Types of SAP system copy
Automation tool reduces time required to create test environments
Until now, it has been common practice to create test systems as a client or system copy of the production system on a specific date. In these cases, a single client or the entire SAP system is duplicated. The corresponding instances of the SAP system have to be reinstalled. In addition, a copy of the source database must be created. These are standard procedures, but they can be disproportionately expensive for productive data sets of several terabytes. SAP and third-party tools for selective data extraction can significantly reduce the cost of deploying non-production SAP systems.
As mentioned above, an SAP system copy created for updates is a special use case of homogeneous system copy. Here, a production system represents the source and a non-production system with a specific long-term task in the SAP system landscape represents the target. The most common update scenario involves updating a QA system in the SAP transport system.
Verification of source system status and infrastructure - analysis of software versions, database disk layout, system status, etc.
The process of creating system copies for updates can be broken down into different activities, as shown in Table 1. For each group, the software used for automation is shown, where "UC4" stands for UC4 Automated System Copy and "HP" stands for HP System Copy. All these activity groups are described individually below.
Today, thanks to tools for creating SAP system copies, it is possible to create such system duplications practically at the push of a button, and that too in a very short time. Even several at once.
There is a useful product for SAP system copy - "Shortcut for SAP Systems".
An alternative to this is a refresh using a client copy.
Pre- and post-processing is automated using the UC4 Automated System Copy for SAP solution.