SAP and DB system administration in MS SQL 2008 environment

[Former Member]

Dear All,

I have questions about the SAP and DB system administration in MS SQL 2008 environment.

We are in the POC process to migrate the BW in NW7.01 SPS #5 at DB6 UDB to MS SQL Server 2008 R2.

We (SAP Basis and DBA teams) will have no access rights to any filesystems or directories of the SAP and Database servers directly as we have been performing in the Unix servers, because of security concerns and SAP administration culture in the Windows environment.

MS SAP and DB experts have told us that all SAP and DB admin functions will be through tools, such as the SAP Management Console (sapmmc), SQL Server 2008 Management Studio, and DBACOCKPIT. Basically no command line will be available during normal operation.

If this is the only way on the system administration in the Windows environment, we and application teams will need to adjust ourselves. However, please enlighten me:

When we need to have access rights in the command line or directories?

What other tools are being used?

Will MS server/system administrators have much more workload, especially during the BillPrint dates?

Best Regards,

SLD

[Former Member]

Hi Shelly,

As you have mentioned, SAP MMC and SQL Server 2008 Management Studio are enough to administrate the SAP and DB. You may require access to the directories to check the logs. Unless and until u r struck with any issues in bringing up the SAP and DB you do require access to the directories.

I'm assuming that u will be scheduling periodic jobs to remove the old job logs.

NB: In order to administer the SAP and DB u would require the <SID>ADM user.

Hope this clarifies.

Regards,

Varadharajan M

[Former Member]

Hi!

Obviously, you will require the user <sid>adm in order to perform the OS level administration, and even some DB tasks. However you can perform most of your administration tasks from inside the SAP with an R/3 user; e.g. you can schedule most of the basic housekeeping tasks from inside the SAP R/3, e.g. [note 706478|https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/706478].

It is clear that will never be able to perform certain operations without the <sid>adm user, but in some enterprises, I saw a clear separation between Systems and SAP administration. Then the System Administrator should obviously learn on some SAP-specific topics (or follow exhaustively SAP Administrator's guidelines) and the SAP Administrator then should rely on the System Administrator for any platform-specific topics: OS and DB configuration, SAP start up and stop, kernel upgrades, extending DB files, etc.

This is also a common situation in systems that are hosted. Personally, I prefer an SAP expert also in the platform side, otherwise the System Administrator will behave just as a puppet, and possibly there will be problems (unless things are planned with enough time and there is an excellent communication between both administrators).

Cheers!

[Former Member]

Hi dude!

I do not think that you need to launch any commands in the shell if things are properly configured. However if you explain what kind of operations you did usually perform, that could be an idea to see other ways to do the same.

Cheers!