Series of Blogs introducing Upgrading to the SAP Business One 8.8X Family

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 Series of Blogs introducing Upgrading to the SAP Business One 8.8X Family

Hello and Welcome to this new series of Upgrade blogs brought to you by members of the SAP Business One Support Upgrade Team. We would like to share our knowledge and experience with all of you and highlight all the common issues we have encountered in Support with regards Upgrading.

Are you puzzled about what Upgrade Patch you should use? What amount of free space is needed, what to do when you get a Pre-Upgrade error? What is the best way to deal with an Upgrade failure …..

SAP Business One Upgrades have never been easier, with the introduction of the 8.8X Upgrade Wizard  with incorporates Embedded Pre Upgrade Checks, One click upgrades, Upgrade of all components together, Automatic Pre checks, Automatic Backups, Post checks, Automatic restore on Failure

Keep tuned into this new series of Upgrade blogs where we will ease all your worries about Upgrading by providing answers to any Upgrade questions or issues you have encountered. As we know 2007 maintenance is drawing to a close in the near future so there is no better time to Upgrade.

In this blog I will focus on preparing your environment for a SAP Business One Upgrade

Testing the Upgrade

Firstly I cannot emphasise enough the importance of running a Test Upgrade of the customer Database. Why undergo unnecessary stress because of a failed Upgrade on a customer site?

 A Test Upgrade of the customer database will ensure a smooth Upgrade on Customer side. We are here to fix all Issues that occur during the testing phase of the customer database and can provide the fix via a remote session or in certain cases give you the fix to run yourself so you can continue with any post upgrade testing that you need to do on the customer’s DB.

When you are ready for the Live Upgrade, we will provide the fix again in either method as stated above in time for the live Upgrade.

Preparing the Environment

Prepare a Similar environment to the customer, ensuring you are using a supported version of MSSQL and Operating System. To verify that the correct Supported environment is in use check the following link, Any non listed Software is not supported by SAP Business One http://service.sap.com/smb/sbo/platforms 

Make sure you go over this list of pre-requisites

1. If you need to also Upgrade your MSSQL you can either download it from our software corner or you can log a support message under the component SBO-CRO-SUP
2. Make yourself familiar with the Admin guide. Please note the latest version of any documentation can be found at: service.sap.com/smb/sbo/Documentation
3. Make sure you have sufficient hard drive space

The following formulas explain the size of the required space:
- Space Required = 3 x (the size sum of all the selected company databases) + the size of the common database
- If TEMPDB is used to upgrade company databases, then Space Required = 3 x (the size sum of all the selected company databases) + the size of the common database + the size of the TEMPDB

4. Set the MDF and LDF files to have Unrestricted file growth in SQL Server (Note  1343052)

5. Shrink SBO-Common and each SAP Business One Databases (Note 1224089)

6. Always use a ‘clean’ database when upgrading and never attempt to use database that has gone through a failed upgrade. Before restoring the backup, delete the failed one first from SQL Server Management Studio

SQL Server parameters - Collation Settings

The collation setting s are related to the characters accents for the languages (French, German, Hebrew, etc). SAP Business One needs to have a specific setting .Wrong collation defined to the MS SQL Server may result in failure of some SAP Business One services, functionalities inside of the application or others unexpected errors. It is important to be sure the collations setting for the server are correctly configured

Please note that SQL Server Collations are not the same as SAP Business One collation settings!

How to check the Microsoft SERVER collations (there are 2 ways to check the SERVER collations)

Run the following query command in SQL Query Analyser
 select SERVERPROPERTY ('collation')

Expected Result: ‘SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS’
If the result is different the collations must be fixed as per instruction provided in the SAP Note 987436(*).

You can also check the collation settings from the Gui Interface of SQL Management studio

At the name of the Server Name right click à choose “properties” in the new pop-up windows à at the Server Properties (General tab page) à the field “Server Collation” informs about the current setting.

Correct collations SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.

Upgrade Path and Patch to choose

Finally make sure you are using the correct Upgrade Path and that you prepare the Environment using the latest Upgrade patch when migrating to a new SAP Business One Version.

Here is a quick overview:

• If Upgrading from 2005SP01 A/B,  2007A/B SP00/SP01 to Family 8.X you can go directly to the latest Upgrade Patch from Family 8.8X (today the latest Upgrade Patch level is 8.81 PL05)
• If Upgrading from 2004 : Go to the latest upgrade package on 2007A SP01 version (2007A SP01 PL08) as an interim Patch Level and then upgrade directly to the new Upgrade Patch  8.81 PL05 (Today’s latest )
• There are some restrictions by upgrading from the Latest Patch Level of 2007A SP01 and 2007B SP0 version to 8.8X family. This restriction is displayed in Patchreadme.pdf document which is released for each Patch Level. In this document you can find the max. Patch Level from which you can upgrade to the appropriate 8.8X Patch Level.

Please note that Using a Non Validated Upgrade patch to upgrade SAP Business One from a previous Release, instead of a validated upgrade patch is not supported

This information must be checked on the SAP Download Portal at:
http://service.sap.com/sbo-swcenter

User Privileges in the Windows System

Please note that to execute tasks like install, upgrade or even run SAP Business One the correct user privileges must be assign in Windows Operational System, otherwise it will not allow the user to perform such tasks or further errors may occur.

Please note these privileges are subject to change for future SAP or Windows versions.

 Check the SAP Business One “Administrator's Guide” available:

8.8 Licence File

Make sure you have requested a new License file for SAP Business One 8.8 license file.

You will need this license file for the upgrade wizard to connect to 8.8 license server and also for connecting your company after the upgrade process is finished. If you do not import a valid license file for SAP Business One 8.8 after the upgrade process, you cannot work with your company.

Note that the 8.8 license keys can only be delivered when the maintenance contract is valid under the installation.

Make sure you also familiarize yourself with the concept of the new Localized licence key, which has been introduced in the 8.8 Family, a change from version 2007 and previous.

If your customer is working with more than one Localisation, then you will need to request a Global license for 8.8X. See Note 1487586 How to order a Global License File.

The next blogs in this series will be 

•  Preparing your SAP Business One DB for the Upgrade .Advice on the ‘Pre Upgrade Checks’ , non supported customisations , making sure your DB is ready.
• Troubleshooting Upgrade Failures, Understanding the Upgrade Log File , how to best work with SAP Support for a speedy solution

In order for us to provide as much assistance and guidance to you as possible in this series of blogs, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to hearing your questions you might have in regards to the topic of Upgrading to the 8.X family and please leave any suggestions you may have on modules you would like to see covered in future blog series. I really hope that this will be an interesting and valuable information exchange method and beneficial to you when Upgrading to the SAP Business One 8.8X family.