Differentiation between homogeneous and heterogeneous SAP system copy
Scenario with system copies for updating
Typically, the "homogeneous SAP system copy" process involves a large number of manual activities. A certain skill level is required for this, which leads to the fact that usually the employees of the SAP Basis department or external service providers realize the system copy. Depending on the structure and size of the systems, this process can take anywhere from hours to several days. In addition to making the target systems unavailable to operations and project teams, system and landscape copies also block SAP Basis administrators. Other challenges include the varying duration and quality (completeness) of the results depending on the processor, time dependency on the employees performing the work, etc..
An alternative to this is a refresh using a client copy. The test environment will then be missing audit documents, among other things, but the development objects will remain untouched. The client copy only works from a running SAP system, but it burdens the system with database queries and transfers data more slowly than a system copy. The affected client is not available during the copy process. Since there are no options within the client to select what all should be copied, the runtime is often unacceptable.
Reliable and fast rework after SAP® system copies
Internationally active companies that operate systems with several terabytes of data and hundreds of users in different time zones depend on high system availability. If necessary, the system is copied incrementally, table by table, on weekends and at night. Complete shutdown of the production system is best avoided altogether.
In this context, generated jobs adapt to changes, even if, for example, a DB change, a release change or other changes have taken place. Nevertheless, once created copy jobs can be reused, which minimizes the maintenance effort and a certain susceptibility to errors. This is also the case when switching from one Any DB to another or when moving from an Any DB to Hana.
For some time now, SAP customers have been supported in system copying by very powerful automation tools that can be used as needed, such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems". Nothing has to be installed in your SAP systems for this - no transport requests, no AddOns!
The export and the import do not always run without errors.
SAP Basis refers to the administration of SAP system that includes activities like installation and configuration, load balancing, and performance of SAP applications running on Java stack and SAP ABAP. This includes the maintenance of different services related to database, operating system, application and web servers in SAP system landscape and stopping and starting the system. Here you can find some useful information about SAP Basis: www.sap-corner.de.
The client copy only works from a running SAP system, but it burdens the system with database queries and transfers data more slowly than a system copy.