Summary of what we achieved: We have recently migrated and upgraded the BW/BI system from Netweaver 7.0 to Netweaver 7.5 using the SAP’s robust tool SUM 2.0’s DMO feature for one of our customer. The database size was nearly 3 terabyte and the resultant HANA database was around 250 Gigabyte.
The existing infrastructure was having database as Oracle 11.2.0.2.0 and Operating System HPUX ia64.
So if anyone is going to work on a similar assignment, can refer to this blog post for insight.
Source system component information
Technical Journey: Our Customer had over 3 terabyte BW database system which had lot of waste in it so to begin with, we followed various SAP recommended notes to reduce the data footprint so that we migrate/upgrade what is absolutely needed. We co-ordinated with BI/BW application owners to identify and remove what was not needed at all. Any aggressive housekeeping/archiving was never done. so they started working on housekeeping on actual production system whilst we started working on technical execution preparations.
Before you start building mock systems, make sure you complete all the mock executions keeping all the settings as that of your production system e.g. client settings, SE06, client role etc. so that you don’t face any surprises for any reason.
In addition, Get the same kind of hardware ready in terms of size and performance as that of your production systems. Always strive to get the maximum hardware increase as possible so that downtime is kept minimal. lesser technical downtime will help us our customers to deliver better tested systems.
Nevertheless, we started off with a Sandbox build using the database backup restore, which did not go well. We faced lot of issues here and there but all sorted out later on. refer to below screenshot for timelines, obviously these were not good but this pave the way for further improvements and techniques.
Note: You can get the graphs and other information from this URL where it gets uploaded upon SUM tool completion when we send feedback to SAP (Downtime Optimization URL)
Sandbox Timelines
After Sandbox build and results, we applied our learnings and lesson learned in next iteration. to be precise, we have made sure that we don’t face any application related errors this time and process goes smooth at least. The results are as below; Satisfactory in terms of execution but not as per expectation in terms of timelines:
First Mock Run Timelines
By this time i.e. completing the first mock and a sandbox build, we were able to fix the issues so we started applying performance improvements measures here onwards. In the final mock run, the results were satisfactory in terms of downtime and execution per se.
in a nutshell, we were ready and excited to gear up for the Production run /Go Live.
See screenshot below for Final mock run timelines:
Final Mock Run Timelines
Go-Live Results:
Based upon the leanings and success of Previous executions/iterations, It was the time to get prepared for the production run or go live, so we prepared list of activities to be done as “Pre” and “Post” tasks. By this time, data cleansing and hardware increase was completed. All the application owners, end users, infra team members, IT managers were excited to go live on BW on HANA platform. We started out at Saturday 4.00 am as the usual BW loads would finish by then. We continued with the DMO procedure and were able to complete everything in record time.
“All is well, that ends well”
Production timelines were as below:
Production Timelines
Finally, upon login we could see the target system component information as:
Target system component information
Conclusion: Well, We can achieve our goals if we prepare well. And that was the key here as well, we kept learning from all the previous mock executions and information available in the forms of SAP notes, blogs, guides. I would also like to share important preparation steps along with technical issues that we faced so that fellow Basis consultants can use them as a ready reference.
Pre Steps: Refer to below screenshot
Preparation Steps
Issues Faced: Following list of issues faced by us during the DMO iterations. I think these can be useful for other community users to get an idea of what sort of issues one can face in this type of assignments.
Common Issues
References: Apart from reading the SUM guide, standard SAP notes, release notes etc, we can refer to following piece of information which proved handy in my case.
I wish all the very best to our fellow community members in their future assignments.
