Several advantages at once
Copying needs to be done skillfully
What is the purpose of copying a complete SAP system? - Well, there are several reasons. Test and development system: After a new productive system has been set up, at least one identical development system or even one test system is still needed. To avoid having to repeat the customizing (settings and configurations of the SAP modules and business processes) on these systems, it makes sense to make a copy. This is clearly the faster way to achieve the goal!
There are now a number of tools that simplify refresh activities of non-production SAP systems. The tools are imported into SAP systems via transports and enable the data to be copied to be written in. The more precise the selection, the greater the potential savings in storage space and extraction time compared to client copy. As with the latter, the configuration is retained and ongoing development and test processes remain undisturbed.
Possibility of manual intervention in case of delta import
Typically, the "homogeneous SAP system copy" process involves a large number of manual activities. A certain skill level is required for this, which leads to the fact that usually the employees of the SAP Basis department or external service providers realize the system copy. Depending on the structure and size of the systems, this process can take anywhere from hours to several days. In addition to making the target systems unavailable to operations and project teams, system and landscape copies also block SAP Basis administrators. Other challenges include the varying duration and quality (completeness) of the results depending on the processor, time dependency on the employees performing the work, etc..
Users do not have to deal with individual tables, but can access a database of business entities. This means that they do not select tables, but business objects such as employees or documents. To do this, however, the tools must contain the object dependencies for SAP's complex data model. Even companies that offer the setup of test systems as a service rarely do this for any SAP dataset. In addition, users can define objects themselves to accommodate customizing and in-house developments.
Tools such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" are extremely useful in SAP system copy.
Some examples of selectable settings of the target system that can be copied automatically: RFC connections and certificates, report variants of the target system, logical paths of the target system, setup of the transport system, ABAP version management, system profiles and operation modes, background jobs, users and roles, settings of SAPConnect, ALE settings, texts of the login screen, developer and object keys, takeover of spool servers, logical systems, other settings, as well as a re-import of transports into the target system, are possible after consultation.
Of course, time savings also mean money savings.