SAP on IBM i: Database Migration Option with target S/4HANA 1909 and beyond

The SAP Software Logistics Toolset 1.0 SPS 28 was released on January 20^th, 2020. This toolset also includes the component SAP Software Update Manager 2.0 SP07 (SUM 2.0 SP07), which allows to run SAP system maintenance operations, such as applying support package stacks for SAP systems based on SAP NetWeaver 7.5, or to run system upgrades to products based on NW 7.5 and beyond. This SUM version also includes the support of the Database Migration Option (DMO) to upgrade and convert an SAP system running on the database IBM Db2 for i to SAP S/4HANA.

For the conversion to target release SAP S/4HANA 1909, the usage of the SUM tool has been changed. For this target release, IBM i and several other operating systems are no longer supported as platform for application servers. SAP Note 2620910 has more details on supported application server operating systems for SAP S/4HANA. During the DMO process, you need an application server that can connect to both the source and the target database. With IBM i Db2 for i as source system and S/4HANA 1909 as target system, this can only be a Windows application server. In the past, however, upgrades on IBM Db2 for i were only supported to run on the primary application server, which had to run on the operating system IBM i. To overcome this limitation, the SAP on IBM i Development team has introduced a SUM 2.0 version that runs on a Windows application server. With this SUM version based on Windows, the DMO feature of the SUM tool will be enabled for SAP systems running on the IBM i platform, while all other features of the SUM tool based for this platform are still covered by the IBM i version of SUM 2.0.

With the initial release of SL Toolset 1.0 SPS 28, we did not support this DMO conversion based on Windows application servers because we encountered problems with IBM i NetServer in our internal tests. The limitation was documented in SAP Note 2849497 (IBM i: Additional information – Software Update Manager 2.0 SP07). Meanwhile, the root cause of the problem has been found and fixed with the following PTFs:

IBM i 7.2: MF67060

IBM i 7.3: MF67061

IBM i 7.4: MF67062

In order to enable a correct SUM procedure with regards to the Database Migration Option, you are advised to install the corresponding PTF for the IBM i release of your IBM i machine before the SUM starts. In addition, we always recommend keeping your IBM i operating system up to date, as requested by the SAP Support Required PTF Lists. For details, see also our former blog post from March 10^th, 2020 about it.