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System Administration
System Administration
- A Basis Administrator's Step-by-Step Guide to Performing an Upgrade to SAP R/3
Enterprise
by Bert Vanstechelman, Independent SAP Basis Consultant
This article is the second in a two-part series that takes you through a technical upgrade to SAP R/3 Enterprise (SAP R/3 4.7), a process that is markedly different from upgrades to previous releases, yet has lacked a single, cohesive resource to shepherd you through the steps — until now. The first installment outlined what you need to do to prepare for the upgrade. This second installment picks up where the first left off and walks you through the significant stages of the technical upgrade process itself to the necessary administrative post-processing tasks. It also outlines the activities that need to be performed by functional specialists, and provides pointers to additional resources
- A Basis Administrator's Step-by-Step Guide to Preparing for an Upgrade to SAP
R/3 Enterprise
by Bert Vanstechelman, Independent SAP Basis Consultant
If you have been tasked with upgrading to SAP R/3 Enterprise (SAP R/3 4.7), you are faced with a process that represents a dramatic departure from any upgrade you have previously undertaken. The architecture is radically different from that of SAP R/3 4.6C, and the upgrade tools use a new upgrade mechanism that replaces the old “repository switch” method. This is the first article in a two-part series designed to serve as your survival guide to an SAP R/3 Enterprise upgrade. Based on the author’s experiences, this first installment outlines what you need to do to prepare for the upgrade, including the tools you need to have on hand and the system configuration steps you need to take.
- A Custom Performance Test — Is It for You?
by Susanne Janssen and Dr. Ulrich Marquard
A load test makes sense — in fact, it's an absolute must — for large, complex, or highly customized systems with add-ons. In these situations, a load test, whereby you physically test a heavily loaded system before it is deployed, is the only way to verify that the hardware sizing, configuration, and parameterization of your system will be powerful enough to support your business transactions with adequate response times and throughput.
How do you know if your system requires a custom load test? The first part of this article shows you how to answer this question. And, supposing your system does warrant a custom load test, how do you proceed? What steps must you take to successfully devise and then execute the test? This article answers these questions as well.
- A guided tour of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server upgrade tools
by Bert Vanstechelman, Senior SAP Basis Consultant, Logos Consulting
Mark Mergaerts, Principal Technology Consultant, SAP Belgium
Dirk Matthys, Senior ABAP Developer, Bekaert Group
When dealing with a complex process such as an SAP upgrade — especially when things go awry — knowledge is power. Being comfortable with the available upgrade programs and user interfaces will greatly improve your effectiveness; you will do the right thing at the right moment, and you will be able to correctly identify and solve problems if and when they arise. This article introduces you to the current generation of SAP upgrade tools. You will learn how they work, where to find them, how to install them and get them going, and how to use their management and monitoring features in any upgrade scenario.
- A Homogeneous System Copy in 60 Minutes? It Can Be Done!
by Bert Vanstechelman, Independent SAP Basis Consultant
A system copy is a very handy thing to have around. You can use it to support upgrades, set up a training system, or refresh your quality assurance system on a regular basis, for example. But making a system copy is a difficult and time-consuming endeavor, and the bigger the database, the more difficult and time-consuming it becomes. This article details a solution that enables your R/3 system to perform an automatic, homogeneous system copy in less than 60 minutes. It first shows you how to manually create a system copy, and then how to create scripts that automatically refresh the system copy.
- A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning for a Successful OS/DB Migration Project
by Bert Vanstechelman, Independent SAP Basis Consultant
Are you an administrator or project manager on the verge of an OS or DB migration? If so, you have a lot of planning ahead of you and a lot of work to do, and you are likely under enormous pressure to complete the migration as fast as possible using a minimum number of resources. The good news is that SAP offers a service that can help - the OS/DB Migration Service. This article guides you, step by step, through the three phases of a migration supported by this service, and helps you to form accurate assessments of the time that will be required for the project, the people who will need to be involved, and the decisions that will have to be made.
- A system administrator’s practical guide to SAP System Landscape Directory (SLD)
by George Yu, Solution Technology Architect, SAP Labs
Administrators often use a spreadsheet or database program to manually keep
track of the systems in their landscapes, but these won’t tell you whether
two systems are compatible, and the ever-increasing size and geographical spread
of landscapes makes this task difficult at best. SAP System Landscape Directory
(SLD) serves as a central repository of information on all the systems installed
in your landscape, and provides this data to maintenance and integration tools
such as SAP Solution Manager and SAP XI to support and simplify system administration.
This article provides an overview of SLD and how it works, including best practices
for key decision points in the installation and configuration process.
- A Three-Step Process for Averting Downtime When Modifying Your R/3 System
by Kurt Bishop
Whether your SAP system is still in its settling-in phase, or is one that has been firmly entrenched for years, ushering in new changes is a nontrivial challenge. Even small, seemingly innocuous changes, like rearranging a screen, introducing new headings on a report, or revising your backup practices can introduce downtime. Large or small, IT teams obviously need to avoid downtime and make sure that a change does not have an adverse effect on users, partners, or customers.
Kurt Bishop prescribes a three-step process for averting downtime: document the risk/reward and cost associated with each R/3 change request; categorize change requests according to their risk/reward profile; and safeguard, schedule, and implement the change in a manner that is consistent with its risk/reward profile. This article provides details on all three steps.
- Achieving a More Manageable and Reliable R/3 Spool Server Landscape Using Release 4 Output
Classifications, Logical
Servers, and Alternate Servers
by Uwe Krüger
Three new output features give rise to a more manageable, more reliable R/3 spool server environment — classifications, logical servers, and alternate servers. With Release 4, classifications of output devices and spool servers (along the lines of production, high-volume, desktop, and test printing) are now made possible within R/3 itself. This helps you ensure that print requests are directed to the spool servers that are best able to process them.
Logical servers give you a way to reassign multiple output devices with no more effort than it takes to reassign just one. Alternate servers enable you to establish automated failover and load-balancing scenarios. In the event that a spool server fails or becomes overloaded, print requests will be automatically redirected to another (alternate) server. This article provides detailed coverage of these new output features and shows you how they can be used to remedy many of the common problems that plague the spool systems of older releases.
- Adequately Account for Business Requirements and Avoid Archiving Anarchy
by Rolf Gersbacher, Data Archiving Development and Coordination, SAP AG
SAP's archiving tools make data archiving relatively simple from a technical perspective, but don't let this lull you into a false sense of security - it's not enough to simply locate large tables, identify the archiving objects, and then run the archiving programs. These actions only touch the surface of the broader issues involved, including which data objects are archivable from a business perspective, what business processes require access to these data objects, whether there are previous or subsequent documents referenced by these data objects, and how the archived data is to be accessed later. Using the central Logistics sales order process as an example, this article shows archiving teams how to account for these critical considerations.
- An insider’s guide to writing robust, understandable, maintainable, state-of-
the-art ABAP programs: Part 3 — additional best practices and administrative
issues
by Andreas Blumenthal and Horst Keller
With the already large, and ever-increasing, amount of options available for ABAP programming, there has long been a need for a comprehensive guide to help navigate through the maze of possibilities and pitfalls. While many guidelines on the use of ABAP already exist both inside and outside of SAP, most tend to focus on specific areas of the language. Based upon the daily experiences of the ABAP Language Group at SAP, this article is the final installment of a three-part article series that aims to provide a cohesive set of recommendations on the use of key ABAP programming features that can serve as a foundation for or complement to guidelines specific to your own organization.
- An Introduction to SAP's New and Improved Frontend Printing
by Stefan Fuchs
SAP’s new spool access method for frontend printing, method “F,” solves some persistent frontend printing problems. Administrators no longer have to define an output device for each and every user who wants to print to his or her personal frontend printer, and users gain an easy, interactive way to print directly from the SAPGUI.
How does this new and greatly improved frontend printing work? How does it eliminate the need for multiple output device definitions for all the users who want to print to their frontend? And what do administrators need to know in order to ensure its successful deployment? These are the questions answered in this article.
- Architecting a high availability SAP NetWeaver infrastructure: Strategies for ensuring a
successful, cost-effective
implementation
by Matt Kangas, Product Manager, SAP NetWeaver, SAP Labs, LLC
Providing high availability (HA) for an enterprise
service-oriented architecture like SAP NetWeaver
is a challenge — typical setups include multiple
integrated SAP systems that are required around the
clock for continuous, one-step business scenarios.
This article helps you meet this challenge in your
own systems by explaining the SAP NetWeaver architecture,
its configuration, the procedures involved, and the
implications of these elements on systems availability.
It starts with an overview of HA basics, and then
discusses the technical details of an HA setup with
SAP NetWeaver, including topics such as architectural
single points of failure (SPOFs) and ways to isolate
and protect such failure points.
- Best practices for performance-tuning SAP R/3 and Oracle database configurations:
Part 2 — Tools for optimizing Oracle databases
by Kostas G. Gavrielidis, Master Technologist, Hewlett-Packard Services
Left unattended, database performance issues only
worsen over time. Monitoring and adjusting your database
configuration on a regular basis is critical to maintaining
optimal performance and heading off larger problems.
This is the second article in a three-part series
on best practices for performance-tuning SAP R/3
production systems running on Unix with an Oracle
RDBMS. Part 1 described the SAP tools available for
monitoring R/3 functionality. This second installment
reviews the performance issues that are common to
Oracle-based environments, and examines the tools
available for tuning Oracle databases.
- Best practices for performance-tuning SAP R/3 and Oracle database configurations: Part 3 — The top 10 performance
challenges of running SAP R/3 on HP Tru64 Unix
by Kostas G. Gavrielidis, Master Technologist, Hewlett-Packard Services
Performance-tuning your SAP system and database configurations is critical
to maintaining a healthy and reliable system environment. This is the final
installment of a three-part series that together provides a comprehensive guide
to performance-tuning SAP R/3 production configurations running on Unix with
an Oracle database. Part 1 described how to use SAP-provided tools to tune
your SAP R/3 system. Part 2 covered how to optimize the Oracle database. This
final installment reviews the 10 most common performance challenges of running
an SAP R/3 system in an HP Tru64 Unix 5.x environment and how to address them.
- Boost SAP R/3 Performance by Reorganizing Your Oracle Database: A Proven
Reorganization Strategy
by Charles Davis, Database Administration Manager, Rohm and Haas Company
Over time, chunks of free space of varying sizes are distributed randomly throughout the tablespaces in your database. While this free-space distribution is unavoidable, it can significantly degrade SAP system performance if not periodically corrected. This article presents a database reorganization strategy for 24x7 SAP R/3 environments using Oracle 8i and 9i. Adopting this strategy can improve your SAP database performance, reduce your database disk space requirements, maintain full SAP compliance for your support agreement, and lighten your database administration team’s workload by enabling your operations staff to run the reorganizations.
- Centralize and simplify SAP solution maintenance across your system landscape with the
Maintenance Optimizer — an
administrator’s guide
by Martin Rink and Stefan Raffel, SAP AG
Keeping your SAP solutions up-to-date across development, test, and production landscapes is a daunting task, and the growing number of applications, functionalities, and integrated technologies only adds to the challenge. SAP Solution Manager 4.0 introduces the Maintenance Optimizer, a tool that centralizes and simplifies solution maintenance across your entire landscape — it detects and downloads relevant support packages and patches, it guides you through the maintenance process, and, as of April 2007, it is required for maintaining SAP Business Suite 2005 and higher. This article gets you up and running quickly with the Maintenance Optimizer and shows you how to get the most out of it.
- Centralize, harmonize, and distribute your master data with SAP NetWeaver
Master Data Management (MDM)
by Klaus David
For companies maintaining distributed IT landscapes, accurate and consistent master data is crucial for business success; however, eliminating redundancy and inconsistencies across distributed system landscapes can be a daunting task. This article introduces SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM) 5.5, a key component of SAP NetWeaver ’04 that provides sophisticated tools for consolidating, synchronizing, and distributing your master data. It provides a detailed overview of the three predefined IT scenarios (Master Data Consolidation, Master Data Harmonization, and Central Master Data Maintenance) that enable you to implement the MDM capabilities you need, and walks you through the configuration of an example scenario.
- Choosing the right platform for your SAP implementation: Six case study TCO assessments that
help you make the right
choice
by George W. Anderson, Senior Technical Consultant and Project Manager, HP Services
Implementing or migrating between different platforms for SAP is neither
cheap nor easy. The technology-specific cost is significant, not to mention
the business and technical costs of analyzing SAP programs and interfaces to
ensure a smooth migration, retooling and retraining staff, bringing in new
servers and disk subsystems, and implementing high availability/disaster recovery
solutions. And each company’s situation is unique — staffing models
greatly differ, as do process and technology practices. This article presents
six case studies based on real-world TCO analyses that you can use to identify
a low-cost platform alternative within the constraints of your company’s
particular business model.
- Data Archiving Essentials — What Every Administrator Needs to Know
by Dr. Rolf Gersbacher and Helmut Stefani, Data Archiving Development and Coordination, SAP AG
As the saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Administrators are well advised to archive data before ailing performance becomes a characteristic of their SAP environment. SAP Data Archiving enables you to keep the size of your database under control over the long term, ensuring improved system availability and performance, and more efficient use of IT resources such as hard disks, CPUs, and networks.
This article describes how SAP's Archive Development Kit (ADK) works, the ways in which you interact with it, and how to plan for and execute archiving and post-archiving activities. It will bring newcomers up to speed very quickly, and provides plenty of useful information for those already well versed in the fundamentals. Threaded throughout the article are suggestions and tips about how best to wield SAP ADK technology, particularly with regard to FI_DOCUMNT, one of the most commonly used and therefore most important archiving objects.
- Database System Copies Made Easy — A Guide for Copying an Entire R/3 System to
a New Windows Platform
by Giovanni Davila, SAP Basis & Database Administration, Signature Fruit Company,
LLC
Sooner or later, every SAP Basis administrator faces the challenge of copying an entire R/3 system onto another server machine to create a test system, a disaster recovery server, or a report-only server, for example. Unfortunately, many administrators lack the knowledge and resources to properly clone an R/3 system. This article provides you with the tools you need to successfully copy a full database system to a Windows platform. By following the steps and checklists outlined in these pages, you can create a new system from the ground up, and best of all, you can automate subsequent copies using a downloadable script that saves you from many common mistakes.
- Drastically Reduce Your SAP System Downtime During Upgrades with New Tools, Procedures, and
Services
by Michael Demuth, Product Manager, Software Distribution Technology, SAP AG and Joanne
Aponiewicz, Platinum Technical
Consultant, SAP America, Inc.
If you're like most SAP customers, the phrase "time for a system upgrade" triggers downtime concerns, and well it should - system upgrades represent the longest planned interruption of SAP production operations. Good planning and preparation will always help minimize downtime and its associated cost, especially when you're upgrading to Release 4.6x, which offers a range of new features to make the upgrade easier and faster. This article provides a guided tour of these new offerings, and advice about how best to leverage these tools for your own upgrade.
- Ensure and track security across your SAP system landscape using SAP NetWeaver 7.0
BI analysis security
by Joerg Boeke, BI Director/BW Consultant, syskoplan AG
In today's climate of heightened regulations and precautions, security has become a primary focus for many companies. IT departments are no different. Cyber-crime is a growing field, and securing your SAP system landscape has turned out to be more important than ever. This article discusses the new analysis security features of SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and how they can help to make your system landscape safe. You'll learn how to set up security, restrict authorizations selectively and restrict access by attributes, and automate the user profile population.
- Ensure Customizing Data Consistency and Smooth-Running Business Processes
Across Your SAP System Landscape with Customizing Synchronization
by Doreen Baseler, Technical Product Manager, SAP AG
If your organization is like most, you no longer rely solely on SAP R/3 to support your business activities. To remain competitive, you need adaptive business solutions that provide best-of-breed functionality, scalability, and integration, so most SAP customers are now tapping into mySAP Business Suite solutions, such as mySAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and mySAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) to better manage customer relations and coordinate supply chain networks. With system complexity increasing as a result, it’s essential that you maintain centralized control over your IT landscape, from the implementation of your solutions to their operation, especially when it comes to your SAP customizing settings, which need to be synchronized across all of your components. Otherwise, your business processes might falter, a risk you cannot afford in a highly collaborative business environment.
- Ensure effective system management by configuring the right infrastructure for
SAP Solution Manager using central system landscape maintenance
by Doreen Baseler, Technical Product Manager, SAP AG
Managing a globally distributed, heterogeneous system landscape is one of the biggest challenges project teams face. Fortunately, SAP Solution Manager provides a set of sophisticated tools that enable centralized administration of the systems throughout your landscape. For these tools to run smoothly, however, you need to properly configure the infrastructure upon which they rely. This article introduces you to how the infrastructure works and how it is configured using an SAP Solution Manager component called Solution Manager System Landscape (transaction SMSY), which houses the settings and system connections that enable SAP Solution Manager to access and manage satellite systems.
- Gearing Up for a Test-Drive of Linux for SAP
by Boris Bialek, Enterprise Systems Group, Dell Corporation
Linux is a reliable, secure, flexible, and highly configurable operating system that is supported by an impressive lineup of hardware and application vendors. But is this OS really ready for a prime-time SAP audience? Is Linux up to the rigorous demands of a full-fledged R/3 production environment? This article will help you decide. It examines the pros and cons of Linux as a platform for SAP, and includes instructions and tips for installing free SAP LinuxLab test-drive software.
- Globalizing Applications Part 1: Pre-Unicode Solutions
by Michael Redford, Information Developer, SAP AG
As Internet access spreads, costs decrease, and the online population extends to all corners of the globe, additional demands will be placed on developers, who have to consider language issues when they write programs, on system administrators, who have to maintain larger, global networks, and also on managers, who have to stay on top of increasingly far-flung business operations.
This article, the first in a two-part series, provides a general introduction to character code pages, and presents two internationalization solutions that SAP currently offers: blended code pages and Multi-Display/Multi-Processing (MDMP) code pages. Code pages are only one aspect of internationalization, but they are the most critical because it is crucial that users be able to see, enter, and print all of the characters used in their language.
- Improve data access in SAP environments with the Oracle Cost Based Optimizer (CBO)
by Martin Frauendorfer, Platinum Support Consultant, Active Global Support, SAP AG
The Oracle Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) can be a powerful tool for determining the most efficient way to retrieve data from an Oracle database. The CBO identifies ways to improve data-access time by considering resource costs such as I/O, by accounting for statistical values and parameters, and by selecting appropriate indexes. Compared to the Rule Based Optimizer1 (RBO), the CBO is more sophisticated and complex, but it also has a few drawbacks.
- Is It Time to Revisit Your SAP Security Infrastructure?
by José A. Hernández
All too often SAP implementation projects don't take security beyond the application level, where security and authorization are often regarded as one and the same. To ensure adequate protection, security measures must be factored into all layers of the SAP infrastructure. With their client/server architecture, SAP systems include many components that exchange information, each of which constitutes a layer of the SAP security infrastructure.
This article introduces you to this multilevel notion of security, and what you need to be mindful of when reviewing your overarching security measures, as well as the security measures you have in place (or lack thereof) to address each specific level.
- Is Your R/3 System Recovery Plan a Disaster? A Three-Step Approach for Designing Recovery and
Availability Plans
by Kurt Bishop, Remote Consulting Team, SAP America
Everyone needs disaster recovery and high availability built into their systems. It's just a matter of how much. Realistically, when devising recovery and high availability plans, it's impossible to ensure that every system will be available at every moment of every day. So how can technical support services differentiate between those systems and functions that would cripple the business if interrupted, and those that are simply a convenience for the end users? How do you explain to users or management that something is just not that important? If the systems are that important, where do you get the resources to support them?
This article answers these questions. It discusses the key elements involved in recovery and availability planning and system design, and also how to work with management to finance your comprehensive disaster recovery and high availability resources.
- Keep Your Java-Based Systems and Applications Running Smoothly with Early
Problem Detection: A System Administrator's Guide to State Monitoring in SAP
NetWeaver '04
by Robert Heidasch, SAP NetWeaver Foundation Group, SAP AG
Consider how much time and effort you would save if you could quickly determine at a glance that your systems are operating properly or — better yet — have the systems alert you to any problems and their potential severity. This article introduces you to the State Monitoring solution built into SAP NetWeaver ’04. It shows you how to take advantage of the provided administrative tools for managing and viewing monitoring data — the Monitoring Service in the Visual Administrator and the Alert Monitor in CCMS — and provides guidelines for identifying and resolving any problems that might occur with the monitoring configuration or functionality.
- Lessons in Logon Load Balancing
by Janet Hutchison
In large SAP R/3 environments that require multiple application instances, you can achieve intelligent, automated distribution of workload across multiple application instances, with minimal impact to end users, through logon groups. This article explains how logon groups work and how to use them to establish a logon load balancing strategy that can improve system performance, elevate end-user satisfaction, and help attain High Availability objectives.
- Looking Forward to the Unicode Advantage: Internationalization and Integration
by Michael Redford, Information Developer, SAP AG
Unicode is an international character-encoding scheme that is used by modern standards such as HTML and XML, and in programming languages such as Java and ABAP 6.10, to enable global, multilingual Internet data communication and systems integration. This article will help managers, administrators, and developers assess whether the newer SAP Unicode systems fit their specific requirements, how these Unicode systems might offer key systems integration advantages, how a Unicode SAP system can be integrated into an existing landscape, and the key considerations when preparing to install a Unicode system from SAP.
- Mastering the Administrative and Development Tasks Required to Put Archived Data in Easy Reach
of Every User
by Dr. Rolf Gersbacher and Helmut Stefani, Data Archiving Development & Coordination, SAP AG
Data archiving relocates old application data from the database to archive files in order to keep a tight rein on database volume and at the same time preserve that data so it can be referenced at a later date. Two SAP tools enable users to easily retrieve and evaluate archived data: the Archive Information System (AS), which enables users to retrieve individual archived business documents, and the Document Relationship Browser (DRB), which enables users to evaluate an archived document's fit within the context of a business process.
This article shows administrators and developers how to accomplish the tasks necessary to make these tools available to users, and also offers valuable behind-the-scenes information and concrete instructions for customizing existing retrieval programs and developing new ones.
- Minimize data warehouse disruption post mergers and acquisitions with SAP NetWeaver 7.0’s Universal Data Connect and
Master Data Management
by Prakash Darji, Product Manager, SAP Labs, LLC
Scott Cairncross, Platinum Consultant, Corporate Performance Management, SAP Labs, LLC
Once a merger or acquisition takes place, there are two disparate data warehouses to deal with — each with its own data and model, and potentially based on entirely different solutions. This article shows you how to use the Universal Data (UD) Connect interface provided with SAP NetWeaver 7.0 along with Master Data Management (MDM) to consolidate heterogeneous data. It shows you how to configure UD Connect, walks you through a four-phase process for implementing it and using MDM to integrate the data with minimal disruption, and lastly explains what you need to do to monitor the unified data.
- Optimizing, Monitoring, and Fine-Tuning a Newly Upgraded Release 4.x Spool Service
by Uwe Krüger
For Release 3.x spool servers, all output requests and related management activities are anchored by a single spool work process. Needless to say, processing bottlenecks can be a common occurrence, forcing administrators to add additional R/3 servers just to get more spool work processes. Release 4.x spool servers, which can support multiple spool work processes, yield far better throughput and performance. Just how many spool work processes should you set up on your Release 4.x spool server?
This article provides you with evaluation criteria and guidelines to answer that question and simple scenarios that illustrate how to apply these factors in a real-world situation.
- Performing a Successful and Cost-Effective Migration of Your SAP System:
Understanding the Import Process
by Michael A. Moore, Independent Consultant
When faced with reducing costs, consolidating dissimilar SAP systems, or adding processing power without breaking the bank, you have to consider migrating your SAP system. This is the second article in a two-part series designed to help you identify the risks associated with an SAP migration and provide you with insight into how to effectively manage the entire migration process. The first installment walked you through the data export process. This second installment takes you through the steps required to import the exported data into a target system and validate the results, and provides some useful tips on optimizing the import to minimize the outage time of your production system.
- Pinpoint Problems in Java-Based Applications with Ease Using SAP NetWeaver '04
Logging and Tracing: A System Administrator's Guide
by Robert Heidasch, SAP NetWeaver Foundation Group, SAP AG
As an SAP system administrator, you know all too well how many hours, and sometimes days, you can spend investigating system problems. You have probably used the ABAP-based system log or user log to identify problems in ABAP-based applications, but what do you do when the problem is in a Java-based application? This article introduces you to the Java logging and tracing functionality included with SAP NetWeaver ’04. It provides an overview of Java logging and tracing concepts, and how they apply to the SAP NetWeaver ’04 environment, and shows you how to configure Java-based logging and tracing using the tools provided with the SAP NetWeaver platform.
- Readying to Resize Your R/3 Platform
by Kurt Bishop, Remote Consulting Team, SAP America
Whether you're sizing a brand-new system or resizing an existing system, there is only one governing principle — sizing requirements are defined by the extent of the SAP functionality to be implemented. Upgraded functionality, for example, may consume resources, whether you use it or not. When resizing an existing R/3 system, you must account for all upgraded and additional new functions and applications. You must also make sure your existing system is properly tuned, so you don't needlessly buy additional hardware.
How do you analyze your system to determine whether or not it is properly tuned? And how do you account for the workloads presented by current and future requirements from "conventional" R/3 as well as new Web-based functionality such as mySAP.com, Workplace, and B2B? These are some of the questions this article will address.
- SAP Solution Manager — 'Command Central' for Implementing Your mySAP Solutions
… and Much More!
by Matthias Melich, Technical Product Management, SAP AG
By now, most SAP customers are aware that SAP Solution Manager is the new standard environment for operating SAP solutions. What you probably don’t know is that it replaces ValueSAP/AcceleratedSAP as a tool for implementing solutions as well. This article shows you how Solution Manager can serve as “command central” in a multicomponent mySAP implementation project, as well as system consolidation, global rollout, customizing distribution, and BC Set integration projects, by enabling you to describe, define, and document your business processes, and by providing predefined descriptions of business scenarios and configuration guides, all in a single, centralized location.
- Selecting the Optimal System Landscape for Your SAP R/3 Upgrade Project
by Arthur Miller
An R/3 upgrade requires that changes be made to the new system, and it requires support for ongoing changes to the production system as well, so the underlying system landscape must make it easy to manage change. Most upgrade projects use a variation on one of two landscape strategies: rehearsal of the upgrade process on a separate, standalone R/3 sandbox system, with the intent of rolling out the upgrade to the production landscape at a later time, or upgrade of the production landscape's development system right away, followed after a time by the upgrade of the QAS system, with the maintenance of additional, temporary development and QAS systems to support the production system at the old release. Understanding the principles, benefits, and limitations of each of these strategies will help you decide which approach best suits your upgrade project.
- Size Does Matter - Strategies for Successful SAP R/3 Capacity Planning
by Kurt Bishop
Capacity planning is not a trivial task. Choose your hardware vendor and equipment carefully, and upgrades will pose few problems. Choose the wrong vendor-model combination, and you will be forced to make extensive changes to your hardware and operating system that will entail extensive planning and testing, and could ultimately require all new equipment.
So how do you, as a customer, set yourself up for a successful collaboration with your hardware vendor - one that ensures the final system design meets your current requirements and adequately scales over time? This article describes the capacity planning process, some basic tools and techniques employed by the vendors, and how you can ensure all of these items work in your favor as you attempt to size your SAP R/3 System.
- Solve configuration-related problems faster and better in your Java-based SAP NetWeaver ’04
systems: A system
administrator’s troubleshooting guide
by Robert Heidasch, Enterprise Services Infrastructure, SAP AG
The reality is that even well-designed, well-managed SAP NetWeaver systems are likely to experience some type of problem sooner or later. This article shows you how to efficiently investigate common configuration problems that can prevent the startup of your Java-based SAP NetWeaver system. It describes the features that are provided to help you detect system and SAP NetWeaver application problems and introduces key system characteristics that are critical to understanding and addressing an out-of-memory condition, which is typically the most difficult to resolve in any Java system, to help shorten your learning curve, and ultimately to save you time in administering Java-based SAP NetWeaver systems.
- Speed Up High-Throughput Business Transactions with Parallel Processing - No
Programming Required!
by Susanne Janssen, Performance & Benchmark Group, SAP AG and Werner Schwarz, IBS
Consumer Industries, SAP Retail Solutions
Parallel processing is a built-in option available with many SAP programs that helps improve the throughput and processing time of business transactions that must process large amounts of data in a tight time frame. This article shows you how to determine whether parallel processing is the right course of action, how the workload is split up to achieve greater throughput, the options available to you to maximize performance, and how to use concurrent batch jobs when parallel processing is not an option automatically provided by the program. It also points out the two most common parallel-processing pitfalls and how to avoid them.
- Take your first steps with the Java-based SAP Web ApplicationServer in SAP NetWeaver ’04: An implementation primer for
system administrators
by Robert Heidasch, Enterprise Services Infrastructure, SAP AG
Configuring and reconfiguring the ABAP-based SAP Web
Application Server (SAP Web AS) to optimize performance
and accommodate ever-increasing and changing applications,
users, and business needs is a well-documented and
well-known undertaking for SAP system administrators.
As a newer technology, however, the Java-based SAP
Web AS is a less well-traveled path. This article introduces
you to the key concepts behind the Java-based SAP Web
AS and shows you how, with a little planning, you can
design an architecture that meets your current needs
and can be easily reconfigured to meet future needs
as well.
- The 15 Most Overlooked Items in Planning for High Availability and Disaster
Recovery
by Kurt Bishop, Independent Consultant
In recovering from a disaster, you are rebuilding more than a system: you are rebuilding your business and everything it stands for. No detail is too large or too small to deserve your company's full attention when developing recovery and availability strategies. Based on the author's own experiences in the trenches, this article helps you avoid costly mistakes by sharing the 15 most overlooked items - including the cost of downtime, security issues, loss of personnel and systems, and the importance of testing - and discussing how to incorporate them into your own recovery planning.
- Use SAP Solution Manager’s extensive reporting capabilities to ensure consistent performance
across your system
landscape through proactive monitoring
by Henrik Zimmermann, Senior Product Manager, SAP AG
Veit Eska, Senior Developer, SAP AG
Michael Mayer, Senior Support Consultant, SAP AG
The growth of SAP Solution Manager as a tool to
maintain, support, configure, and upgrade SAP landscapes
brings with it the need for increased reporting capabilities,
so you can be proactive in addressing issues before
they become critical. SAP Solution Manager 4.0 includes
a wide range of reporting options for generating
technical and administrative information about your
system landscape, including SAP EarlyWatch Alert
Reporting, Service Reporting, EarlyWatch Alert Reporting
in SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, Service Level
Reporting, and System Availability Reporting. This
article provides an overview of these new options
and explains how you can use them to ensure consistent
performance across your system landscape.
- Using SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) to ensure the safe transfer of data across security domain boundaries
by Eduard Neuwirt, Senior Developer, and Manfred Reinart, Development Architect, SAP AG
Your data is one of your most valuable assets, so you protect it by separating it into systems with varying levels of security, depending on the sensitivity of the information. But what if processes running in lower-level security areas need to access data stored in higher-level security areas? This article shows you how to use SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) 7.0 in conjunction with a security gateway to ensure the safe transfer of data between high and low security domains. PI serves as a flexible and transparent integration platform while the security gateway acts as a firewall, enabling data to cross domain boundaries without compromising security.
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