Copying needs to be done skillfully
Downtime
The different types of SAP environments must meet different requirements. Training courses, for example, can only be held expediently if the working conditions largely correspond to those on the production system. Companies can simulate real-life situations for testing purposes on the basis of consistent and realistic data alone. Users should also test their own developments and modifications with consistent data that is close to production. A test environment that is as identical as possible to the production system is suitable for testing patches and release upgrades. In development and training systems in particular, it is fundamentally important to anonymize sensitive data in order to comply with data protection rules.
One example: In an SAP environment, a system copy must be performed for various reasons - until now manually. Such a copy is always required when the QA system of a multi-level SAP architecture has to be brought up to the status of the current production system: Be it for testing new applications or during a release upgrade, for maintenance purposes or for updating the quality assurance and test system. In principle, the task proves to be simple: All files belonging to the clean configuration and implementation of the SAP environment must be transferred from the productive systems to the quality assurance system in the correct order and in the correct directories.
Consistency of database disk blocks - stopping I/O activities or executing DATABASE BEGIN ONLINE BACKUP command, flushing cache, etc.
Post system copy rework - The collected information from the system copy prework is evaluated and the corresponding transport requests are reimported. The development status before the system copy is thus restored. In addition, this package includes a tool that, when individual transports are released, checks whether there are any overlaps on the target system with transports that are still open there. This prevents a transport from unintentionally "overtaking" an earlier released one with the same objects.
Powerful and sophisticated automation tools for the creation of SAP system copies provide a remedy here and, in addition to time and cost savings, demonstrably also make it possible, for example, to increase the process quality in system copying or to maintain it at a consistently high level. In effect, they free up SAP Basis. With "Shortcut for SAP Systems", you can sustainably relieve your administrators of the time-consuming routine activities of an SAP system copy.
Backup / Restore: If the source system must not fail, eg to copy the database files, one can create an online backup of the database, copy the backup files to the new server and perform a restore before performing the SAP installation over the existing database.