Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 2021 – What to Expect and L...

mpranathivarma · ‎01-12-2022

Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 2021 – What to Expect and Lessons Learned

This blog post provides information on what it takes to perform the S/4HANA 2021 upgrade based on our experience with it.

What to expect?

Pre-upgrade tasks

Issues faced during different phases of the upgrade

Important SAP Notes to be considered

Pre-Upgrade Steps

1. Planning the upgrade in the Maintenance Planner

Maintenance Planner is a cloud-based tool from SAP which simplifies the effective planning of overall changes in an SAP system landscape. The tool will help in performing several checks and help in analyzing the impact in addition to calculating the required files which are to be downloaded for carrying out the upgrade. While the preparation for the upgrade is done through Maintenance Planner, the actual upgrade is performed using Software Update Manager (SUM). The Maintenance Planner will scan the source system for Add-Ons and Business Functions. To get accurate results from Maintenance planner, one must make sure their SAP S/4HANA system is updated in the SAP Solution Manager LMDB and the system details are pushed to the SAP Maintenance Planner correctly.

Source system version used for this upgrade: S/4HANA 2020 FPS 01.

Fig. 1 Maintenance Planner

Fig. 2 Maintenance Planner - Selecting Components

Fig. 3 Maintenance Planner - Target Software Details

Fig. 4 Maintenance Planner - Upgrade warnings about Add-ons

Fig. 5 Maintenance Planner - OS/DB file selection

Fig. 6 Maintenance Planner - Download overview

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

We must make sure that the attribute change packages are included and downloaded, too.

2. SAP S/4HANA – Simplification Item Check

The Simplification Item Check (SI-check) is performed prior to the upgrade. It helps in assessing the functional and technical impact of the upgrade by doing a relevance check on the simplification items which are specific and unique to each SAP system. SI-check also identifies data inconsistencies or missing mandatory preparation activities which can result in a failed upgrade or conversion. With the help of this, one can be privy to the issues which need to be fixed before the upgrade. One can also use the “exempt” option to ignore the checks. The report /SDF/RC_START_CHECK and an associated check framework are included in the Simplification Item Check.

Fig. 7 Simplification Item Check

Fig. 8 Inconsistencies about SI checks

Fig. 9 Inconsistencies about SI checks - Check consistency for all

Fig. 10 Output of Consistency check

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

In case there is an error, the applicable development team should be contacted to fix them.

Add-on uninstallation/masking

Before the upgrade procedure, we must check if the installed add-ons are compatible with SAP S/4HANA.

At the beginning of the upgrade, we reached out to SAP for masking add-ons by attaching the system information xml.

Fig. 11 Stack XML generation in SPAM or SAINT transaction

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

SAP indicated that they don’t mask add-ons anymore; instead, they shared some insights strictly based upon our system components which can be found below:

1.) SAP-Standard Add-Ons supported for 2021:

AIFGEN (version: 700)

ARBCI1 (version: 10S)

ARBCI2 (version: 10S)

ARBCIGR (version: 10S)

IBPIECC (version: 110)

IBPIFND (version: 110)

MRSS (version: V2000; Product Instance: SAP MRS FOR S4HANA 1.0-SAP MULTIRES Sched for ERP_NW)

MRSS (version: V2000; Product Instance: SAP MRS FOR S4HANA 1.0-MRSS NW UI5 GANTT)

MRSS_UI5 (version: V2000; Product Instance: SAP MRS FOR S4HANA 1.0-SAP MultiRes Sched for UI)

MRSS_UI5GT (version: V2000; Product Instance: SAP MRS FOR S4HANA 1.0-MRSS NW UI5 GANTT)

NXI (version: 300)

SAP_UI (version: 755)

UIAPFI70 (version: 800)

UIBAS001 (version: 600)

UIHR001 (version: 100)

UIHR002 (version: 100)

UIILM001 (version: 100)

UIMDC001 (version: 200)

UIMDG001 (version: 200)

UIS4HOP1 (version: 600)

UITRV001 (version: 300)

To-do from our end: nothing. Via the program, we received a successor of these add-ons.

2.) 3rd Party Add-Ons / own developments:

PALAGENT (version: 200)

PALANTIR (version: 200)

PALCONN (version: 200)

To-do from our end - SAP gave the following options (went with option 1):

1.) Uninstallation via SAINT before the upgrade.

Prerequisite: an uninstallation routine is provided by the 3rd Party vendor.

2.) Add-On that can be used during the upgrade phase.

Prerequisite: Get a confirmation from the 3rd Party vendor and a workaround to handle this Add-On during the upgrade of the system.

After handling all 3rd party Add-Ons, SAP recommends uploading these changes via LMDB refresh.

To have no Add-On related issues during the upgrade, please do not install any additional Add-Ons before the upgrade phases.

SAP Help – SAP Add-On Installation Tool

Download upgrade tool

We downloaded and used SUM 2.0 SP 12 with the “downtime minimized” option.

3024369 - Central Note - Software Update Manager 2.0 SP12 [lmt_020]

Issues faced during the upgrade

Following are the issues we encountered during various phases of the upgrade along with their respective fixes.

Pre-Upgrade

Issue: Issues with add-ons like PAPM, BI_CONT, BI_CONTX were encountered while generating stack through maintenance planner

Resolution: Resolved by SAP and released compatible add-ons for release, they were added to the stack post which we could proceed with upgrade.

Extraction Phase:

Issue: Error “Unsupported DVD kit ID” in extraction phase.

Fig. 12 SUM Errors during Extraction Phase

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Started the sapinst service from UNIX end using command systemctl start sapinit.service.

Configuration Phase:

Issue: Error “Road map step configuration did not complete successfully” in Configuration phase.

Fig. 13 SUM Checks phase - SAP notes to be implemented

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Implement the missing SAP notes pointed out.

Issue: Execution of SET_LM_SEMAPHORE aborted with rc5, or at least one semaphore for another system id and/or client range exists.

Resolution: Delete the record(s) of old system from table ‘LMSEMAPHORE’. This only happens if the system you are upgrading is a copy of another (source) system where SPAM/SAINT queue was not confirmed before the system copy.

Checks Phase:

Issue: Faced issue in CHECKS phase where SDM had unfinished migrations.

Resolution: reference note: “2691264 - SDM: Unfinished uptime migrations exist before upgrade starts” was followed, executed report "R_SDM_ONLINE_EXEC", and manually ran SDM migration classes in all the respective clients.

Issue: Error “Road map step checks did not complete successfully” in checks phase.

Fig. 14 SUM Checks Phase Errors

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Fig. 15 Error Logs related to Fig. 14

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Note down the prerequisites from SDM_MON t-code and make sure to manually execute these classes as FINISHED F or P as a result to fix these errors.

Pre-Processing Phase:

Issue: Dumped error in "MAIN_SHDRUN/SUBMOD_DIFFEXP/DIFFEXPTABU_IPL" preprocessing phase where tool was looking for HI and VI languages in the system.

Error Screenshot:

Fig. 16 Preprocessing Phase warning

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Added the missing Languages HI and VI in the i18n configuration via RSCPINST report (just added the language and activated if not installed).

Step 1: Add the language from “Add Language”.

Step 2: Activate the languages.

Fig. 17 Resolution to the issue

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Issue: Faced issue in "MAIN_SHDRUN/PARDIST_SHD" preprocessing phase with an error of SLT triggers doesn't comply.

Fig. 18 Preprocessing Phase Errors

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Deleted the triggers from HANA studio.

Issue: Ariba objects found without a delivery transport found in Pre-processing phase.

Resolution: Reference note: 2853818 - Ariba objects found without delivery transport during RUN_RSUPG_TADIR_COMPONENT_CHECK was followed.

Execution Phase

Issue: Faced issue in "MAIN_NEWBAS/TABIM_UPG" Execution phase where there was incomplete output of show buffer.

Fig. 19 Execution Phase Errors

*These screenshots are taken from our execution of the upgrade in our internal environment.

Resolution: Made an adjustment to the original buffer, unzipped, and place a zip file in the buffer directory as suggested by SAP.

Post-Processing Phase

There were no errors in the post-processing phase.

Important SAP Notes for SAP S/4 HANA 2021 – Overview