Procedures for Managing Your
System 
Purpose
To maintain a high level of availability for your SAP system, you must have formalized procedures in place covering the full range of operational issues. The more complex the system, the more important this becomes. Without such procedures, the management of your data center becomes very difficult to coordinate, resulting in more chance of errors and therefore reduced system availability.
It is not the aim of this documentation to advise you exactly how to define management procedures at your site, because this depends on the particular aspects of your setup.
Process Flow
...
1. You establish service level agreements between the departments responsible for the system so that the required availability is guaranteed.
2. You define procedures to follow in the event of failure, including escalation management, and make sure that key technical staff approve the plans and know how to implement them.
3. You test your procedures at regular intervals.
Pay special attention to complex procedures for managing failures, for example, with switchover software. If your system is growing rapidly, adapt test procedures that are sensitive to complexity and volume, for example, database recovery.
4. You consider setting up a dedicated test environment.
The test environment should match the live environment as closely as possible. In the test environment, you can simulate failures that you have identified as likely or that have critical effects on the system.
5. You document essential aspects of the system and establish procedures for updating the documentation. Be sure to also log failures and problems so that mistakes are not repeated.
6. You define adequate procedures for the following system areas:
Procedures for Managing Your System
System Area |
More Information |
SAP NetWeaver Application Server |
SAP NetWeaver Application Server: High Availability |
Change management |
– |
System upgrade (SAP) |
|
System failure (SAP) |
System Failure (SAP NetWeaver AS) |
Archiving (SAP) |
|
Cluster administration |
|
System monitoring and tuning |
|
Database administration (backup, upgrades, monitoring/tuning) |
|
Database failure |
|
Database - SAP connection failure |
|
Disaster recovery |
|
Network |
|
Fault reporting with follow-up |
– |
Switchover |
|
System load assessment for mission-critical applications |
– |