How to do SAP System Copy – Part I

Sometimes you need to copy / move your whole SAP system to other machine. For example you want to build a Test system or you want to upgrade / migrate your SAP system to other platform.

There are various methods to do that, one of which i’ll explain here is using standard SAP R3load procedure.

Using standard SAP Installation tool, you can do the following:
1. SAP Homogeneous System Copy:
The Source and Target System is the same platform (OS and DB).

   Example:
Source: Windows 2003 / Oracle 10 G
Target: Windows 2008 / Oracle 10 G

2. SAP Heterogeneous System Copy
The Source and Target System is different platform (OS and / or DB)

   Example1:
Source: HP-UX / Oracle 10G
Target: Windows 2008 / Oracle 10G.

  Example2:
Source: Solaris / DB2
Target: Windows 2008 / MS-SQL Server 2008.

Basically the procedure for SAP Homogeneous / Heterogeneous System Copy is quite the same. You do Export DB in Source System and do SAP Installation / Import in Target System. The difference is you need to enter SAP Migration Key when performing SAP Heterogeneous System Copy.

In this article I’ll show you the Export part. For this example i use SAP R/3 Enterprise and Oracle Database.

1. Call SAPInst tool. Expand the menu in appropriate DB, and choose ABAP Database Content Export

2.  Choose Standard Method (R3load-Based).

Note: in this article i use standard method (R3load-Based). To do export using Migration Monitor please read article “SAP Database Export Using R3load and Migration Monitor“.

Standard Method SAP Export

3.  Enter the SAP System ID (SID) you want to export.

SAP SID

4. Enter the Database ID (DBSID)

DB SID for SAP DB export

5. Enter your SAP instance number and hostname.

SAP Instance to Export

6.  Enter your sapmnt directory.
UNIX: /sapmnt
WINDOWS: \\sapmnt

sapmnt directory

7.  Enter your Database Schema to export. And choose the appropriate option such as your Database Server / Client 32/64 bit version.

SAP Database Schema

8.  Enter Export Parameters

Target System:

• Target Database:
  Homogeneous: TargetDB must be the same as Source DB.
  Heterogeneous: Fill with correct TargetDB if you want to change DB (such as ORA to MSS).
• Export Directory: the location of dump file

Advanced Export Parameters:

• Split STR Files: Select this option to speed up export process
• STR Split Strategy: Use Java Splitting Tool
• JRE Directory: Locate your JRE directory (usually the  same as JAVA_HOME)

Target DB

9.  Skip statistics update to speed up export process.

Skip DB Statistics.

10. To speed up export and import process you can choose the necessary Splitting Tools Parameter options below.

• Extract number of Largest Tables in Separate Packages
• Extract Tables with Size More than Limit
• Split STR Packages

Split STR files

Note:

To speed up export / import process you can do also SAP Table Splitting as explained in the article “SAP Table Splitting on Database Export“.

11. Export parameters.

Export Strategy:

• Alphabetical Order: to export package name according alphabetical order
• Custom Order: you will decide the export order later.

Data File Code Page : 1100 if you don’t do unicode conversion.

Number of parallel jobs: it depends on your CPU core.

12. Check for the summary and continue to export.

13. Watch the Export process.

14. Make sure the export process is finished successfully and the export file is created in target folder.

SAP DB copy is finished

You then copy the Export File to Target machine and continue to the Import process (explained in How to do SAP System Copy Part – II).

Note:

You can use Backup Restore procedure for Homogeneous System Copy as described in this article: “SAP Homogeneous System Copy using Backup Restore Procedure”

More concept the difference between SAP System/Database Copy and SAP Client Copy is also explained in this book: SAP Administration: SAP NetWeaver / SAP Basis Practical Guide.