Netweaver 7 on MS Cluster - system refresh

[Former Member]

Dear all,

I am building a Netweaver 7 platform on MS Cluster with SQL Server 2005. Installation works fine but I have problem when I am trying to perform system refresh. The source system is a non-clustered NW and target system is clustered.

Per SAP's suggestion on system refresh, here are the steps I performed:

1. Create DB copy from Source system.

2. Uninstall Dialog Instance on cluster node 2.

3. Uninstall Central Insance on cluster node 1.

4. Restore DB to Target system.

5. Install database instance.

6. Install Central Instance.

7. Install Dialog Instance.

After the steps were completed, the Cluster Administrator started to have strange behavior and SAP system can not be started. Does anyone have similar experience or know where could I get some more information?

Thank you all in advance.

Regards,

Eric Lin

[Former Member]

Hi,

Why would you uninstall/reinstall CI and DIA instances ?

It's absolutely not necessary for a system refresh on an MSCS cluster system.

I did not try for a netweaver system but I'm definitively sure for an SAP R/3 4.7 Oracle system.

Before the refresh, we just put all resources on the same node and deregister the database from the cluster.

Then this is a standard system refresh.

Regards,

Olivier

[Former Member]

Hi Olivier,

First thanks a lot for the information!

I got the above procedure after a long discussion with SAP on an OSS note, which the SAP guy said he tested and worked.

Now for your case, can you please elaborate a bit more on the 'deregister' part? What it seems to me is like you 'broke' the cluster and make the system like working on a standalone server, and then perform the refresh. It sounds like a good idea but I am not really clear on a couple of details:

1. MS SQL Server 2005 we use does the clustering within installation stage, which I am not sure if 'deregister' and 're-register' would work in my case.

2. There are Dialog Instance and one of the 2 Enqueue Instances installed on node 2(assuming CI is on node 1), if not uninstall DI and CI, will they be confused by the refreshed database?

3. How about other resources in the Cluster Admin, do you deregister them as well or just leave them as they are?

Thanks for your feedback in advance!

Regards,

Eric Lin

[Former Member]

Hi Eric,

I have no experience with SQL server on MSCS cluster because we use Oracle.

With Oracle what I call "deregister" is using the Oracle fail safe command

Fscmd disableisalive <SID>.WORLD /cluster=<cluster group name> /user=<sidadm> /pwd=<mot de passe> /domain=<domain>

I don't know if a similar command exists for SQL Server.

2: when you restore the database you rename it. So there is no reason to confuse the SAP instances when you restart them.

3. We just stop the SAP resources while restoring.

Regards,

Olivier

[Former Member]

Thanks Olivier. I will try it out.

Appreciated your help!

Eric

[Former Member]

Hi Eric

Can you please share your plan of system copy with me as I performing it for the first time on a clustered system?

Thanks in Advance

Manish

[Former Member]

Hello Eric-

I used to perform the same steps for my last project for our MSCS environment for both ECC 6 & BI 7

I used to uninstall just the Instances and after that restore the database of for example qas with prd using the sql anget and then perform the rest of the steps.

I used SAPINST for all these and there is one important step when you uninstall using SAPINST in one of the steps related to database.

UNINSTALL->Database (here you need to uncheck this box) Very important if you dont then everything is lost.

check if you made any mistake with this step?

and if you have Java in this you need to export that and in post refresh when you run inst tool you just provide the export path it should work and rest all what you said about enqueue is all correct.

Thanks,

George Rayi