Software Logistics: DMO: downtime

optimization by migrating app tables during

uptime (preview)
Posted by Boris Rubarth Sep 8, 2014
This blog discusses a new technique to further reduce the downtime of the Database Migration Option (DMO)
procedure of Software Update Manager (SUM). Before reading this content, be sure to be familiar with the
general concept of DMO, explained in Database Migration Option (DMO) of SUM - Introduction and in DMO
technical background

Scope
Downtime optimized DMO will reduce the downtime of the DMO procedure. It integrates the SLT technology
to enable the migration of selected (big) application tables during uptime processing of DMO, thereby reducing
the downtime migration time.

Technology
During uptime processing, the source system is still available for end users. End user activity in the system
may change application tables, so if these tables have already been migrated to the target database (SAP
HANA database), the changes have to be recorded and transferred to the target database as well. The
SLT technology (SAP LT REPLICATION SERVER) offers the required technology to set triggers on the
respective application tables to create log entries, frequently analyze the logs, and transfer the delta to the
target database. The SLT technology is part of the DMIS AddOn.
There is no need to install / use a separate "SAP LT Replication Server"!

Specific considerations compared to "standard" DMO

The DMIS AddOn has to be selected when creating the stack.xml in Maintenance Optimizer
A text file has to be created containing the application tables to be migrated during uptime (each table
name in a separate line)
The allowed target release of SAP_BASIS is 740 SP5 or higher

Known limitations
downtime optimized DMO works for SAP Business Suite systems (not for SAP BW)
Selection of application tables for uptime migration is currently a manual process
No monitoring of delta transfer ratio is offered yet

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The following tables are not allowed:
- Pool tables
- Basis tables containing deep components (e.g. STRG)
- Tables to be converted
- Tables without primary key
- Tables which start with /BI in the name
- Application exchange tables
Note that cluster and basis tables are supported starting with SUM SP13 and higher
(with the exception on basis tables with deep components, as listed above)
(Basis tables: tables part of software components SAP_BASIS, SAP_GWFND, or SAP_UI)
downtime optimized DMO is not supported for the scenario System Conversion (targeting SAP
S/4HANA)

Registration for customers

We have pilot projects running and currently do not accept further pilot projects. Stay tuned for an update on
this blog.
[SAP internal information: check SAP Note 2005472 - this is not released to customers]

Abbreviations

SLT: SAP Landscape Transformation Server

PAS: Primary Application Server (fka CI)
PRD: Productive
SHD: Shadow
TGT: Target

Technical background
The initial situation is like for the "standard" DMO:

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Again, like in standard DMO, the shadow repository is created by the shadow instance:

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The shadow repository is copied from the source database to the target database, the SAP HANA database.
Note that the shadow instance is still existing, although currently not used, but not deleted as in the standard
DMO.

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Now the trigger for the selected application tables is set up, and the initial transfer of the triggered tables starts.
The triggers are set by the integrated DMIS technology.

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Still in uptime, the delta transfer of the application tables is then done. Therefore, a job starts the DMIS reader
(part of SLT) on the shadow instance to check for trigger logs, and transfer the delta to the DMIS writer. For the
DMIS writer to write the data to the SAP HANA database, we need an additional instance
that uses the target version kernel for the SAP HANA database. This instance is called TMP instance
(temporary).

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Downtime starts, now the remaining delta of the application tables are migrated.

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Now the remaining application tables (that have not been triggered) have to be migrated as in the standard
DMO.

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The target kernel is now applied to the PRD instance, the system is started to allow the update of the
application tables. This is still business downtime.

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Once the application tables are updated and the procedure is finished, the system is available again.

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9923 Views Tags: sl_toolset, sum, software_update_manager, dmo

Boris Rubarth in response to rajdeep sarma on page 11

May 11, 2016 1:10 PM
Hello Rajdeep,
thanks for your question. I'd like to take this opportunity to clearify some aspects.
1. This is not a pilot service, it is a feature that is piloted. The participation is not free of costs, as SAP
colleagues from consulting and/or Active Global Support will have to be involved and will have to be paid by the
customer.
2. This is a program to pilot a feature, it is not a service to analyze your scenario. The time for the project
depends on the scope of the project, like involved systems, number of iterations, ...
3. The involvement of the SAP colleagues is throughout the complete project, not just during a kind of analysis
phase.
My recommendation is to analyze your scenario thouroughly, and of course I can recommend to involve SAP
colleagues for this. But this is not bound to the "downtime optimized DMO" feature.
Regards, Boris
rajdeep sarma in response to Ming Wei on page 12

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May 10, 2016 8:42 PM

Hello Boris,
we have ran more 4 migration iterations for DMO run on a 20 TB ECC 6 EHP6 oracle system migrating to
HANA.
We have observed very poor performance during the first 12 hours of the migration where just around 2 TB
of the data gets migrated from EUMIGRATEDT.logs. In the next 30 hours or so we get around 700 GB/hour
throughput.
We have tried many different options for optimize the migration , i.e. increasing /decreasing the table split
options during split and increasing /decreasing the number of R3load processes during migration but that is
not helping the speed up of the migration. We have observed the during this first 12 hours the CPU IO on the
oracle DB server is always more than 60% and we have observed more than 100 blocked processes in SAR
output.
Keeping all these in mind, we want to explore possibility of migrating APP tables during uptime during this
method the blog provides.
Before opening the massage with SAP, I have a few questions for Borris
1. My understanding is that this pilot service to analyze the tables by SAP development support is free of cost ?

2. How much time does the SAP development support takes to get engaged to analyzie our scenario and
recommend solutions around tables which can be migrated online.
3. After development support provides recommendation, is there any further involvement for SAP professional
services during the rest of the project duration.
Regards,
Rajdeep
Ming Wei
May 6, 2016 5:37 PM
Hi Boris, I opened an mesg126683 in BC-UPG-TLS-TLA regarding the pilot of downtime optimized DMO, and
attached all the info from our last normal DMO run in POC HANA. still no response from support. Is this the
right queue?
Thanks
Ming
Boris Rubarth in response to Robert Kundrat on page 13

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Mar 8, 2016 8:57 PM

Hello Robert,
not sure what you are referring to as "near zero downtime offering for HANA migration" - is it the nZDT service
offering?
Anyway these are two different technologies.
Regards, Boris
Robert Kundrat
Mar 8, 2016 5:32 PM
Hello,
Could you please clarify for us if the near zero downtime offering for HANA migration from SAP and the
downtime-minimized DMO described here are two different scenario.
Thanks,
Robert
Anil Murthy in response to Ronald Halmen on page 13
Jan 6, 2016 3:11 PM
Thanks Ronald...I just sent back the incident and asked the processor to forward it to Development support.
Will let you know how it goes.
Regards,
Anil
Ronald Halmen in response to Anil Murthy on page 13
Jan 6, 2016 12:15 AM
Hi Anil,
apparently, the processor of your incident is not familiar with the procedure that enables you to take advantage
of the "Downtime Optimized Database Migration Option" of SUM. Please send the incident back and ask
for forwarding it to the Development Support level. It's not SAP note 2161397 but 2005472 that needs to be
considered in your case.
Hope this helps,
Ronald
Anil Murthy
Jan 5, 2016 5:33 PM
Hi Boris,

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I opened a ticket under BC-UPG-TLS-TLA and have been going back and forth with SAP. They are saying that
there is no pilot anymore and I was referred to the standard DMO note 2161397. Can you please help us with
this. I can provide the message number.
Regards,
Anil
Boris Rubarth in response to Gabe Mensching on page 14
Dec 5, 2015 10:46 AM
Hi Gabe,
it is the right component, and the incident will be handled now.
Regards, Boris
Gabe Mensching
Dec 4, 2015 5:34 PM
Boris I have tried opening an incident under component BC-UPG-TLS-TLA but I received a response that it
was not the appropriate area. Is there a different component that needs to be used?
Thank you for the blog. This was very informative.
Bhushan Agarwale in response to Boris Rubarth on page 14
Sep 3, 2015 8:01 AM
Hi Boris,
The Downtime Optimized DMO is very much clear with your blog, thanks again for explaining in detail.
Basically, for one of our clients, we proposed in-place DMO migration for their ERP system (ECC6-EHP5) on
DB2 with size of 13 TB. The client only has the 24Hrs downtime window, and hence we were exploring the
Optimized option. However, client wants to be sure the Optimized DMO is not a consulting offering.
Thanks,
Bhushan
Boris Rubarth in response to Bhushan Agarwale on page 14
Sep 2, 2015 10:25 PM
Hi Bhushan,
this note is not released for customers, that it why you cannot access it.
My hope was that this blog serves to understand "downtime optimized DMO" ...
Regards, Boris
Bhushan Agarwale
Sep 2, 2015 4:58 PM
Thanks Boris,
I am trying to get the below note to understand optimized part for DMO. However, it is not yet released.

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2005472 - Downtime Optimized Database Migration Option for Software Update Manager
Thanks,
Bhushan
Boris Rubarth in response to Bhushan Agarwale on page 15
Sep 1, 2015 10:26 PM
Hi Bhushan, Nicholas,
downtime optimized DMO is still "available on request", and we can't estimate when it will be made general
available (GA).
It is not necessarily a consulting service: "available on request" means that customers / partners have to
request the usage, and we will decide on project details as well as development capacity on the request.
However, it is not a bad idea to have experienced SAP consulting colleagues involved.
Regards, Boris
Bhushan Agarwale
Sep 1, 2015 7:46 PM
Hi Boris,
IS the Optimized DMO a consulting offering from SAP.? Or it is GA available for customers with SUM SP13?

Thanks,
Bhushan
Nicholas Chang
Aug 14, 2015 5:39 AM
Hi Boris,
May i know the estimate date for GA?
Also, how many customer had registered themselves for using this tool and what's the outcome?
Thanks,
Nicholas Chang
Boris Rubarth in response to Vikas Talekar on page 15
Jul 20, 2015 12:09 PM
Hi Vikas,
you do not have to take care for SLT, or schema names, at all - it is all included
Regards, Boris
Vikas Talekar

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Jul 16, 2015 7:44 PM

Thanks Boris - Very good content.
When we say not using other SLT server to replicate large tables ,
1) should we use Source system as SLT ?
2) will that replicate table data to same schema as target SUM schema i.e. ECC SAP<SID>
3) if yes SLT configuration replicate data dictionary tables to target schema as default - is that ok to overwrite
SUM transfer tables ?
Jayesh Kothari in response to Boris Rubarth on page 16
Jul 1, 2015 4:22 PM
Thanks Boris. I shall get in touch with SAP to see if we can get this option for our migrations.
Boris Rubarth in response to Jayesh Kothari on page 16
Jul 1, 2015 4:09 PM
Hi Jayesh,
for downtime optimized DMO, the DMIS AddOn is used, but we do not use the setup like for SLT, so there will
be no separate SLT replication server.
The DMIS AddOn may or may not be installed on the source system, meanwhile SUM SP13 can handle both
situations.
If your landscape is using an SLT replication server, this will not be used for downtime optimized DMO. So no
SLT setup required on that server.
Regards, Boris
Jayesh Kothari
Jun 28, 2015 9:39 AM
Hi Boris,
Thanks for this blog.
I had a question on the usage of SLT with DMO of SUM.
You mentioned to select DMIS addon as part of stack.
What if our landscape already has the latest - DMIS SP08? and we wish to use DMO of SUM to update/
Migrate ?
Do we manually setup SLT config naming the schema as SAPSID , replicate the tables we need manually ,
and later start SUM to update/migrate to HANA ?
Regards,
Jayesh
Ronald Halmen in response to Boris Rubarth on page 17
Feb 18, 2015 3:04 PM

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Hi Boris,
if certain NW ABAP based products like BW or SCM (in case BW functionality is used) are not supported as
source systems then please document this accordingly, also in the "Restrictions and Limitations" section of the
related SAP note. Currently, this is not transparent.
Thanks and regards,
Ronald
Boris Rubarth in response to Alexey Ukrainsky on page 17
Feb 17, 2015 12:59 PM
Hi Alexey,
1 - yes, for downtime optimized DMO, is currently not possible to include the unicode conversion. Although the
SLT technology is capable to cover the unicode conversion, the integrated usage in DMO does not (yet) allow
the unicode conversion.
2 - BW is not supported as a source system for downtime optimized DMO. I guess the replication scenarios
that you refer to have an ECC backend as a source, where changes are replicated into BW on HANA - correct?
This is different to the scenario where BW as a source would require triggers.
Regards, Boris
Alexey Ukrainsky
Feb 17, 2015 12:39 PM
Hi Boris,
some questions/clarifications:
1- you say the unicode conversion is not possible? it is possible with SLT as long as RFC connections are used
to read/write the data. SLT can also cluster/pool/INDX tables very well..
2- BW are not supported? The majority of replication scenarios for SAP HANA are using the data replication
into BW on HANA.
Boris Rubarth in response to Ali Taner Guler on page 17
Jan 13, 2015 1:52 PM
Hi Ali,
well, if the version and SP levels you listed are the start release, you may consider to reach a target level that
is supported by "DMO with target ASE".
As far as I know, SP7 for EHP7 of SAP ECC 6.0 may be coming out soon, and it will be based on SAP_BASIS
7.40 SP09.
If this does not fit, you will have to use Software Provisioning Manager.
Regards, Boris
Ali Taner Guler

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Jan 9, 2015 10:19 AM

Hi Boris,
I am currently involved in a migration project. The project scope is migrating from MSSQL 2012 to ASE 16.0.
While I am reading the guides I noticed that SUM has new feature called DMO and when I got deep into it,
saw that DMO can only be used for target database ASE on request (min. required NW release must be
SAP_BASIS 740 SP9).
My Business Application Suite version and SP levels are: ERP EHP6, SAP_BASIS 731 SP07 and SAP_ABA
731 SP07.
In this situation what are your suggestions to continue with? I would appreciate if you could advice.
Regards,
Ali Taner
Dr. Jrg Unger
Nov 13, 2014 5:57 PM
Hi Boris, great session itm360 on Teched Berlin though it was way to late ;-)
looking forward to trying out this DMO with DT-Minimizing.
Muthu Maran
Oct 28, 2014 11:35 PM
Boris,
It was nice meeting you at TechEd and ITM360 was a great session. Looking forward to use it at more
customer environment.
Srinivas Kakarla
Sep 23, 2014 2:14 PM
Thanks Boris,
Very interesting and eager to explore it.

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