Over the past years, management of software life cycle tasks have evolved to the point that SAP has consolidated and bundled different tools and invented the SAP Software Update Manager (SUM). This tool provides different ways to run maintenance tasks and drives the user step by step through the process using a modern and unique browser based GUI. SUM is now the standard tool run any maintenance operation for SAP NetWeaver based SAP products, like
- implementing an SAP Support Package stack to keep a given SAP product up-to-date,
- applying an SAP Enhancement Package stack for an SAP product or
- upgrading to a higher release
The SAP on IBM i Development team has created a new whitepaper to show behaviors and insights of this tool when running on the IBM i platform. It is intended to be a supplement to SAPs upgrade documentation and represents a collection of review steps based on SAP/IBM documentation, SAP Notes, and experiences of the SAP on IBM i Development team. It can be downloaded from the IBM Techdocs website at:
https://www.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP102818
The white paper explains technical aspects when running the SUM tool on an IBM i server. It focuses on the configuration and performance aspects of the upgrade process, the special behavior of the upgrade tools when running on the IBM i platform, and explains improvements made for that platform. Insights about the construction of the so-called “shadow instances” and their databases are included, as well as descriptions of upgrade phases which run specific to this platform.
