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Downtime, Uptime and Limitation

Ying
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎2024 May 06 2:30 PM
2,360

If you have read one of my previous blogs, you are probably familiar with the lifecycle events in S/4HANA Public Cloud. It falls under three main categories:

  • Patching: This involves resolving reported bugs and issues, usually conducted every two weeks.
  • Continuous Feature Delivery: As the name suggests, new features are delivered on a monthly basis to keep up with users' dynamically changing needs.
  • Release Upgrade: This is much larger in scope and currently happens twice a year.

In SAP Activate Methodology, we have tasks for each respective lifecycle event. For release upgrade, we have a dedicated roadmap on the topic to provide more guidance to our customers. This blog, however, aims to delve deeper, highlighting intricacies of Hotfix Collection and providing practical guidance. 

Technically, patching and continuous feature delivery operate the same way, occurring every two weeks, referred to as “Hotfix Collection" (HFC). The deployment of HFCs are considerably frequent lifecycle events in the public cloud, occurring every fortnight on a weekend. Notably, once in a month, when there is not a release upgrade, an HFC will include updates and new features, alongside the standard patching of issues.

In our S/4HANA Public Cloud, 3-system-landscape roadmap, the Review and Process HFC task is facilitated by several accelerators such as:

Hotfix CollectionHotfix Collection

The approximate 30-hour window consists of an hour or so downtime on the S/4HANA systems side where users cannot log in, and couple of hours where the project is locked within SAP Central Business Configuration. Despite the short duration, it is crucial to understand certain activities to avoid during this period. For example:

  • Large cloud development imports (a) or activation of large scope or country (d) should be avoided; these may take longer to complete, possibly overlapping with SAP pre-processing window of the HFC.
  • SAP's pre-processing window or lock phase, marked by the pink bars, prohibits configuration and ABAP development transports, data migration activities in S/4HANA systems (b), and deployment from SAP Central Business Configuration (e). 
  • Business process configuration activities are also limited, when the S/4HANA Development system is in read-only mode (c).

As someone who believes in the power of visual representation, I've created this scaled picture illustrating this roughly 30-hour window: yellow indicates activities to avoid, pink signifies limitations, and red denotes full system access restriction.

To conclude, here are the takeaway points for Hotfix Collection:

  • If you're a customer live in Production, good news is that your users only need to stay away from the system for about an hour or so on a weekend.
  • If you're in the midst of a project, avoid triggering any significant cloud development imports or big scope like country/ region activation late on Fridays.
  • And, rather than working around all the limitations, select a weekend free from scheduled lifecycle events when planning your go live. 

 

Stay tuned for more updates and blogs.

Follow the SAP Activate page on the SAP Community. Remember to turn on your notification to receive updates or information about items requiring your attention. To enable notifications, follow the steps on the SAP Community Resources page.


SAP Activate Minute

Tune into the SAP Activate Minute videos in our Playlist here. Subscribe to get notified when we drop new videos. Here are past ones that relates to this blog: 

 

 

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