Friday, March 5, 2010

Re-importing a SPAM/SAINT Support Package

Due to errors, because you want to roll-back to any SPAM version, or just because SAP Support has requested you to do so; you can implement the following workaround to re-import a current (or older!) SPAM/SAINT update to your system.


Procedure:

1- Call transaction SEPS --> Goto --> Inbox, and order by column Subject. Search for all the SAPKD* packages (for example SAPKD70026).

2- Take note of all the .PAT files associated to the SPAM packages and make a backup copy of these files.

3- Go back to SEPS --> Goto --> Inbox, and order by colum Subject. Select all entries with status C or N, and delete them (this will also delete the .PAT files in the EPS/in directory).

4- After that you can upload the desired SPAM package you want to import to the EPS/in directory, either through front-end (tx SPAM), or through backend (SAPCAR).

5- Import the SPAM update: tx SPAM --> Import SPAM/SAINT Update


This procedure might be useful to other components (though i never tried it), but please keep in mind that is very dangerous!!! To re-import other component Support Packages, you should ask SAP Support.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Hardware Handling for SAP/SQL Server 2008

Here is an updated document of the Best Practices (including hardware design) of SQL Server 2008 implementation for SAP.

Most of the design foundations are applicable by logic to any other Database platform, excluding of course, specific SQLServer configuration.

I highly recommend its reading:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/9/4/d948f981-926e-40fa-a026-5bfcf076d9b9/SAP_SQL2008_Best%20Practices_Part_I.docx

For us, IT guys (and girls), I suggest you pay big attention to:

- Hardware selection (page 27)
- Installation and configuration (page 32)
- SQL Server on NUMA (page 56)
- Transparent Database Encryption (page 75)
- Windows Server specific configurations (page 95)

If you are new to SAP, or are just a DBA in your organization, I also suggest reading the introductory part of the document (What is SAP / How does SAP interact with SQL Server)

Limited SAP ORACLE support for VMWare

A few months ago, SAP did not support ORACLE under a VMWare enviroment.
Now the support has increased a bit, but still with the following limitations:

- Only version 10.2.0.4 or higher (no 9.x, no 10.2.0.2)
- Only single instance (no RAC support)
- If you plan to virtualize your SAP/Oracle system under Microsoft platform, the minimun version supported is Windows Server 2008.
- When opening an OSS message, you have clearly state that this system runs under VMWare.


Note the following:

"If the problem is determined not to be a known Oracle issue, the problem will be forwarded to VMware for support. When the customer can demonstrate that the issue occurs when running on the native OS, Oracle will resume support."

Check OSS Note 1173954 for more information