HowTo – Migrate SAP MDM 5.5 repositories to SAP MDM 7.1

As most of us know that SAP MDM 5.5 has already gone out of extended maintenance but we can still find customers who are running on this older version or are planning to upgrade & migrate to latest available release.

Here below, with an example of migration of SAP MDM 5.5 to SAP MDM 7.1, I will try to consolidate the associated technical How-To process from BASIS standpoint.

As with SAP MDM 7.1, underlying architecture of SAP MDM instance is totally changed, for example, on windows environment, now you will not see MDM installation under C:\ProgramFiles~\ SAP MDM 5.5\, instead all the new installations follow the standard SAP architecture i.e. /usr/sap/<sid>/., thus, in place upgrade of existing MDM 5.5 is no longer possible, instead the process would be:

1. Install fresh SAP MDM 7.1 with latest support pack stack
2. Install required MDM frontend clients of same version
3. Complete the basic post-installation configurations like DBMS settings & SLD connection
4. Stop/Unmount & Archive repositories of SAP MDM 5.5
5. Copy the archived repositories to SAP MDM 7.1 archive directory
6. Unarchive repositories in SAP MDM 7.1
7. Update the repositories
8. Verify & Repair the updated repositories
9. Start the repository using “update indices” option for the first time
10. Check the connection & accessibility of repository in SAP MDM 7.1

See an underlying example of migration of SAP MDM 5.5 to SAP MDM 7.1 delicately installed and used for SRM-MDM Catalog only:

Target SAP MDM 7.1 can be installed using MDM Installation Master. Installer follow the similar path as it does for normal SAP Application server installation & asks for multiple inputs like <sid>, DBMS name, path to software media etc.

Once the target skeleton build is complete and all post installation activities like installation of front-end components, SLD registration, DBMS connect settings are done,

next step is to copy backup of archived repositories of old MDM to new MDM Archive directory location.

Correct directory location can be found from parameter ‘Archive Dir’ in MDS profile.

After this, Next step is to Unarchive Repository using MDM console.

Unarchived repository starts appearing in console with Outdated status. So, in next step Update of repository is performed.

Once update is successful, next step is to Verify & Repair the repository. An automatic repair is performed by the MDM server which ends up giving a complete log of actions performed.

Verification & Repair gives a total count of errors corrected & you can manually choose to display a complete log of same.

The fatal errors which cannot be repaired automatically, must be repaired manually. Check the repair log to get exact details of errors.

After Update & Repair, first start of MDM repository should always be done using Update Indices option.

Using Update Indices option takes some time to start the repository. Once it is started successfully, connectivity can be tested using client tools & system can be handed over to function team for further testing.

I hope this will enable some of you to migrate successfully or at least make a draft plan of how to do it. There is always a scope of improvement, please feel free to share your experience or known errors you faced during the process.