The Next Generation Experience for Landscape Maintenance with SAP Solution Manager

• Introduction
• Key Features of Maintenance Planner
• Benefits of the Maintenance Planner
• Getting started
• Learn more
  • • Documentation
    • Demos and Presentations
    • Prerequisites for the Use of the Maintenance Planner
      • We’d like to hear from you

      Introduction

      Businesses today want to continually leverage innovations delivered by SAP at the lowest possible risk. The IT department‘s mission is to maintain and enhance the SAP software used to boost the efficiency and be the differentiator for the business. Need to change your landscape could be driven both from business as well as technical standpoint.  IT department is expected to respond swiftly to help their organization adopt  innovations as quickly as possible. It isn’t easy….

      SAP Solution Manager offers the next generation customer experience for maintaining your landscape through the SAP cloud-based Maintenance Planner.

      The Maintenance Planner enables easy and efficient planning of all changes in your SAP system landscape.

      Maintenance Planner is compatible with SAP Solution Manager 7.1  and SAP Solution Manager 7.2.

      Through Maintenance Planner, SAP Solution Manager drives simplicity for maintaining your system landscape, being perfect for new and upcoming SAP Solutions such as SAP S/4HANA. This simplification is automatically extended to all existing products. SAP Solution Manager continues to serve as the single platform for the delivery of SAP Service and Support including governance and documentation of the entire maintenance process.

      Key Facts:

      • Maintenance Optimizer is no longer supported. Maintenance Planner is the successor of Maintenance Optimizer.  Read more about Maintenance Optimizer sunset.
      • In SAP Solution Manager 7.1, Maintenance Optimizer has retired since  January 9, 2017. SEA (Scope and Effort Analyzer) will continue to be supported.
      • For SAP Solution Manager 7.01 SP 23 or above, Maintenance Planner  is supported, provided, you have installed SAP Note 1646604.

      Figure 1: Home screen of the enhanced Maintenance Planner supporting customers in their transformation journey.

       

      Key Features of Maintenance Planner

      Maintenance Planner

      • is a solution hosted by SAP.
      • simplifies the landscape maintenance process to update, upgrade and install new systems with much greater ease and efficiency.
      • integrates correction of landscape data with the maintenance process in a dialog driven process.
      • consolidates  definition of maintenance dependencies.
      • streamlines new system installations  by eliminating superfluous activities.
      • prevents inconsistency across systems in a multiple tier SAP customer landscape.

      Benefits of the Maintenance Planner

      See why you should use the Maintenance Planner and where using it is already mandatory:

      

      Figure 2: Key benefits of the Maintenance Planner
      

       

      The Maintenance Planner is the strategic tool that enables easy and efficient planning of all changes in your IT landscape.

      The Maintenance Planner supports SAP Solution Manager 7.1 and is mandatory for SAP Solution Manager 7.2 and for all calculations regarding SAP S/4HANA and SAP NetWeaver 7.5+. Being integrated with SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library, it is the planning tool for this area.

      Maintenance Planner…

      • … unifies tasks from Maintenance Optimizer and LMDB Product System Editor in one tool
      • … delivers maintenance artifacts for SWPM, SUM, & SEA (SAP Solution Manager 7.2)
      • … offers integrated processes for installation of SAP Fiori Apps and SAP S/4HANA conversion

      Maintenance Planner Provides the Following Functions and Improvements to the Process:

      Planning landscape changes in a graphical UI

      Showing overview and detailed system information in an intuitive way
      Simplified modeling of maintenance dependencies replacing product systems

      Maintenance Planner simplifies the complex process of modeling maintenance dependencies (for example the version dependencies between a  portal and an ERP system in a self-service scenario) through an intuitive procedure.

      Consolidated planning for system tracks managing all roles in one planning step

      Currently, maintenance planning is focusing on individual system maintenance, which often requires multiple planning activities for a complete track. Maintenance planner offers planning for complete system tracks (like DEV – QAS – PRD) to lower overall planning efforts.
      Integrated correction of erroneous system information in the planning process

      Incorrect system information about installed products has been a frequent source of error while planning maintenance activities. Maintenance Planner validates the system information as a first step in the planning process. It guides you through a dialog based process to correct the system information as part of the maintenance activity if necessary.
      Streamlined  planning of new installations at desired target stack level

      Maintenance Planner significantly simplifies the installation process by eliminating the steps of system registration and a separate system update planning during installation. With Maintenance Planner, the target state of a system can be planned and downloaded in one step so that the overall installation process will be simplified, accelerated and less error-prone.
      Operational  ease

      The Maintenance Planner is hosted by SAP, it only requires a browser to access the tool.
      The Maintenance process with Maintenance Planner:

      

      Figure 3 – the maintenance process with the Maintenance Planner: System data is uploaded to the Customer Profile via SLD and LMDB; in the Maintenance Planner changes are defined and stack.xml and download basket are prepared. Consuming tools are Software Provisioning Manager Software (SWPM), Update Manager (SUM). etc. and the Scope & Effort Analyzer as of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 consume maintenance transactions from the Maintenance Planner.

      Getting started

      1. Ensure that you have an s-user for the SAP Service Marketplace (SMP).
      2. To ensure availability of your company’s landscape data in Maintenance Planner, follow the steps described in the blog Maintenance Planner – Prerequisites and Initial Setup.
      3. Access the Maintenance Planner with your s-user.

      Learn more

      Documentation

      • A User Guide can be accessed from the home screen of Maintenance Planner.
      • Maintenance Planner Release Highlights
      • Please refer SAP Note 2174410 for the list of Maintenance Planner limitations.
      • Maintenance Planner FAQs.
      • For the big picture of the Maintenance Planner and related tools, see Landscape Management @ the SCN
      • To see how to work with the Maintenance Planner in a concrete planning process end-to-end, see Planning Landscape Changes  – a Best Practices Guide

      Demos and Presentations

      • Watch a replay of an SAP TechEd 2015 session.
      • Watch a replay of an SAP TechEd 2016 session.
      • To learn about SAP Fiori installation with Maintenance Planner see blog and video of SAP Fiori Apps Reference Library Integration with the  Maintenance Planner .
      • SAP TechEd Live 2017 Interview

      Prerequisites for the Use of the Maintenance Planner

      To learn about handling data required by the Maintenance Planner, see

      • Data and Topology of SLD, LMDB, and Customer Profile – How to Get Reliable Landscape Data in SAP Support Portal as a Basis for Planning
      • Uploading, Accessing, and Trouble-Shooting System Data in the Customer Profile Used for Planning Changes in Your IT Landscape
      • House-Keeping in the Customer Profile Data Used by the Maintenance Planner
      • Required SAP NW Version of the Source SLD for LMDB in SAP Solution Manager 7.2 & Options to Get there

       Maintenance Planner and Landscape Entities & Verification

      Maintenance Planner offers maintenance dependencies as a successor of product systems – learn about scenarios of using one or the other in

      • Product Systems and Maintenance Planner in SAP Solution Manager 7.1
      • Landscape Entities & Maintenance Planner in SAP Solution Manager 7.2 
        

      When interested in checking landscape data, have a look at: Verification in the Maintenance Planner – Part I: Principle and Evolution and Verification in the Maintenance Planner – Part II: How-to & Examples

       

      We’d like to hear from you

      Propose new features or suggest enhancements to existing features by collaborating on ideas for new features in SAP Idea Place, the public channel to participate in innovation at SAP. Maintenance Planner belongs to the idea session Software Logistics, category: Maintenance and upgrade management. Submit new ideas, vote for existing ideas and connect directly with the team at SAP!