Best Practice Training Environment

[#1]

Many clients wish to have training material based on their own implemented solution.

The question is what is the best method to achieve this ?

• Separate training tenant
• Perform training on QA tenant
• Completely separate training platform
• Other suggestions

[Matthew_Shaw · Accepted solution]

Hello Peter

You've certainly thought of some great options there and its helpful for others, I'm sure, that you've shared this insight. Many thanks.

Certainly a dedicated tenant (service) has some very appealing characteristics. My thoughts for a dedicated training tenant (service):

There's little point having a private edition for training, so you might as well go with the cheaper option a public tenant (service)

Then you also have the option of either a 'test' or a regular 'production' tenant (service). A 'test' gives all users full planning pro licenses and 'public test' tenant (service) is likely to be cheaper than a 'public production' tenant (service) for the planning use-case. A public test tenant (service) has a minimum 20 user I believe (subject to change etc.) and 25 users is required if you want your users to be able to do scheduling of publications. My article has a lot more detail on these points https://blogs.sap.com/2020/04/20/sap-analytics-cloud-landscape-architecture-life-cycle-management/

But of course the downside of a dedicate training tenant (service) is you need to commit to the minimum contract term.

I think there are many challenges with running a training on another tenant (service) such as QA. Its possible of course, but there are many shared components and you can't easily split them completely apart. A dedicated 'folder' as I mentioned earlier would really only work if the model doesn't need to be copied, in other words it would only work if stories/applications are the things you're going to copy for training purposes and nothing much else. For your planning use-case then, as you mentioned, the versions of the data within the models then need to be managed and that's very problematic when you've designed the system so only certain versions can be managed by certain users etc. I agree with you a dedicated tenant (service) is really the best option here.

I encourage others to comment on this topic, I think there's many challenges with this and not all those challenges will have been described so far.

All the best, Matthew

[Jay_Gandhi]

Hi Peter,

I highly recommend you review some of our documentation on lifecycle management and tenant strategy topics here:
SAP Analytics Cloud – Landscape Architecture gets an update | SAP Blogs
Jay

[Matthew_Shaw]

Hello Peter

Thank you for your feedback. You raise a good point, we don't really have a good solution for training, at least nothing special to accommodate those particular needs. You could use a regular SAC tenant/service and setup a folder for just training purposes and limit access to anything 'production' like. Though there will be many shared components and this could be problematic. I would think that if you're just playing/training with stories then its quite easy. What 'things' are you wanting to cover in the training?

All the best Matthew

[peter_warren_uk]

Hi Matthew

Thanks for responding to this question

The requirement is to have training on a system that includes all aspect of the solution we are building for the client. This is complex global, manufacturing with multiple models and various planning versions, strategic, targets, rolling forecast, budget etc. They have Dev QA and Prod tenants in place. The 'things' they want to cover include all aspects of each planning process, including transfer between models , data actions and workflows.

The options being considered are

Option 1 - Create separate data version for training and perform on QA tenant

Will require additional work to modify and maintain input forms and reports to include the Training data version or create training stories

There may be some data actions that are restricted to specific versions of data - these need to be re-created to work with the training version

Relatively easy to reset the environment after training

Training activity may conflict with genuine QA requirements

Risks to QA data

Option 2 - Train directly on QA without creating any special data versions

No additional work to modify and maintain input forms and reports to include the Training data version or create training stories

More difficult to reset the environment after training

Training activity more likely to conflict with genuine QA requirements

Risks to QA data

Option 3 - Procure dedicated training tenant

No additional training specific development/maintenance

Simple to reset the environment after training - can restore from content network after each use

No risk to any other environment / data set

As new developments are moved to Production they move to Training - simple transport

Additional cost for training tenant offset by saved cost of maintaining versions/stories etc

No conflict with other user requirements

Personally I'm tending towards option 3 as it looks to be the easiest to maintain

Thanks again for your input

Peter

[peter_warren_uk]

Hi Jay

Thanks for taking the time to reply

I have read that excellent post by matthew.shaw several times but he doesn't refer to the case for having a separate training tenant only the usual dev qa prod etc

Peter

[mfoeken]

Hi Peter,

I recommend you take a look at the concept of workspaces which is recently introduced. This would provide the opportunity to setup a 'isolated' environment for training purposes on an existing tenant. And since training content doesn't have a share in the regular lifecycle it doesn't really matter which tenant you use. Connectivity to meaningful data source is leading I guess.

Kind regards,

Martijn van Foeken | Interdobs