Where to find information on SAP BW on HANA migrations
I’ve been part of projects to migrate to BW on HANA recently and one of the things that I noticed was that resources can be fragmented and tricky to find. I thought I’d curate a list of places to go to find information. If I have missed something then please ping me so it can be added to here.
1) Best Practice Guide
Boris Zarske maintains a Best Practice Guide – Classical Migration of SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP to SAP HANA and this is a great place to start. It covers all aspects of a migration and should be in your toolkit because Boris is aggregating information directly from the development team.
However, it only covers classical migrations, and if you’re doing BW on HANA then you should ideally be considering DMO.
2) Database Migration Option (DMO)
Roland Kramer maintains SAP First Guidance – Using the DMO Option to Migrate BW on HANA and this is the place to find out information about this. It is applicable to BW 7.0 and above and can help automate the upgrade and migration to SAP HANA. DMO doesn’t work in every scenario, so make sure that it can do what you need.
3) Migration Cockpit & Checklist
If you go SAP Note 1909597 – SAP NetWeaver BW Migration Cockpit then you can install and configure program ZBW_HANA_MIGRATION_COCKPIT. This program runs on BW 3.5 or above, which is very cool.
In addition, as recommended by Ali S Qahtani, you should consider applying SAP Note 1729988 – SAP NetWeaver BW powered by SAP HANA – Checklist Tool, which provides program ZBW_HANA_CHECKLIST or ZBW_HANA_CHECKLIST_3x, depending on your version of BW. This is a pretty neat checklist and a presentation is attached to the note.
4) Architecting BW on HANA
I wrote a blog on Licensing, Sizing and Architecting BW on HANA. In addition, Marc Hartz‘ guide on SAP NetWeaver BW Powered by SAP HANA Scale Out – Best Practices is important if you have a large system, as is Marc Bernard‘s How NOT to size a SAP BW system for SAP HANA.
5) Managing your BW on HANA Project
I wrote blogs on 10 Golden Rules for SAP HANA Project Managers, and 10 Golden Rules for SAP BW on HANA Migrations. Hopefully they are useful for you.
Roland Kramer also wrote Three things to know when migrating SAP BW on SAP HANA, which is worth reading. This refers to SAP First Guidance Collection for SAP NetWeaver BW powered by SAP HANA, which in turn refers to Implementation – BW on HANA Export/Import, SAP First Guidance – Using the DMO Option to Migrate and SAP First Guidance – SAP-NLS Solution with Sybase IQ. Wow, this is recursive documentation!
5) HANA Basis Reference Guide
Andy Silvey has written the awesome The SAP Hana Reference for SAP Basis Administrators, which is a go-to guide on HANA Administration. It is well worth reading if you’re a Basis consultant moving to the HANAsphere.
6) ABAP Post-Copy Automation
Michaela Pastor wrote a very handy blog about ABAP Post-Copy Automation, which is all about reducing the time to do system copies, and using the same ABAP source system for more than one BW system.
7) Some additional blogs
Sunny Pahuja’s blog on Some points to remember for Database Migration to HANA is very detailed though a little out of date.
Final Words
Since I’ve written this, I’ve realized that there is a lot of information out there, which may be overwhelming. I do encourage though, if you are planning a BW on HANA migration, that you take a look at this information before you build out your plan. You will be much better informed and I have no doubt that you will change your plan for BW on HANA.
Thanks to all of those that helped curate this, especially Thomas Zurek, Klaus Nagel, Boris Zarske, Roland Kramer, Lloyd Palfrey, Marc Bernard, Lothar Henkes.
If you have some content that I should link to here, then please let me know!
Hello John,
Thanks for the Feedback.
Please Note that the SAP First Guidance Collection will be the Content for the renovated SAP HANA Cookbook.
Best Regards Roland
Hi John,
thanks for putting together this collection - that's great help! Additionally for BW customers planning to upgrade/migrate to BW7.40 (SP05) here is the central landing page in SCN for the latest and greatest BW-on-HANA release 🙂
Best regards, Klaus
Great stuff. Also, BW to HANA migration supported by rapid deployment solution(http://service.sap.com/rds-hana-bwmig). Any comments/feedback is always appreciated
Thanks John! 🙂
Hi John,
I read your blog "Where to find information on SAP BW on HANA migrations". It´s great information that you pulled together!
I would have an additional resource that you should add:
There are two rapid-deployment solutions available that deliver lots of documentation and best practises on how to do the migration. The information is provided in a structured way, the so called Step-by-Step guide and can be found in the "solution deployment" area of the linked sites below.
1) Rapid database migration of SAP NetWeaver BW to SAP HANA - helps customers to replace the actual underlying database of their existing BW system with SAP HANA.
2) Rapid data migration to SAP NetWeaver BW - allows customers to extract and analyze selected data from virtually any existing data warehouse system into SAP NW BW. Optionally the data can be migrated into the SAP HANA enterprise cloud.
Best regards,
Susanne
One recurring point I see in most BW customers migrating to HANA is their BI Java stack
First, they need to separate it to another instance (dual stack split).
After that, starting on AS Java 7.40 SP04+, they can deploy it on HANA.
Furthermore, it can be the same HANA instance as of the BW ABAP instance.
Some customers have evaluated the necessity to maintain at all the BI Java stack, looking into deploying the web apps on the Bex Queries on the Java Engine of BOE. But several cases still require the BI Java stack.
Thanks Henrique that is a good point. I found that BI Java is still necessary in many customers - I haven't seen anyone running it on HANA yet.
There remain a bunch of reasons to continue to run BI Java
- BI Portal
- Visual Composer
- BEx Scheduling
- Workbook Precalculation
It's unusual to see a big BW instance that doesn't require one of these. In fact my first "Design Thinking" project in 2009 was a BW project running on the BI portal. We have some great examples of nice usability using BI Java. This is especially the case when moving from the BEx Browser, for those that remember that!
Hi John,
agreed.
What might replace the web apps on the long run is BO Analysis for OLAP & Design Studio, but they're just not there yet.
Best,
Henrique.
I think the bigger problem is that those tools all require additional licenses and in many cases, the migration requires substantial rework, and yet the products are lacking in features that are in use.
It's more likely that Project WHO may address some of these, I do hope so!
Hello John,
First of all, thank you very much for the information that you give to us.
I'm a bit confuse about the method what I need to use.
My scenario is a fresh upgraded SAP BW to 7.4 and SPS7, and I want to migrate the current database to Hana. What kind of migration method I' ll must to follow? Classical migration because my SAP BW is updated or I need to go with DMO without doing the upgrade phase on system because is on 7.4 yet? 😕
Thanks again.
Hi
you can/should use DMO to apply SPS 08 for 7.40 while you migrate to BW on HANA.
DMO can also be used within the same release, as long you apply at least one SPS.
best regards Roland
There are always lots of ways to skin a cat, but I happen to think that if you don't need DMO, the classical migration remains lower risk. DMO seems to be maturing quickly so that will change.
Also BW 7.4 SPS08 will be a feature release, so you should consider whether you want/need the features of SPS08, or rather whether you should instead stick with SPS07, which might be lower risk.
Hi John,
There are always considerations to avoid DMO, but îf you want to go to HANA with your BW (or ERP) System DMO is the best choice, as all Development activites are going in this direction.
By this time a heterogeneous towards HANA is more risky, because you have to take care about all rep/post preparation steps manually. I think you know, how long such a list can grow, if you try to avoid using DMO.
Yes, SR2 for 7.40 which is SP08 is a feature Release and it will not make the usage of DMO more risky at all.
Best Regards Roland
Not a question of risk using DMO with SR2, but rather the risk of SP08 in itself. The last feature release, SP05, required some time to stabilize. Perhaps this won't be required in SP08, but since it's not been released yet, that's the working assumption,
Hi John,
SP5 has been an exception in the sense that it has been announced well in in advance (12+ months) that the new BW functions in NW 7.4 will ship only with SP5 (and not with SP0 as usual). So SP5 (or SR1) has been the "de facto release" of BW 7.4.
SP8 is as stable for existing / previously shipped BW features and functions as any normal SP. The new functions in SP8 are delicate in the sense as the need to undergo the usual reality proof that every net new feature has to meet. But if don't use them then you should not feel a difference.
Regards
Thomas
This makes sense and it's been like this since BW 7.0. I remember the early IP projects 🙂
Still, we have very aggressively recommended customers to go to SP06 and SP07 for stability reasons. We will see how SR2 turns out but I think we should be less aggressive especially for customers who are now in test phases and don't need the new features.
Hi John,
This is really awesome stuff, where we can see complete details of Migration part. Thanks very much for sharing this.
Kind Regards,
Arun Reddy
I´ve SUSE Enterprise SP3 (11.3)
I should follow the note
1824819 - SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS settings for SLES 11 / SLES for SAP Applications 11 SP2
If I`ve SP3?