We are working for several years with various TREX versions normally without any mayor issue. But suddenly my fears came true - it happened!

There is a problem with our TREX and we can't find out what is going wrong there. So the first thing what I do is to have a look at the SDN Forums and SAP Notes to see if somebody has already experienced the same issue.

Unfortuntaly I don't find anything that fits to my case so I decide to open a customer message under component BC-TRX* to get direct support from SAP.

They ask relatively early for a service connection to analyze the issue with the TREX Admin tool. So let's give it to them.

Mostly it isn't enough to open just a R/3 connection to your ERP system to access the tool with the TREXADMIN transaction or a HTTP service connection to the Portal. Generally the support consultant must access the standalone TREX Admin tool on the TREX server to analyze the issue properly.

In case the TREX server runs on a Windows OS it's easy. Then we just can open a Windows Terminal Server (WTS) connection as described in SAP Note 605795 in order to provide access for the support consultant. If the company's security policy prohibits a WTS connection it's also possible to provide the support consultant with a Citrix or PCAnywhere connection.

If the TREX is installed on an UNIX OS we have to do a bit more. Unfortunately they can't open the python-based TREX Admin tool with a Telnet connection. So for that we should open a WTS, Citrix or PCAnywhere connection to a MS Windows server within the same domain as the TREX server. From this host we can establish a VNC connection to the TREX Unix system. An alternative would be to install a X Window application (e.g. Cygwin, Xming, Exceed) and use a SSH X Window tunnel to establish a secure connection. The installation and configuration steps are generally well described on the respective X Window application homepage.

After I have finished and tested the connection for the remote access I can send the customer message back to the SAP Support. In order to avoid a time wasting customer message "ping-pong" I try to provide the support consultant with all necessary information to connect to our TREX server:

That would be..

- The SID of the WTS to use

- The domain, user ID and password for the WTS connection.

- The  <SID>adm user to open the TREX Admin tool

- As there are many connection options they need to know the exact steps and commands to open the TREX Admin tool on the server.

For security reasons I put all the sensitive data the for logon in the Secure Area. This is described in SAP note 508140.