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Architecture Discussions - Central/Local, Central only, Local only?

Former Member
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Hi All,

This question is constantly being asked by customers/clients/partners. So rather than leaving it verbal, I would like to stimulate some discussion here which we can then reference in the MII wiki. I guess I could write a blog, but I think this reaches a wider audience.

I will start off with a suggested reasoning for specific architectures for simply providing a starting point. Feel free to disagree, but please provide your rationale

Central/Local:

By default, I usually lean towards a Central/Local architecture. And by that I mean that there are MII servers in each Production Plant and a central MII server which is the focal point of the inputs to the ERP and other central data center functions. Some folks will point out that this means the central MII server is a potential single point of failure, but that is also true of the ERP system which it presumably interfaces to. Also this simplifies the interface to the ERP system where the RFC/IDoc Listeners are concerned. In the past I also would point out that the use of Virtual Xacute Server connections would utilize a binary streaming feature which is very efficient in transporting data. There are other methods now of invoking the binary transport, but the intent is to minimize the footprint on the network. Minimal data transport with the central MII instance formatting the raw data for ERP uploads via BAPI/RFC or IDoc or ES. The network footprint for the formatted BAPI Request XML is usually a minimum or 5 times greater than the raw data itself.

Central only:

I only recommend this when MII is providing central (generally upper management) dashboards which are utilizing small amounts of data from local plants or only reporting on data which already resides centrally. A simple example is an electricity usage monitoring system. Once a day or perhaps once a shift, the local metering can be queried and the data presented centrally from all the plants for sustainability purposes. Little bit of data, fairly simple presentation, but good corporate data presentation.

Local Only:

A subset of Central/Local which can be implemented first. There are strong reasons to have MII reside at the local plant. Response times are much faster just from being in the local network. When using MII to manage your production data and provide insight for managing the factory, colocating provides disconnected (from Central) operations. More complex data processing is easier to implement when WAN considerations can be ignored. Interfaces to ERP will need to be created and maintained for each plant (speaking again about RFC/IDoc Listeners) and each plant will require its own RFC Destination, etc. in the ERP system. If you are just using MII for managing your local plant(s) with dashboards, KPIs, etc., then a local only makes sense.

These are just quick thoughts and are not meant to be comprehensive. That is for the rest of you to provide (please!). I hope we can generate enough of a dialog to help others make good decisions for their architectures in the future.

Thanks in advance,

Mike

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Former Member
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this is a really interesting topic!!!

Hi everybody,

I had experience in the last two years with a local infrastructure of xMII servers running 11.5 version.

In my scenario every plant has it's own xMII server, being exactly in the middle between Central ERP and local production systems.

I would say this is not the ideal solution in my mind...

...I consider MII something it should be absolutely local, 'cause has to send/receive data from local systems and in the LAN the amount of data transferred can be really high (and has to be fast), but I can say we experienced problems with load balance toward ERP (where ERP it seems to be the bottleneck) and trying to synchronize the calls to the ERP.

That's why, even if I unfortunately have no experience with this architecture, I would propose in the future as ideal architecture the first solution listed at the top of the thread...local MII servers linked to local systems with a centralized MII server linked to ERP.

regards

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Hi Udayan,

Yes, these questions have been around since 11.5 or as you said probably earlier. But the questions keep recurring, so I wanted a common forum for a discussion. Most of my experience with MII involved local with central (more than a dozen sites) with a few more using local only (I only remember 2, but there might have been a few more). I have only run into a single central only instance (not yet in production), but their WAN had dedicated pipes between the HQ and their local plants, so performance was not as much a consideration in their architecture. I will monitor their situation to see if that changes when they do their production rollout.

Ottantaphoenix,

I think you have highlighted the main issues that keep coming up, although I have not run into that many instances where ERP was the bottleneck. Usually it is the network data load that causes problems.

But I appreciate your input and hope others will put in their experience as well.

Thanks,

Mike

Former Member
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...well ERP it shouldn't be the bottleneck, that situation surprised me a lot and I really think it is linked with bad management of ERP infrastructure (maybe tuning and missing scalability of solution once factories live are increasing) and bad communication between the areas (lack of real vertical integration).

I also think it could be linked to strategic outsourcing all companies are generally doing on IT area...loosing internal human resources...getting globally a worst service from systems on supporting real production...but this is my own poor opinion...

best regards

Edited by: ottantaphoenix on Dec 1, 2010 10:19 AM

Answers (1)

Answers (1)

Former Member
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All,

Along with Mike's comments, there are diagrams and corresponding explanations in the [MII 12.X Best Practice Guide|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/f08d7ae2-6f56-2c10-50b4-8a3bb1d43502].

Looking forward to seeing your responses....

Regards,

Kevin

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I guess this topic did not interest as many people as I would have expected.

Oh well, it is now out there for review.

Former Member
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Mike,

This is good information. I'm just getting familiar with MII as part of an SAP Deployment and have some concerns regarding the architecture. At this point, I think we are planning on a single Central MII server located near the ERP system. Having read the documentation and your comments, I do have concerns about performance over the WAN as well as throughput of the server itself. If we utilize the single server for integration and intellilgence, will peformance be so bad that neither purpose will be served? We are getting a sandbox environment setup right now, so we'll have a better idea soon how well this is going to work for us.

Thanks for the additional info, though.

John

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Hi John,

There are a lot of variables which affect system performance, especially with a single central installation like you describe. Certainly the data loading on the WAN is a big factor. And setting up a central server is only as good as the worst leg of your network.

Run a very simple test of your network by pinging a sample (or all of them if there are not too many) of nodes you will be using. It may not confirm how good your network is, but it may indicate particular areas which are likely to have problems.

Regards,

Mike

Former Member
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Mike,

These Deployment approaches have been around since 11.5 days (may be earlier) but with Netweaver in the picture has presented a lot of challenges especially with the Distributed/Local Deployment model.

Organizations struggle to find the required skill sets to maintain these systems at the Local Level. With the organizatons moving towards a more central approach as far as their IT Force is concerned , even the IT tools are taking a central approach.

Having said all this it still makes perfect sense to have the MII instance as close as possible to the datasource.

It'll be interesting to see how organizations meet up with this particular challenge or as SI / Consultants what can we suggest as the best approach in such a scenario.

Thanks

Udayan

Former Member
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+1 for commenting on the support/resources required for Netweaver at the "local" level.

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Hi Ryan,

Good to hear from you again. You have a lot of experience with various customers and their architectures. What proportions of the three different scenarios have you run into?

I don't see the local NW installation being much of an issue (any more than the local MII installation). But I haven't seen many problems with it either. What kind of problems have you run into?

Thanks,

Mike

Former Member
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Mike,

I know your question was directed at Ryan, but this is an area where we are currently struggling, so I thought I would provide my two cents.

As previously mentioned, IS resources are becoming increasingly centralized/offshored. In our case, the Basis teams remit is really focused around ERP and they do a good job with BAU support there.

I recently enlisted Basis help in building the Netweaver CE servers required for 12.1 (first CE instances in our company). I'm running into challenges setting up NWDI and the 'Local' landscape, while keeping my systems out of scope of the ERP change processes (system freezes, etc that don't impact our ability to develop locally).

So I guess the 'problem' that I have run into is around a lack of knowledge in NW CE JAVA-AS space and how it fits into the larger landscape.

Rod

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Hi Rod,

I guess the maintenance aspects of NWDI were not in the forefront of my brain. I guess that may have been what Ryan was referring to as well. And since I have only limited experience with the packaging of a project for delivery to local plants, I will bow to others' insights into those kinds of issues.

But thanks for chiming in. I want this to be open to everyone's points so don't feel reluctant. However I will probably run out of points to award pretty soon.

Thanks,

Mike

Former Member
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Hi

How is the architecture lools like for load balancing?

Edited by: Seng Kiang Hoe on Dec 14, 2010 10:12 AM

Edited by: Seng Kiang Hoe on Dec 14, 2010 10:13 AM

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Strictly speaking, Load Balancing is handled through NW (and in ECC). There are some aspects of both that percolate down to the MII level. JRA allows load balancing, but not SSO. JCo allows SSO, but not load balancing. There are other aspects as well particularly if you do modifications to IDocs or other ERP mods.

You will probably need some assistance from NW/Basis resources if you run into any other issues with load balancing. Problems will sometimes pop up where one node receives MII "stuff" and the others do not. Inconsistent processing is a symptom of this.

Regards,

Mike