How to migrate ERP to HANA?

[Former Member]

Now that SAP announced the Business Suite is in ramp-up for HANA, for me a pressing question arises: How should I migrate an ERP system to HANA?

I am a migration consultant and following the heterogenous system copy guide is the technical way to do it. But how about a safety net?

Remember: SAP promised a risk free migration with BW on HANA. Migrate your BW on RDBMS to BW on HANA, establish a dual-delivery setup from ERP to your two BW systems and take all your time to test and verify your BW on HANA until you finally move the end users to your new BW on HANA system. This approach is brilliant, relatively simple and works fine.

Is such a risk free migration to ERP on HANA also possible? I very much doubt so.

1. You cannot emulate productive workload. There are tools like e.g. Loadrunner where you can do some stress testing of a SAP instance, and you can spend real effort here to include your most important business transactions, but it won't be your real productive workload.(This is not to debase tools like Loadruner, you belong to the top notch IT oranizations if you use them because you can reduce risk significantly.)

2. What would you do if (after all the careful plannings and preparations) the go decision was given and ERP on HANA doesn't behave as expected? Per definition you started the productive work with the real productive workload, and only this workload can reveal whether ERP on HANA is running fine. My imagination and some experience from the last 15 years tell me what might go wrong.

I don't know who will be the first one to migrate a productive ERP system to HANA. Maybe it will be SAP itself. I just anticipate the question: "Is it possible to reduce the remaining risk?" Is it possible to establish a safety net during the migration just in case you might prefer to revert back to the old RDBMS? Without data loss and in a short timeframe?

[former_member184458 · Accepted solution]

Mark,

thank you for your thoughtful comments.

Lori has written a blog about HANA migration with more information and useful links,

http://www.saphana.com/community/blogs/blog/2013/01/15/lets-talk-sap-hana-database-server-migration

In General, all the SAP project phases for a go-live also apply to a HANA migration. That means, you would perform a test run, or a day in the life of the customer, prior to the actual cut-over, including a simulation of the workload.

SAP will provide RDS (Rapid Deployment Solutions) to make the migration as sound and safe as possible. The current schedule for announcements is set for February 2013.

SAP will also provide more details about the experiences of our ramp-up customers as they become available. This link to the Suite on HANA FAQ on the SAPHANA website will provide the latest information: http://spr.ly/sohfaq

SAP RUNS SAP, and SAP HANA. The migration of the SAP CRM and ERP systems from RDBMS to SAP HANA are both in the project phase. Please stay tuned for SAP RUNS SAP announcements.

thank you

erich

[former_member246250]

Hello,

we got the same question from some other customers, also regarding risk free migration with CRM on HANA.

Regards,

Manfred