’5

Q5 / Q6

P5 / P6

Upgrade steps in SCENARIO 1B in a skecth would then be steps (*) described earlier, which now need no Development Freeze in step 1, but only during final step – upgrade of production:

1-3. Same as steps (*) 2-4.4. Development Freeze (**)5. Transports from D5/Q5 upgrade, Final upgrade of P5 to P6 and GoLive6. Copying fast-tracks back upgraded D and Q systems.

Hardware Requirements and Sizing Estimations Concerning ECC6 Upgrade

In all these scenarios I find that pure technical upgrade of ECC systems can be estimated as follows (by Note 901070, SAP benchmark information, and Oracle documents given all in references) – by upgrading from ECC5 to ECC6 (and from Oracle 9.2 to 10.2) we have only a slight increase in need for the h/w resources:

System Component CPU RAM DISKSAP INSTANCE 0-5% 5-10% insignificantORACLE 0-5% / insignificant 0-5% / insignificant 5%

Table 1 – technical upgrade resources requirements without project sizing

Some indications and experiences were made in references that it is possible to have 25% DB growth, but this any is not an issue for ERP system as it has already more than 50% free space in the database files.

The only important issue about all these scenarios is the currently available Storage space for Temporary Support hardware (in any scenario, but especially for SCENARIO 1A) and during project implementation. With some additional effort and incoming resources for backup disks this might be solved, too, but this needs to be carefully estimated. But in any case, Storage space has to be well planned for the future.

Hardware Sizing and Other Project Requirements - Quicksizing

On the other hand, system sizing and Storage space is also significantly influenced by Sizing produced by the Rollout & Optimizitaion activities and appropriate parts of the project. This has to be discussed separately, BC needs input from each team about estimated number of users and their types, significant changes of system usage (numbers of document generated, etc) and other infor needed for the quicksizing utility which should be part of the regular project BBP activities. These are planned to be until 01.09.2008, but we need this info ASAP in order to inform out h/w vendor (HP) on time and to place orders as needed. Timelines are still not cleared. I expect that it would be mostly about additional RAM, CPUs and Storage, and optionally about borrowing servers. HP also offered us help from his SAP experts at least on this topic, which could be very useful for the whole project.

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline

BI hardware landscape and system sizing is unknown in terms of project scope (tbd in BBP as proposed by Robert Gamauf). For Solution Manager, company has requirements for only one upgraded system (as seen from workshops). Using Web GUI for BI and Java instances for BI should also be considered in system sizing.

Borrowing servers as temporary resources and support during the project is also a good option which influences mainly the project timeline, but are not important after GoLive if no User Requirements emerge during BBP (e.g. BI systems and Solution Manager usage).

References:

[1] Road Map V3.2 \\sap1\sap_projekt\Technology\UPGRADE\index.htm

[2] The Upgrade Guide V2.0

[3] \\sap1\SAP_Projekt\Technology\UPGRADE\sappress_netweaver_application_server.pdf

[4] ADM326 Upgrade Course

[5] http://www.sapdb.info/sap-ecc6-upgrade/ Keter_ECC6_Upgrade_Presentation_170107.ppt

[6] Upgrade Master

[7] service.sap.com/benchmark http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/index.epx

http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd3tier.epx?num=200

http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx

[8] http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/sap-on-db2/a-few-more-sap-upgrade-tips-19422

[9] service.sap.com/quicksize

[10] service.sap.com/upgrade

Upgrade scenarios with development freeze Support Pipeline