BW System Copy

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

Our BW environment is not in synch and We are planning to do a system copy for BW landscape. I went through a lot of threads and not sure which strategy is

better for our company.In one of the thread from the forum I got some idea but i have few queries about that solution.

http://sap.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/sap-basis/client-copy-system-refresh-549052

If we create master client(as one of the expert advised as a option) in DEV with the same configuration of Production. Will it be a stand alone machine or

just a new instance of existing DEV. The reason why i am asking is that our existing DEV machine have different hardware configuration vs PRD hardware

configuration. If anyone can educate me or give me another option how can we synchronize the BW environment. I really appreciate the effort.

[Former Member]

Hi Ahmed

System copy might be your best option to sync the environments . Check this document , it has more information on various scenarios.

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-15962

Regards

Amit Padmawar

[Former Member]

Last time I checked the client concept that is known from traditional SAP systems has no real meaning in BW. In other words in a BW instance you can have only one BW system. To refresh systems you do a system copy which copies the entire database from the source system to the target system. Usually the SID is changed during the copy. With BW systems you will also have to refresh the source system, not only BW. Notice that refreshing the DEV system might have a negative impact, you will loose at least versioning and change logs. That is why most customers never refresh the DEV system.

[Former Member]

Thanks for your prompt reply but I do not understand what are you trying to say? As i understand from your perspective if BW landscape (DEV,QAS, PRD) is out of synch it never updated due to the negative impact.  Let's assume i have to add some more fields to infocube that have different instance in DEV vs in PRD. When object instances is different in DEV vs  in QAS vs  in PRD then how can you modify that object, if you do not refresh your systems. Could you add some more light on it?

[Former Member]

That is a very basic question of Change Management. Naturally you implement all changes in DEV, transport to Q&A and finally PRD. Only transactional/master data stored in the database is different from system to another. Whenever there is need to refresh transactional/master data in Q&A (or Sandbox, Training, ...) you do it by means of System Copy. If there are differencies in configuration between systems, you have already lost the game since you have not been following the basic rule of Change Management. Apart from changes that have not yet been released & transported (and transactional/master data), your systems should be identical.