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Author's profile photo Boris Rubarth

“DMO to Azure”: combine SAP S/4HANA conversion with the move to Azure (without “DMO with System Move”)

Update June 09 2023:

Check out the new blog on DMOVE2S4 (formerly named “DMO to Azure”):

Two Major News with SUM 2.0 SP 17 | SAP Blogs

You plan the conversion of your on-premise SAP ERP system (running on non – SAP HANA database) to SAP S/4HANA, and consider to combine the conversion with the move to Microsoft Azure. Instead of using the well-known “DMO with system move”, you want to evaluate the usage of plain DMO, as it may result in shorter downtime. Let us know about your project to evaluate if “DMO to Azure” would work. The respective restriction in the SAP Note on DMO, e.g. SAP Note 3070443 for DMO with SUM 2.0 SP 12 (~”do not use DMO for a data center move”) is not relevant for your project then.

Combining System Conversion with the move to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS)

More and more projects plan to combine the conversion of their SAP ECC system to SAP S/4HANA with the move to a hyperscaler like Microsoft Azure. For source systems on non – SAP HANA database, “DMO with system move” is an established approach for this scenario. Nevertheless, it comes with more complexity and only limited options to reduce the downtime. The plain DMO approach was so far not recommended due to potential issues like latency.

Migration technology evolved

Meanwhile the migration procedure of the Software Update Manager (SUM) was adapted in a way that the shadow repository is always directly created on the target SAP HANA database. SUM will no longer create it on the source database first and then migrate it to the target database. This simplification reduces the communication roundtrips and raised the idea of using plain DMO for the described move scenario. In a joined effort, colleagues from Microsoft and SAP evaluated the idea, tested it with a variety of systems and parameters, and now came up with a whitepaper describing the approach “DMO to Azure”. [Converting from SAP ERP on Premise to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure] In addition, you should consider viewing SAP TechEd 2021 session DT201 on this topic [TechEd 2021 (sap.com), registration required].

DMO%20to%20Azure

DMO to Azure

Test “DMO to Azure” with our support

If your project plans the scenario of a combined conversion with move to Azure, let us jointly evaluate if “DMO to Azure” can be a valid approach for you. We are looking for systems up to 5 TB size, running on non – SAP HANA database, targeting SAP S/4HANA 2020 (or higher). We can’t guarantee to meet specific downtime expectations, but you get direct support from SAP and Microsoft for the specific conversion run. Contact us by creating an incident as described in the respective SAP Note for DMO with SUM 2.0 (see support.sap.com/sltoolset for actual SAP Note).

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      Author's profile photo Giovanni Angelo Alfonso Longobardi
      Giovanni Angelo Alfonso Longobardi

      Hi Boris,

      thanks for sharing your knowledge!
      Btw, is this scenario on Azure only? Other Cloud Providers?

      Regards,

      Giovanni

      Author's profile photo Boris Rubarth
      Boris Rubarth
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Giovanni,

      actually this article is focusing on Azure. If you read the respective paragraph in SAP Note 3070443, it is not specific to Azure, but the detailed (and excellent) instructions of the whitepaper are only available for targeting MS Azure.

      Regards, Boris

      Author's profile photo AMIT Lal
      AMIT Lal

      Hi Boris,

      This is an excellent whitepaper, targeting our SAP on Azure customers. Thanks for sharing!

      Question - Just wondering "DMO to Azure" is restricted to the SAP S/4HANA project only or BW/4HANA and NW 7.5x are also in the run for the future? 

      Best Regards,
      Amit Lal

      Author's profile photo Takayuki Hoshino
      Takayuki Hoshino

      Hi Amit, I am responding to this on Boris' behalf, as I think others may have a similar question. As stated in note 3070433, DMO can be used for the following systems including BW.

      • SAP BW system
      • SAP for Banking system
      • SAP Business Suite system
      • SAP NetWeaver ABAP stack based system
      Author's profile photo Boris Rubarth
      Boris Rubarth
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Amit,

      sorry that I overlooked your question: the approach is only supported for targeting SAP S/4HANA.

      Best regards,
      Boris

      Author's profile photo Yong-Wook Kim
      Yong-Wook Kim

      Hi Boris,

       

      First, Thank you for your continued blogging about S/4HANA conversion.

      I wonder if direct DMO (without system move option) is possible even in PCE environment (Infra : MS Azure).

      Source DB Size : 4TB

      Please check if possible.

       

      Best Regards,

      Yongwook Kim

       

       

      Author's profile photo Boris Rubarth
      Boris Rubarth
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yongwook Kim,

      in general I can imagine that works as well, may depend on the actual landscape / network setup.

      Best regards, Boris

      Author's profile photo Kapil Joshi
      Kapil Joshi

      The SAP Note 3070443 seems not available anymore, is there a replacement note available?

      Author's profile photo Boris Rubarth
      Boris Rubarth
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Kapil,

      thanks for asking. The landing page of the SL Toolset (support.sap.com/sltoolset) always lists the current SAP Notes for SUM and DMO. For DMO with SUM 2.0 SP 14, it is SAP Note 3126581.

      Regards, Boris