When evaluating SAP ECS Roles and Responsibilities for SAP RISE and ERP Cloud Private Editions, you will see a very generous allowance for system copies. Up to 12 copies per year per SID. Given that most SAP teams struggle to complete system refreshes annually, this seems like an extraordinary allowance.
However, a system copy is not a system refresh. In fact, the system copy itself is the easy part.
The pre-copy preparation and post-copy remediation tasks, the actual refresh tasks, are still owned by the customer.
A reliable refresh begins before the actual system copy.
Confirming source and target compatibility, capacity, and availability; noting what needs to be preserved; stopping or isolating jobs and interfaces; and deciding how to protect production data in the target are, for the most part, still the customer's responsibility.
Before ECS, everything was straightforward.
The internal or outsourced basis team owned all the tasks and understood the systems well. In an ECS environment, this changes. These tasks are shared, and it needs to be clear who owns each element and who approves what before the copy starts.
Without this preparation, missing settings and privacy issues are discovered only after the copy. That’s when the disruption happens.
The copy phase is the easy part. It simply duplicates the database and copies up-to-date data into the target systems. It is essential, but it is only the middle of the process.
Previously performed internally or by a managed service provider, SAP ECS now owns and performs this part. That makes it a little more complicated.
Careful coordination, scheduling the service request, and being on hand has complicated things.
Still, the customer owns the process and the outcome.
Once the copy is complete, it's back to the internal team to bring the copied system to its previous state.
This is where the real work takes place.
It’s time-intensive and arduous and requires focus because this is the step where errors and missteps usually occur.
Things like BDLS conversion tasks, removing imported RFC destinations and interfaces, reimporting transports in progress, and reinstating users are all areas where mistakes can be made.
The customer still owns all of this.
System refreshes depend on long runbooks, specialist memory and sometimes weeks of elapsed effort.
Unfortunately, ECS providing the system copy changes none of it. The customer remains responsible.
This is where automation tools like Libelle SystemCopy come into play. Automation and orchestration of pre- and post-processing around the copy of typical activities such as BDLS handling, preservation and restoration of target settings, as controlled, repeatable workflows minimise manual effort and provide a more consistent system refresh
When combined with the ECS system copy work, system refresh automation can reduce time and effort and improve quality whilst bringing much of the process back under internal control.