Technical Details of the CTS Plug-In
The CTS plug-in is an add-on that installs the software component CTS_PLUG on SAP systems. This classifies the SAP system as a CTS server. You can find details on the installation and supported SAP releases in SAP Note 1665940
.
The CTS plug-in (software component CTS_PLUG) contains the following further plug-ins:
CTS Service plug-in
This plug-in contains CTS functions that are required in the managed systems. This includes central CTS functions as well as functions required for downgrade protection checks in Change Control Management of SAP Solution Manager.
The CTS Service plug-in is release-dependent. There is one CTS Service plug-in for each SAP NetWeaver release. For an overview of supported releases, refer to SAP Note 1665940
.CTS Bootstrapper plug-in
This plug-in contains functions that are required to activate the CTS Service plug-ins on the managed systems.
The CTS Bootstrapper plug-in is release-independent.
From a technical point of view, the CTS plug-ins are transport requests. When the CTS plug-in (software component CTS_PLUG) is installed in an SAP system, the CTS Service plug-ins and the CTS Bootstrapper plug-in are extracted to the transport directory. They can be distributed from the CTS server to the managed systems. Distributing the plug-in means importing the transport requests in the managed systems.
CTS Service plug-ins are independent of the SAP NetWeaver Support Package level. Therefore, they can always be installed in a system with a minimum Support Package level of the software component SAP_BASIS. When the transport request of the CTS Service plug-in is imported in the managed system, the transport request of the CTS Bootstrapper plug-in is also imported.
These characteristics enable the CTS Service and Bootstrapper plug-ins to be installed at any time, even during production operation. In particular, no system restart is necessary and there are no constraints concerning production usage. In this way, you can use the current SAP technology in SAP systems without the need to update all managed systems to the current Support Package level. You can update the managed systems in the maintenance cycles that you are used to.
Figure: Distribution of CTS plug-ins to managed systems
The graphic illustrates the plug-in distribution process.
The CTS server asks the managed system if the CTS Service and the Bootstrapper plug-ins are available and in which version.
The managed system returns the required information.
If the CTS Service or Bootstrapper plug-ins need to be updated, you can trigger the distribution from the CTS server to the managed system.
NoteThe system compares the versions of the CTS Service and Bootstrapper plug-ins on the managed systems with the versions available in the transport directory of the CTS server. It does not check for versions of the CTS plug-in that are available on SAP Support Portal.
End of the note. NoteIf the managed systems are not part of the SAP Solution Manager transport domain or if they are not linked to the SAP Solution Manager domain with a domain link, you must initially import the CTS Bootstrapper plug-in manually in the managed systems. Afterwards, you can automatically distribute the CTS plug-ins.
For more information, see SAP Note 1688276
.End of the note.
Updates to the CTS Plug-In
To import updates or corrections to the CTS server (SAP Solution Manager), you must import the relevant SAP NetWeaver Support Packages, or implement the relevant SAP Note corrections into SAP Solution Manager.
To import corrections that are required on the managed systems, you must import the relevant Support Packages for the CTS plug-in into SAP Solution Manager and distribute the CTS plug-ins to the managed systems. For an overview of the Support Packages available for the CTS plug-in, refer to SAP Note 1665940.