In an effort to simplify upgrades, and chiefly the testing processes involved, SAP will break up enhancement packages into smaller, vertically and industry-focused pieces that its customers can implement incrementally.
The updates in smaller pieces will come out every quarter. Customers will have the option to implement them in several ways—a node, a support pack or as an add-on to a support pack. Customers can access the updates through Solution Manager or via the Innovation Roadmap on the SAP Service Marketplace.
“The enhancement pack was a collection of hundreds of innovations bundled into one package. But customers want smaller, digestible pieces,” says Bernd Leukert, EVP and Corporate Officer for SAP Business Suite Applications. “They want to select which pieces to install and which to ignore.”
In turn, SAP extended maintenance and support for ERP 6.0 and Business Suite 7 products for five years, from December 2015 to December 2020. The maintenance and support schedule covers NetWeaver and all current enhancement packages for the Business Suite. Customers still have a choice between Standard Support at 17 percent and Enterprise Support at 22 percent of net licensing fees.
The plan is for enhancement packages to come out every two to three years (Innovation 2011 will be delivered in November), and all previous enhancement packages shipped already to market will remain available. But over time, the importance of the enhancement package will be reduced as SAP delivers more flexible ways of upgrading customers’ existing systems, according to SAP. Enhancement packages will be mostly for customers starting a new implementation, Leukert says.
These smaller enhancements will include, for instance, widgets for end users to design their own user interfaces without IT’s assistance or any modifying of the SAP back-end. Business analytics enhancements are also planned.
“We want to show the difference with Oracle, which is pushing customers to a disruptive strategy with Fusion,” Leukert says. “If they stay on the current release, they are not able to consume innovations.”
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
SAP's HANA is hot, but still in early Stages..Taking Baby Steps..
The potential of SAP's HANA in-memory computing engine permeated the agenda and had attendees' tongues wagging this week at the Tech Ed conference in Las Vegas, but the technology still has some maturing to do.
SAP has relentlessly promoted HANA since its launch in May 2010, touting its ability to quickly analyze large amounts of business data and reporting major early interest from customers. Over time, SAP plans to weave HANA throughout its portfolio as part of a sweeping "renewal," but in reality, the product only went into general availability in June, and detailed stories of customers successfully using it in production have so far been scarce.
One person who has worked on a number of HANA proof-of-concept (POC) exercises said Tuesday that while HANA's technology works well, customers should expect some bumps in the road and a fair amount of effort before they get the results.
"The most important thing is, don't do [a POC] just to test the technology," said Harald Reiter of Deloitte Consulting, during a presentation on the Tech Ed show floor that drew a sizable throng of onlookers. Customers should start a HANA project with a solid use case in mind, "something you really want to go live with," that justifies the financial investment, he said.
Right now, he said, customers have limited choices: Either use one of the few packaged analytic applications SAP has so far released for HANA, or build something from scratch. "Those are the hard ones."
Customers should take pains to line up a full-fledged, dedicated HANA team, according to Reiter. The roster should include a project manager, solution architect, HANA administrator, data services architect, data modeler, security expert and developers, he said.
Part of the challenges Reiter faced on his projects was the fact that SAP has been issuing updates to HANA in rapid-fire fashion.
While the patches often were to fix bugs and are "technically painless to implement," they still require testing to be redone, he said. In addition, at times the updated version of HANA behaved differently from the last.
Data modeling is the key to squeezing the best performance out of HANA, so the data modeler member of the team is most important, Reiter said. HANA's performance can be "totally different from one data model to the next," he added.
SAP has partnered with a number of hardware vendors for HANA, which is available as an appliance in a number of sizes with system RAM varying accordingly.
Customers should realize that a considerable portion of system RAM is going to be consumed by processing, leaving less room for data storage, he said. Companies will want to use HANA to run historical analyses on all of their data but that will be difficult with a smaller appliance, even when HANA's data compression capability is factored in, he said.
Overall, customers should "expect the unexpected," Reiter said. "SAP really helps you, but you have to plan ahead. Don't think this is going to work right away."
SAP has made much of HANA's "pipeline," or backlog of sales leads, saying it is the fastest-growing in company history. While that may be the case, many of its customers are likely years away from considering an investment in HANA for various reasons.
Columbia Sportswear is now involved in a major ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) system migration, and adding a HANA project now would cause too much complexity, said Bob Kaila, SAP basis manager.
"We're doing a complete company transformation. [HANA] is something the higher-ups are very, very interested in, but being where we are right now, we're taking on so much change in the company, we just don't want to add another product that we have to ramp up internally."
Columbia uses Teradata as its core data warehousing platform. HANA would probably end up being used in conjunction with Teradata, versus replacing it, since currently Columbia has a great many applications tied into it, including non-SAP products, he said.
One of HANA's initial customers, the large medical products company Medtronic, is set to go live on the system in October after a three-month project, said architect Kiran Musunuru during a presentation.
Medtronic initially will use HANA for two applications, one of which is aimed at global complaint handling. Medtronic serves millions of patients a year, and wants to analyze complaints that come in quickly so problems with products can be resolved as soon as possible, he said.
Medtronic's HANA system is running on a Cisco hardware-based appliance with 512GB of RAM. The company used Sybase's PowerDesigner tool to build an integrated data model constituting a range of source systems, he said.
The project faced assorted challenges, he said. For one, HANA's newness meant there were no best practices to follow. In the end, Medtronic decided to hire an SAP consultant to help with the work.
In a few weeks, Medtronic will start seeing HANA in full-fledged action.
"As of now, everything works fine," he said.
SAP has relentlessly promoted HANA since its launch in May 2010, touting its ability to quickly analyze large amounts of business data and reporting major early interest from customers. Over time, SAP plans to weave HANA throughout its portfolio as part of a sweeping "renewal," but in reality, the product only went into general availability in June, and detailed stories of customers successfully using it in production have so far been scarce.
One person who has worked on a number of HANA proof-of-concept (POC) exercises said Tuesday that while HANA's technology works well, customers should expect some bumps in the road and a fair amount of effort before they get the results.
"The most important thing is, don't do [a POC] just to test the technology," said Harald Reiter of Deloitte Consulting, during a presentation on the Tech Ed show floor that drew a sizable throng of onlookers. Customers should start a HANA project with a solid use case in mind, "something you really want to go live with," that justifies the financial investment, he said.
Right now, he said, customers have limited choices: Either use one of the few packaged analytic applications SAP has so far released for HANA, or build something from scratch. "Those are the hard ones."
Customers should take pains to line up a full-fledged, dedicated HANA team, according to Reiter. The roster should include a project manager, solution architect, HANA administrator, data services architect, data modeler, security expert and developers, he said.
Part of the challenges Reiter faced on his projects was the fact that SAP has been issuing updates to HANA in rapid-fire fashion.
While the patches often were to fix bugs and are "technically painless to implement," they still require testing to be redone, he said. In addition, at times the updated version of HANA behaved differently from the last.
Data modeling is the key to squeezing the best performance out of HANA, so the data modeler member of the team is most important, Reiter said. HANA's performance can be "totally different from one data model to the next," he added.
SAP has partnered with a number of hardware vendors for HANA, which is available as an appliance in a number of sizes with system RAM varying accordingly.
Customers should realize that a considerable portion of system RAM is going to be consumed by processing, leaving less room for data storage, he said. Companies will want to use HANA to run historical analyses on all of their data but that will be difficult with a smaller appliance, even when HANA's data compression capability is factored in, he said.
Overall, customers should "expect the unexpected," Reiter said. "SAP really helps you, but you have to plan ahead. Don't think this is going to work right away."
SAP has made much of HANA's "pipeline," or backlog of sales leads, saying it is the fastest-growing in company history. While that may be the case, many of its customers are likely years away from considering an investment in HANA for various reasons.
Columbia Sportswear is now involved in a major ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) system migration, and adding a HANA project now would cause too much complexity, said Bob Kaila, SAP basis manager.
"We're doing a complete company transformation. [HANA] is something the higher-ups are very, very interested in, but being where we are right now, we're taking on so much change in the company, we just don't want to add another product that we have to ramp up internally."
Columbia uses Teradata as its core data warehousing platform. HANA would probably end up being used in conjunction with Teradata, versus replacing it, since currently Columbia has a great many applications tied into it, including non-SAP products, he said.
One of HANA's initial customers, the large medical products company Medtronic, is set to go live on the system in October after a three-month project, said architect Kiran Musunuru during a presentation.
Medtronic initially will use HANA for two applications, one of which is aimed at global complaint handling. Medtronic serves millions of patients a year, and wants to analyze complaints that come in quickly so problems with products can be resolved as soon as possible, he said.
Medtronic's HANA system is running on a Cisco hardware-based appliance with 512GB of RAM. The company used Sybase's PowerDesigner tool to build an integrated data model constituting a range of source systems, he said.
The project faced assorted challenges, he said. For one, HANA's newness meant there were no best practices to follow. In the end, Medtronic decided to hire an SAP consultant to help with the work.
In a few weeks, Medtronic will start seeing HANA in full-fledged action.
"As of now, everything works fine," he said.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Will HANA impact ABAP Programming style?
Traditional ABAP Programming style is more inclined towards reducing the load on Database and shifting the processing to Application server. This is more to do with Data Storage models and SAP 3-tier system architecture provided another layer for data processing. This restricted ABAP developers to confine to the concept of “pulling required data to Application server and processing data in App Server” and along came the complexities of buffering.
With the introduction of HANA, data is available in volatile memory so data can be retrieved and processed in same “memory”. At first thought, this gives a feeling that ABAP OpenSQL Programming style should be changed and some of the “banned” OpenSQL statements like ‘Order By’ etc should come back in to use. Well, Hold on!! Let’s not jump into conclusions, let’s analyze some specific scenarios from HANA perspective and decide on this –
Scenario-1: There is a database table with 50 records in it and you wish to read the table 1000 times for values based on field F1.
· Non-HANA: Since the database table is relatively small in size, make a copy of the table in your program and then read the desired record as and when required.
· With HANA: Read data from database table as and when required and process it. Remember, with HANA query and data processing is happening at the same place!!!
Scenario-2: Let’s consider opposite scenario to Scenario-1. There is a database table with 10000 records in it and you wish to read the table 100 times for the values based on field F1.
· Non-HANA: Since the database table is very large, it’s better to use SELECT SINGLE than porting the entire table into an internal table.
· With HANA: Same as in Non-HANA read data from database table as and when required and process it. The only advantage here is there is no network traffic with every query as query and data processing is happening at the same place!!!
Scenario-3: Joins Vs Nested Select statements
· Non-HANA: Join is the most preferred way to fetch data from two tables instead of nested select statement. No second thoughts about it from OpenSQL perspective.
· With HANA: Join has its own advantages and Nested select has its own advantages from Relational database perspective. With HANA, the decision to use Join Vs Nested select statement depends on further requirements. If any intermediate processing has to be done, nested select is better than join.
Scenario-4: Optimize the cost of database searches
· HANA or No-HANA, the cost of database search should always be optimized and concept of index is extremely important
Scenario-5: Table buffering
· SAP provides buffering facility to increase performance. Since buffers reside in Application server it takes considerably less time to read data locally than reading it from database.
· With HANA, no additional table buffering is required as all the database resides in volatile memory.
Scenario-6: ABAP Sort Vs Order by clause
· Non-HANA: Optimized solution is to use ABAP Sort and reduce load on Database server
· With HANA: It really doesn’t matter. Both the statements should be equally good or bad.
With the introduction of HANA, data is available in volatile memory so data can be retrieved and processed in same “memory”. At first thought, this gives a feeling that ABAP OpenSQL Programming style should be changed and some of the “banned” OpenSQL statements like ‘Order By’ etc should come back in to use. Well, Hold on!! Let’s not jump into conclusions, let’s analyze some specific scenarios from HANA perspective and decide on this –
Scenario-1: There is a database table with 50 records in it and you wish to read the table 1000 times for values based on field F1.
· Non-HANA: Since the database table is relatively small in size, make a copy of the table in your program and then read the desired record as and when required.
· With HANA: Read data from database table as and when required and process it. Remember, with HANA query and data processing is happening at the same place!!!
Scenario-2: Let’s consider opposite scenario to Scenario-1. There is a database table with 10000 records in it and you wish to read the table 100 times for the values based on field F1.
· Non-HANA: Since the database table is very large, it’s better to use SELECT SINGLE than porting the entire table into an internal table.
· With HANA: Same as in Non-HANA read data from database table as and when required and process it. The only advantage here is there is no network traffic with every query as query and data processing is happening at the same place!!!
Scenario-3: Joins Vs Nested Select statements
· Non-HANA: Join is the most preferred way to fetch data from two tables instead of nested select statement. No second thoughts about it from OpenSQL perspective.
· With HANA: Join has its own advantages and Nested select has its own advantages from Relational database perspective. With HANA, the decision to use Join Vs Nested select statement depends on further requirements. If any intermediate processing has to be done, nested select is better than join.
Scenario-4: Optimize the cost of database searches
· HANA or No-HANA, the cost of database search should always be optimized and concept of index is extremely important
Scenario-5: Table buffering
· SAP provides buffering facility to increase performance. Since buffers reside in Application server it takes considerably less time to read data locally than reading it from database.
· With HANA, no additional table buffering is required as all the database resides in volatile memory.
Scenario-6: ABAP Sort Vs Order by clause
· Non-HANA: Optimized solution is to use ABAP Sort and reduce load on Database server
· With HANA: It really doesn’t matter. Both the statements should be equally good or bad.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Remodeling in SAP BI 7
Before the release of SAP BI 7.0, in the previous version 3.x; we were not able to redesign the info cubes without deleting the existing data from the info cube. We had to delete all the data, modify the cube & then re-load the data again. But with the release of 7.0; the concept of Remodeling introduced as a feature to change the design of an info cube without deleting the Existing Data.
Before starting with the steps of Remodeling, I would like to mention the Dos & DONTs –
No data loading should be in process :
After remodeling, check all the BI objects that are connected to the InfoProvider like transformation rules, MultiProviders, DTPs have been deactivated. You have to re-activate these objects manually.
The remodeling makes existing queries that are based on the InfoProvider invalid. You have to manually adjust these queries according to the remodeled InfoProvider.
You cannot replace or delete units. This avoids having key figures in the InfoCube without the corresponding unit
Following are the steps to be followed :
Go to the context menu of Info cube that is to be redesign, select Remodeling as shown in fig. or select the Administration tab from the Left Most Area. There you can select Remodeling or can go direct to the T-Code RSMRT.
Also remember to activate the Transformation as well as the DTP of the Info Cube. Now there you can map the new Info Objects in the transformation but no need to upload the whole data again.
In the similar way, we can delete the Characteristics from the info cube without deleting the existing data into the Info Cube.
Before starting with the steps of Remodeling, I would like to mention the Dos & DONTs –
No data loading should be in process :
After remodeling, check all the BI objects that are connected to the InfoProvider like transformation rules, MultiProviders, DTPs have been deactivated. You have to re-activate these objects manually.
The remodeling makes existing queries that are based on the InfoProvider invalid. You have to manually adjust these queries according to the remodeled InfoProvider.
You cannot replace or delete units. This avoids having key figures in the InfoCube without the corresponding unit
Following are the steps to be followed :
Go to the context menu of Info cube that is to be redesign, select Remodeling as shown in fig. or select the Administration tab from the Left Most Area. There you can select Remodeling or can go direct to the T-Code RSMRT.
Also remember to activate the Transformation as well as the DTP of the Info Cube. Now there you can map the new Info Objects in the transformation but no need to upload the whole data again.
In the similar way, we can delete the Characteristics from the info cube without deleting the existing data into the Info Cube.
Monday, April 25, 2011
SAP Admin Tricks & Tips.
1. Problems with username/passwords while setting JCO's?... try with the password in UPPERCASE.
2. Going home in a hurry?, use transaction /nex to close all your sessions at the same time in specific application server you are logged-in.
3. In an R/3 screen, use %pc to download any TCode full page in any format you want.(.htm, .txt etc). Also use TCode /nSO21 to specify the default download location (this is very useful as saving all files to the sapworkdir can be little annoying at times)
4. Show Work Process usage over time by running SM50 -> List -> CPU. This shows CPU usage in minutes since startup. If all of your DIA WP's show time, then consider adding more.
5. If you want to select text on your SAP screen and if you are not able to do it. use Ctrl+Y and then you can select text.
6. To access history of Tcodes used, click on the Tcode command field and use UP and DOWN arrow keys.
7. To display the checked object when not authorized call transaction SU53. It reports the last objects verified and also the respective values. Incase missing authorization through pop-up then close it (click cross mark) instead of continue it. Then run SU53 immediately either in same session (/nSU53) or in new session (/oSU53).
8. Use ctrl+? to go to the tcode command field on SAP screen.
9. Enter /i on tcode field to delete the current session.
10. Enter /nend to cancel all SAP sessions and log off.
11. Use ALT+F+W and ALT+F+U in SAP Easy Access Screen to download and upload the user favorites within/across systems.
12. To send a SAP message to another person use Function Module TH_POPUP from transaction SE37.
13. Ctrl & + to open new SAP session
14. ctrl+shift+F8 System Administration information.
15. Open SAP Notes on Windows via Batch File
Here is a quick tip on how to open a SAP Note by just typing in or pasting the SAP Note number. Its very convenient, when you are reading a PDF document (possibly a installation/configuration guide) and you come across interesting SAP Notes that you want to quickly check.
Create a batch file using your notepad with the following text:
@ ECHO QUICK COMMAND TO DISPLAY SAP NOTE
@ ECHO ----------------------------------------
@ SET /P sapnote=Please provide SAP Note number ?
@ START /MAX iexplore -new https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/%sapnote%?nlang=E
@ PAUSE
Next Create a shortcut to the batch file and put it on your desktop.
Next time you wish to open a SAP Note, simply click on the shortcut and you should get a prompt like the following:
QUICK COMMAND TO DISPLAY SAP NOTE----------------------------------------Please provide SAP Note number ?
Here provide the note number and press the enter key.
The command will fire up a new internet explorer window and open the SAP Note in it. It will help if you have SSO setup for your OSS Userid as you wouldn't need to enter your userid and password.
Hope that helps.
2. Going home in a hurry?, use transaction /nex to close all your sessions at the same time in specific application server you are logged-in.
3. In an R/3 screen, use %pc to download any TCode full page in any format you want.(.htm, .txt etc). Also use TCode /nSO21 to specify the default download location (this is very useful as saving all files to the sapworkdir can be little annoying at times)
4. Show Work Process usage over time by running SM50 -> List -> CPU. This shows CPU usage in minutes since startup. If all of your DIA WP's show time, then consider adding more.
5. If you want to select text on your SAP screen and if you are not able to do it. use Ctrl+Y and then you can select text.
6. To access history of Tcodes used, click on the Tcode command field and use UP and DOWN arrow keys.
7. To display the checked object when not authorized call transaction SU53. It reports the last objects verified and also the respective values. Incase missing authorization through pop-up then close it (click cross mark) instead of continue it. Then run SU53 immediately either in same session (/nSU53) or in new session (/oSU53).
8. Use ctrl+? to go to the tcode command field on SAP screen.
9. Enter /i on tcode field to delete the current session.
10. Enter /nend to cancel all SAP sessions and log off.
11. Use ALT+F+W and ALT+F+U in SAP Easy Access Screen to download and upload the user favorites within/across systems.
12. To send a SAP message to another person use Function Module TH_POPUP from transaction SE37.
13. Ctrl & + to open new SAP session
14. ctrl+shift+F8 System Administration information.
15. Open SAP Notes on Windows via Batch File
Here is a quick tip on how to open a SAP Note by just typing in or pasting the SAP Note number. Its very convenient, when you are reading a PDF document (possibly a installation/configuration guide) and you come across interesting SAP Notes that you want to quickly check.
Create a batch file using your notepad with the following text:
@ ECHO QUICK COMMAND TO DISPLAY SAP NOTE
@ ECHO ----------------------------------------
@ SET /P sapnote=Please provide SAP Note number ?
@ START /MAX iexplore -new https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/%sapnote%?nlang=E
@ PAUSE
Next Create a shortcut to the batch file and put it on your desktop.
Next time you wish to open a SAP Note, simply click on the shortcut and you should get a prompt like the following:
QUICK COMMAND TO DISPLAY SAP NOTE----------------------------------------Please provide SAP Note number ?
Here provide the note number and press the enter key.
The command will fire up a new internet explorer window and open the SAP Note in it. It will help if you have SSO setup for your OSS Userid as you wouldn't need to enter your userid and password.
Hope that helps.
Friday, April 22, 2011
SAP System Administrators are Aliens ?
Do SAP system administrators originate from an Alien civilization?
Introduction
Honestly, I think so but there is no hard evidence just yet. In fact the whole human race could be originating from Alien civilization. There are a lot of facts and small pieces of the puzzle and hopefully one day the puzzle is put together and humanity will know how it all got started. Whatever our origin is we are here now and we are evolving, learning and getting ready for some amazing years where we will see science come up with such breath taking technologic breakthroughs it will be hard to imagine in fifty years how we lived today.
What the … Am I blogging about?
I guess some of you are already wondering if I had magic mushrooms for breakfast by now but I can assure you I did not. I stumbled upon a video on youtube featuring Erich Von Daniken. I really love it when a video or a blog makes me think and that is exactly what the video did. After watching the video I went to look for more content on whether or not aliens ever where in fact on earth or even if we originate from alien civilization. I found a documentary from history channel and it is in fact very interesting.
In one of my previous blogs “Dumb Poetry of a wise SOAL..!!!” – copy found in http://bit.ly/fUVUMj you can find hints that how dumb I was. How does any of this relate to basis administrators? I invite you to read on and find out the answers.
We are who we are
System administrators are often stereotyped as being geeky and asocial. A stereotyping I dislike a lot but sometimes I cannot get around the fact that some of my beloved out of work activities seem to fall in that category. Although the gaming industry is much larger than the movie industry these days gamers are also stereotyped as being geeky. So I already have my profession that points in the direction of being geeky and then I have the fact that I love playing games. Wait is that a bad thing really? Geeky is hot nowadays, the huge geeky looking glasses are worn by some hipsters and geeks seem to be attractive somehow.
I do believe a lot of diverse persons exist within a single profession but I also see similarities. Of course everyone has its own personality and looks different and I’m glad that is a fact. How boring would the world be if everyone would have the same personality and look exactly the same? Seriously, I wouldn’t want to have a girlfriend that looks like a copy of someone else.
A similarity I often see among SAP system administrators is that they are dedicated and flexible. We tend to have very flexible work hours and it is also something we love. I do love the fact that I can do irregular work hours, especially if I can start at five am. Of course the job also brings along timings or tasks that are less interesting. Working during weekends or being called in the late evening because a SAP system has crashed for example. When we are on guard we can be called 24/7 in case something goes wrong.
The importance of flexibility
There is a lot of unawareness what system administrators do and it also brings some what I call “crazy eye” looks along with the unawareness. Sometimes to others it looks like we are not working hard, for example when I would be leaving the office at two pm. But that is because the other people in the office don’t know that I was awake at five am solving an issue and started to work already. It can also be the case that I have to do more work at seven pm again from home.
As a SAP system administrator being flexible is important. It makes sense that the business doesn’t want to bring down their productive SAP system during the work hours or even extended work hours so it also makes sense as a system administrator you will sometimes be working in the evenings, at night or in the weekend.
Working twenty-four hours straight
I’m planned in to do a SAP upgrade in one of these weekend and not to my surprise I’m being misunderstood by my own better half who has been feeling slightly ill this week. As some of you already read I have two children (Karim, 18 months old and Ishrath Nine years old) and it can be exhausting to keep them busy so I can understand it isn’t easy.
Being a SAP system administrator means you have to constantly keep learning to avoid your contract being cut off and ending up losing your job in the worst case scenario. Last week I attended a Cloud Computing of SAP to broaden my knowledge and get in touch with Cloud Computing. Of course I ended up coming home very late because I had started at five thirty pm. I arrived back home at around six pm and my daughter is asking where are you been.!!! I have a self-defense class today do you know that ?
I know I will be called at any time when I’m on-call or to start working on the upgrade. I also know it is going to be a lot of work since it is a large, distributed environment with a lot of dependencies. It is also a very business critical mission because it is one of the most important SAP systems in use. Given this and all the tasks that I will be performing, taking into account the durations of all of the different tasks I performed on the Q A landscape I know up front I’m looking at staying awake for more than twenty-four hours straight.
It is a necessity to ensure I will be ready on schedule so functional testing can begin once I have finished my work. This is also part of being a system administrator. Later on the day I will finish the latest preparations so I can start tonight and have a smooth upgrade. Of course I’m not the only one involved in general for the upgrade but to perform the technical upgrade of the SAP system and everything connected to it that is depending on it I am.
Alien language
Sometimes I really feel as if I’m talking in an Alien language as my better half has a hard time understanding why I have to work at certain timings or why on earth I have to stay awake for twenty-four hours if needed. Can’t you just check every few hours? No it doesn’t work like that.
I want this upgrade to succeed and I don’t want to lose time that can be spend on performing proper testing before the actual Go Live. It can feel like talking to a brick wall but then again my better half seems to have the same feeling. No matter how far my explanation goes that it is a necessity and that it is of great importance the misunderstandings and the crazy eyes seem to stay.
System Administrators Attention
I hope this blog and other blogs about SAP System Administration or also referred to as Basis Administration can give a view on what we do and get rid of some of the stereotyping and misunderstandings. I’m glad to see other community members, start to bring system administration into the picture by producing content on this Blog.
I was also very pleased with the SAP Virtualization and Cloud week that did contain sufficient information for SAP system administrators. It was very interesting and in my opinion also very much needed as we still have to search really hard sometimes to find sufficient information. I still see a lack of system administration related content in certain events but I will keep voicing the need for content and also for a system administration space.
I also still invite everyone to use the hashtag #sapadmin to mark interesting content on twitter for system administrators.
I do what I have to do
I’m glad I was able to vent my frustration by writing this blog which is actually a great way to vent. I’m dedicated to the cause and I will do whatever it takes to make this upgrade a success story.
This is what a system administrator has to do and it is one of the reasons that make us valuable.
Honestly, I think so but there is no hard evidence just yet. In fact the whole human race could be originating from Alien civilization. There are a lot of facts and small pieces of the puzzle and hopefully one day the puzzle is put together and humanity will know how it all got started. Whatever our origin is we are here now and we are evolving, learning and getting ready for some amazing years where we will see science come up with such breath taking technologic breakthroughs it will be hard to imagine in fifty years how we lived today.
What the … Am I blogging about?
I guess some of you are already wondering if I had magic mushrooms for breakfast by now but I can assure you I did not. I stumbled upon a video on youtube featuring Erich Von Daniken. I really love it when a video or a blog makes me think and that is exactly what the video did. After watching the video I went to look for more content on whether or not aliens ever where in fact on earth or even if we originate from alien civilization. I found a documentary from history channel and it is in fact very interesting.
In one of my previous blogs “Dumb Poetry of a wise SOAL..!!!” – copy found in http://bit.ly/fUVUMj you can find hints that how dumb I was. How does any of this relate to basis administrators? I invite you to read on and find out the answers.
We are who we are
System administrators are often stereotyped as being geeky and asocial. A stereotyping I dislike a lot but sometimes I cannot get around the fact that some of my beloved out of work activities seem to fall in that category. Although the gaming industry is much larger than the movie industry these days gamers are also stereotyped as being geeky. So I already have my profession that points in the direction of being geeky and then I have the fact that I love playing games. Wait is that a bad thing really? Geeky is hot nowadays, the huge geeky looking glasses are worn by some hipsters and geeks seem to be attractive somehow.
I do believe a lot of diverse persons exist within a single profession but I also see similarities. Of course everyone has its own personality and looks different and I’m glad that is a fact. How boring would the world be if everyone would have the same personality and look exactly the same? Seriously, I wouldn’t want to have a girlfriend that looks like a copy of someone else.
A similarity I often see among SAP system administrators is that they are dedicated and flexible. We tend to have very flexible work hours and it is also something we love. I do love the fact that I can do irregular work hours, especially if I can start at five am. Of course the job also brings along timings or tasks that are less interesting. Working during weekends or being called in the late evening because a SAP system has crashed for example. When we are on guard we can be called 24/7 in case something goes wrong.
The importance of flexibility
There is a lot of unawareness what system administrators do and it also brings some what I call “crazy eye” looks along with the unawareness. Sometimes to others it looks like we are not working hard, for example when I would be leaving the office at two pm. But that is because the other people in the office don’t know that I was awake at five am solving an issue and started to work already. It can also be the case that I have to do more work at seven pm again from home.
As a SAP system administrator being flexible is important. It makes sense that the business doesn’t want to bring down their productive SAP system during the work hours or even extended work hours so it also makes sense as a system administrator you will sometimes be working in the evenings, at night or in the weekend.
Working twenty-four hours straight
I’m planned in to do a SAP upgrade in one of these weekend and not to my surprise I’m being misunderstood by my own better half who has been feeling slightly ill this week. As some of you already read I have two children (Karim, 18 months old and Ishrath Nine years old) and it can be exhausting to keep them busy so I can understand it isn’t easy.
Being a SAP system administrator means you have to constantly keep learning to avoid your contract being cut off and ending up losing your job in the worst case scenario. Last week I attended a Cloud Computing of SAP to broaden my knowledge and get in touch with Cloud Computing. Of course I ended up coming home very late because I had started at five thirty pm. I arrived back home at around six pm and my daughter is asking where are you been.!!! I have a self-defense class today do you know that ?
I know I will be called at any time when I’m on-call or to start working on the upgrade. I also know it is going to be a lot of work since it is a large, distributed environment with a lot of dependencies. It is also a very business critical mission because it is one of the most important SAP systems in use. Given this and all the tasks that I will be performing, taking into account the durations of all of the different tasks I performed on the Q A landscape I know up front I’m looking at staying awake for more than twenty-four hours straight.
It is a necessity to ensure I will be ready on schedule so functional testing can begin once I have finished my work. This is also part of being a system administrator. Later on the day I will finish the latest preparations so I can start tonight and have a smooth upgrade. Of course I’m not the only one involved in general for the upgrade but to perform the technical upgrade of the SAP system and everything connected to it that is depending on it I am.
Alien language
Sometimes I really feel as if I’m talking in an Alien language as my better half has a hard time understanding why I have to work at certain timings or why on earth I have to stay awake for twenty-four hours if needed. Can’t you just check every few hours? No it doesn’t work like that.
I want this upgrade to succeed and I don’t want to lose time that can be spend on performing proper testing before the actual Go Live. It can feel like talking to a brick wall but then again my better half seems to have the same feeling. No matter how far my explanation goes that it is a necessity and that it is of great importance the misunderstandings and the crazy eyes seem to stay.
System Administrators Attention
I hope this blog and other blogs about SAP System Administration or also referred to as Basis Administration can give a view on what we do and get rid of some of the stereotyping and misunderstandings. I’m glad to see other community members, start to bring system administration into the picture by producing content on this Blog.
I was also very pleased with the SAP Virtualization and Cloud week that did contain sufficient information for SAP system administrators. It was very interesting and in my opinion also very much needed as we still have to search really hard sometimes to find sufficient information. I still see a lack of system administration related content in certain events but I will keep voicing the need for content and also for a system administration space.
I also still invite everyone to use the hashtag #sapadmin to mark interesting content on twitter for system administrators.
I do what I have to do
I’m glad I was able to vent my frustration by writing this blog which is actually a great way to vent. I’m dedicated to the cause and I will do whatever it takes to make this upgrade a success story.
This is what a system administrator has to do and it is one of the reasons that make us valuable.
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