SP upgrade questions

[Former Member]

guys, just want to get a real world understanding of SP upgrades. I have two questions:

1) How frequently do companies carry out SP upgrades ? i find quarterly as too aggressive of an approach. How about once a year, does that sound acceptable for a small landscape ?

2) When we do a SP upgrade, should we really apply patches to all componenents, including industry solutions and modules that are not even used by our company ? Can we only do SP patching of the modules used by us ? Is that a problem ? What do companies normally do ?

please advise.

RS

[Former Member]

wherever I have worked we go with twice a year approach , one escpecially if you are using sap hr when legal patches are released for year end and other statuory changes.

If you see any error message and you route it to SAP, if you are on a lower level support pack and the issue is resolved in a later support pack, the first thing advised is to be updated with support packs.

[Former Member]

any more answers to my question # 2 ? thanks

[Former Member]

Yes, you can apply patches individually but SAP recommends to apply stacks. Which is easy for SAP to identify/resolve the issues. Also should be easy for you when you perform application upgrade to a latest version (ie from ECC5 to ECC6 or ECC6 to ECC6 EHP4)

[Former Member]

Hi Rajiv,

You can patch only components that you use. There is no need to patch everything.

And the frequency can be decided based on your need. If your current stack works without any issues, then you dont have to perform an upgrade. But if you require a bugfix or an additional feature which is available in a latest SP, then you can perform an upgrade. So you can do it on a need basis also if you find regular upgrades too cumbersome.

Regards,

Sangeetha

[JPReyes]

Most people do patches once or twice a year... doing it quarterly its a big overhead in my opinion.

I usually keep all components up to date as is important to keep stack consistency.

Thats my 2 cents.

Regards

Juan