Sequential upgrade of one landscape (DEV, QAS, PRD) to new release

[Aleksandr]

Hello.

 

INTRO

In this blog post I will tell you about chosen strategy upgrading ERP system to new EHP (from EHP7 to EHP8) in our company.

We were choosing between two strategies in our project of upgrading EHP:

Strategy	Pros	Cons
Temporary landscape	Maintenance and implementation of EHP are separated	More effort for teams Additional hardware resources Problems with ChaRM
Without temporary landscape	Less effort for teams No additional hardware resources No problems with ChaRM	Risk for maintenance and EHP project because colleagues can modify the same objects.

 

MAIN PART

We have a landscape:

-------- Landscape ------------

DEV -> QAS -> PPD -> PRD

SM with ChaRM and ITSM

-------------------------------------

and all system are connected to SAP SM with ChaRM. We had >10 projects and about 7000 requests per year are imported to PRD. We could not break our transport system with ChaRM.

 

We have chosen the strategy without temporary landscape and prepared the rules that everyone had to follow:

Object changes

• Z objects
  
  
  
  • Allowed to change without restrictions
  
  
  
  


• Extending standard objects
  
  
  
  • Allowed to use standard mechanism of extended of objects
  
  
  
  


• Standard objects
  
  
  
  • Forbidden to modify standard if you have to transport it to PRD before installing EHP
  
  
  • Allowed to change standard if standard is not changed after installing EHP
  
  
  • Allowed to change standard if you have to transport it to PRD after installing EHP
  
  
  
  

Where objects changes should be located

1. Project queue (not EHP)
   
   
   
   • if it is new functional
   
   
   • or you can modify object (see above)
   
   
   
   


2. Project queue (EHP)
   
   
   
   • if you fix errors and bugs after installing EHP
   
   
   • if you adopt a new functional of EHP
   
   
   
   

Queue of import

1. if you changed the same objects or standard
   
   
   
   • Firstly, you should transport requests of EHP project
   
   
   • Secondly, you should transport requests of other projects and change documents
   
   
   
   


2. Other requests are without additional restrictions.

 

CONCLUSION

These rules helped us to resolve conflict situations between teams and save resources of company (hardware and teams) because we made upgrade to new EHP without additional systems and SAP systems allow it.

 

Additional:

Upgrading a three system landscape