Dual Landscape Required for Support Pack Updates or Not

[jdub67]

We are currently on ECC 6 Ehp 8, Support Pack 18.  We are in the process of planning to update to a later Support Pack version.  Our Basis team is suggesting we create a Dual Landscape for updating the support packs just like we did when we upgraded from Ehp7 to Ehp8.  Something similar to this:

Is a dual landscape environment really needed when we are just updating to a later support pack? 

What are the risks if we don't create a dual landscape environment and create transports from a DEV system that has a higher support pack level than the QAS(DEV) or PRD environment?

[S_Sriram]

Hi 

1. It all depends on your business requirements. You can either have dual landscapes for the SAP system upgrades, addressing one system after another, or we can follow the approach outlined in point number 2 onwards.
2. In our environment, we have taken a copy of the production system as a sandbox system, upgraded it, and tested all the business process scenarios. After that, we started the live landscapes.
3. Before upgrading the production environment, we created a clone of the production environment in the private network to calculate the overall time process of the upgrade to minimize overall downtime.

BR

SS