Back in 2008, we thought we were done with all of our SAP Unicode conversions.  Oops.  We forgot about Solution Manager, probably because we don't look at it very often. Once we realized it needed to be updated we began brainstorming ideas, such as in-place upgrades, a new installation, or a combination of the two.

We only had a single instance running, and every time we took Solution Manager offline for any kind of maintenance, it was a risk.  As the requirements and dependencies grew, we knew we needed more than 1 instance.

I'll go into more detail another time, but the short version is we decided to consider our running 7.0 non-Unicode version as development, and install a new Unicode 7.0 system as production.

Last week, with SAP help, we upgraded the production system to Enhancement Package 1, and are stabilizing the Root Cause Analysis component in order to monitor our BW 7 upgrade.  As it turns out, the EP1 adds more load to the Solution Manager system, so I'm back to working on capacity planning for that box before we can get more out of it (common refrain).

Below are current thoughts on how we are going to clone our production Solution Manager system in order to have a fresh development system for further tweaking.  We prefer to do a copy, since there isn't a clean path to convert to Unicode on the old box.

Export current content?

• Early Watch reports - inventory for Basis and Database
• Automated testing (CATT) scripts; inventory
• CPH - data not needed; configuration - screen shots or other metadata

Execute copyback

• Delete old system
• Storage refresh
• Deletion of job logs and spool directories at OS level
• Start SAP
• SAP License installation
• BDLS update

Post-copyback cleanup

• Support Packs ABAP and Java (up to EHP1 sp19)
• Reconfigure TMS (SE06, SE03 and STMS)
• System profiles
• SDCCN Configuration
• SM59 connections
• Review each Solution Manager functional area
  • Early Watch
  • Test protocols
  • CPH
  • Reports
  • System connections
• SLD
• RCA

Operational Maintenance

• 2 system landscape
• What is transportable and what is dual maintenance
• What is "tested" in SSD, deployed in production
  • Connection map
  • One agent per system?
• Next support packs
• Kernel updates

We've been doing SAP system copybacks for years, leveraging peer help from other ASUG members to minimize the human intervention, bring our quality systems back online quickly, and protect production systems from testing overloads.  This one will be a different beast I'm sure.