S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Systems Behaviour During Blue-Green Deployment Uptime

[Dhanashree_Biradarpatil]

Today, customers expect that cloud solutions should offer continuous availability, sparing them the need to wait for planned maintenance events. They prefer that software deployments do not disrupt their businesses anymore. And this is exactly what Blue-Green deployment methodology helps S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition achieve.

With the current Blue-Green deployment supported updates (hotfix) and upgrades (release) for ABAP based cloud systems, S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, aims at 5 min or less downtime. This number is planned to be reduced further down to zero.

During Blue-Green deployment customer can run uninterrupted business operations during software rollouts. However, while this approach safeguards ongoing business activities, it’s important to note that new implementations may face certain limitations during the deployment phase.

This blog post aims to introduce you to this blue-green deployment methodology used in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition updates/upgrades and discuss what all features and functionalities are made available to users even when the update/upgrade is running. So, let’s begin!

What is Blue-Green Deployment?

Blue and Green simply refer to two runtimes on different versions. As shown in the below diagram, Blue is the currently active production runtime, and Green is the updated/upgraded version which would eventually replace the Blue one.

Blue Green Deployment

Blue-Green deployment works like this: the consumer uses the blue runtime; a green runtime is deployed in parallel. Then, the consumers are switched to use the green runtime and the blue runtime is removed.  In above diagram, ‘Prepare V2’ and ‘Switch to V2’ stages represent the Update/Upgrade phase.

As simple as that!

What it means is all the changes in an update/upgrade are deployed without interrupting the user for much duration. After carrying out most of the update/upgrade related tasks in the background, the system simply switches to the updated runtime and the updated system become available. Thus, the downtime experienced by the user, during which logging into system is not allowed, is reduced via Blue-Green deployment. 

Why Blue-Green Deployment?

Blue-Green deployment paves path for zero downtime deployment. This facilitates multiple advantages such as:

• Continuous business operations since update/upgrade changes are applied without delays
• Innovations can be deployed more frequently in small increments as business disruption due to downtime is avoided.
• Risk of change is minimal. In case the update/upgrade fails, it is relatively easier to switch back to previous version and update/upgrade can be re-triggered at later point of time once it is fixed.

What is Downtime and Uptime?

Downtime is the period during the update/upgrade when a business user cannot log into their S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system. This is the reason downtimes are considered disruptive.

On the other hand, Blue-Green deployment accomplishes much of its update/upgrade-related tasks during uptime—a period during the update/upgrade when a business user is able to log in to S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition system and use certain functionalities that are allowed.

Uptime is restrictive but unlike downtime, is not disruptive. This means that a business user is allowed to log into and perform certain functionalities even when the update/upgrade is going on in background; although with some restrictions in place (more on that in further sections).

For system updates, uptime starts about 12 hours before the maintenance period mentioned in the 3SL Maintenance Schedule.

What does Uptime allow or restrict?

Logically, the next question to follow is – which functionalities are allowed during Blue Green deployment uptime, and which are blocked?

To maintain consistency across the systems, it is important to put some restrictions around which functionalities are available during blue-green uptime. E.g. - certain system-specific functionalities and business transactions, including executing existing workflows, maintaining current settings, etc., are available during blue-green uptime, whereas other functionalities like release transports, data migration, etc., which can affect the consistency across systems, are blocked.

Below is the detailed information regarding the availability of important functionalities during Blue-Green deployment uptime of a new update/upgrade based on the customer landscape:

Conclusion

Blue-Green deployment helps to safeguard S/4HANA Cloud Public Cloud customers from business disruptions during updates/upgrades. Awareness regarding restrictions in place during Blue-Green uptime will empower customers with clarity about what activities can be continued with even during the updates/upgrades. This would further lead to an overall better experience for S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition customers.

Glossary

• Role Creation and Assignments : This refers to role creation via Manage Business Roles app; and role assignment via Manage Business Users app.

• Workflows and Attachments : This includes creation of new workflows, and execution of existing workflows/attachment functionalities.

• Transportable Configurations : This refers to those configurations done via CBC Activities (or Implementation Activities app in 3SL) that can be captured in a Transport Request and pushed to further systems. This includes all configurations which are not ‘Current Settings’.

• Number Range Current Settings : These are the number range related current settings done in the S/4HANA Public Cloud system.

• Non-Number Range Current Settings: These are the current settings that are not number-ranges and cannot be captured in a transport request and need to be redone in Production System.

• Custom Development: This refers to Custom Development that can be done in 3SL systems via ABAP Development Tool.

• Central Business Configuration (CBC) Project : Access to the projects created in CBC system.

• Change Project : Creation of a new change project by initiating a change in the project.

• Add New Country/Scope Extension : This functionality refers to initiating a change in project to add a new country to the scope or additional scope items.

• Organizational Structure creation and changes : This functionality refers to initiating a change in project to create or edit the organizational structure.

• Extensibility : In-App and Side-by-Side extensibility done in S/4HANA Cloud.

• Test Automation Tool : Test Automation Tool is used in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to automate business process testing in the Quality/Test system.

• Transports :Transport release and import in S/4HANA Public Cloud Public Edition systems during blue-green deployment uptime.

• Forms : Forms creation and editing in S/4HANA Output Management in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition systems.

• General Ledger: This refers to any changes made tothe General Ledger.

• Data Migration: Data Migration is done via the Data Migration Cockpit application.

Further Links

In case you are interested to know about Blue-Green Deployment-related information and schedules in S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, you would find the below links useful for further reading:

• SAP NOTE: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3024158

• 3SL Maintenance Schedule: https://www.sap.com/documents/2021/09/58ffa59e-f97d-0010-bca6-c68f7e60039b.html 

Please feel free to post your questions and comments, and you can reach out to Manish Sharma, Co-Author, at manish.sharma04@sap.com or me at d.biradarpatil@sap.com.

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