SUM 1.0 SP06 - what does it mean for IBM i customers?

With Software Update Manager (SUM) 1.0, SAP provides a unified tool for software logistics processes. Being a release independent successor of SAP's enhancement package installers and upgrade tools, it is designed to cover more and more processes that formerly were performed by dedicated tools. Examples are release upgrade, enhancement package installation, import of support package stacks and more.

It is important to notice that, except from Support Package Manager (SPAM), SUM will be the only supported tool for every scenario it is released for. Which scenarios are supported by a certain version of SUM can be told from the respective central SUM note, which is pointed to from the most current version of SAP Note 1563579 - Central Release Note for Software Logistics Toolset 1.0.

This document wants to make you aware of some facts and their implications particularly for SAP on IBM i customers, which you should take into account when planning for the processes executed with SUM:

Facts

• Starting with SUM 1.0 SP06, the following requirements for the SAP system before start of the logistic process will take effect:
  • For every SAP system based on SAP NetWeaver 7.x the 7.20 downward compatible kernel must be used. For several reasons, it is also recommended that you configure your system for kernel replication with sapcpe.
  • For every SAP system based on SAP NetWeaver 7.x the new user concept must be implemented.
  • If the system runs a Java stack with Partner JDK 1.4.2, this JDK has to be replaced by SAP JVM 4 accordingly
• It is a direct consequence of the release strategy for SL TOOLSET 1.0 that version SUM 1.0 SP05, which still can technically support systems with older kernel releases ,and with IBM JVMs, and the old user concept will not be available after some point in time about July 2013. This implies that the above requirements will be mandatory for every process supported by SUM 1.0 SP06 and higher.

Implications, background and some details

Every precondition of the above list needs planning and, depending on the kind of the system, may result in significant downtime:

• Downward compatible kernel: According to SAP Note 1629598 - SAP Kernel 720 will replace older kernel versions SAP kernel versions 700, 701, 710 and 711 ran out of maintenance by August 31st, 2012. Therefore, newly shipped SL tools for SAP on IBM i will no longer support the old kernel versions - SUM 1.0 SP06 on IBM i technically relies on the 7.20 kernel. Find an overview of relevant notes for the context of this kernel in SAP Note 1687173 - IBM i: Collection of notes about the 7.20 kernel. Not at least to avoid downtime for future kernel maintenance, it is highly recommended that you make yourself familiar with the replication concept of sapcpe and configure your system accordingly. SAP Note 1632754 - IBM i: Changing to an instance-specific directory gives guidance for this step.
• New user concept: software logistic processes had suffered from the old setup with dedicated work process users for years because generic development is agnostic to this split. It turned out to be more and more difficult up to nearly impossible to map permissions correctly during updates/upgrades. Therefore, the change to the new user concept is expected to raise the experienced quality of the procedure for customers significantly. The switch process itself is expected to cause little downtime for ABAP systems but by nature has bigger impact to Java systems because there the number of file system objects to be adapted is higher by orders of magnitude. For details of the switch process refer to Note 1149318 - User concept conversion using tool CONVUSRCPT.
• SAP JVM 4: For details of the switch refer to SAP Note 1495160 - SAP JVM as replacement for Partner JDKs 1.4.2 and the SCN article SAP JVM 4 and IBM i.