IT Performance Reporting vs. Interactive Reporting: usage rights

[Former Member]

Hello!

A very interesting point I just found out by reading the help site of SAP:
http://help.sap.com/saphelp_sm71_sp08/helpdata/en/45/51fbdbd4941803e10000000a1553f7/frameset.htm

Following the statement that E2E MAI is only available for customers with enterprise support and that IT Performance Reporting can be also used for standard support customers there can be a license problem for customers with standard support by activation of IT Performance Reporting.

With SAP Solution Manager 7.1, the new work center Technical Monitoring is also available, which is no longer based on the Computing Center Management System (CCMS) as its monitoring infrastructure, but rather on the Monitoring & Alerting Infrastructure (MAI). This work center also has new reporting (see Interactive Reporting). We recommend that you now only use the IT Performance Reporting in the System Monitoring work center if you have already set up central monitoring based on the CCMS and do not want to use the new MAI.

The system reports of interactive reporting are still available to you with SAP Solution Manager in IT Performance Reporting, even if the provision of the data is still based on the CCMS.

All the web templates/queries of IT Performance Reporting within Solution Manager 7.1 are part of work center Technical Monitoring and following E2E MAI.

Question:

Can customers with standard support activate the IT Performance Reporting within Solution Manager 7.1?

[bxiv]

I can access IT Performance Reporting under the System Monitoring work center; I can also confirm that  have done nothing in the way of CCMS and there is information populating the graphs/charts/tables.

[Former Member]

Hello Billy,

thank you for your update.

The question still is:

Can customers with standard support activate the IT Performance Reporting within Solution Manager 7.1?

[bxiv]

I have Ent support; I don't think SAP does 'standard support' any longer.  The link below has a picture with the 3 levels of support, my company doesn't pay money for SAP employees to visit to help with issues, and we certainly don't have Max Attention.

Source:

http://service.sap.com/supportofferings

[Former Member]

Hello!

Many thanks!

Because Solution Manager is a central management solution you will usually connect several systems to Solution Manager.

Let's assume you act as service provider with standard support customers and enterprise customers as well.

And now who can say which usage rights do you have and which functions can you activate?

[bxiv]

I would offer two suggestions:

1. Restrict access to the portions of SolMan that your customer can't use, due to having the wrong support contracts.  If you don't add the system monitoring work center to their roles, then they can't even reach the performance reporting.  Going along these same lines you should already have restrictions in place to prevent one customer from viewing another's system data.
2. Contact SAP with an OSS message and get an official ruling/documentation on how this scenario would work.

[Former Member]

Hello!

All our customers neither have user (SU01) to access to our Solution Manager not have a VPN/SAP GUI access to our Solution Manager.  

But the question still:

whether or not a partner with Enterprise Support can use Solution Manager for own purpose (E2E MAI) having mixed customers (with standard and enterprise support)?

[bxiv]

Understood, along those same restrictions on the customers, you can restrict what data is displayed from the various cubes in the work centers.

So you either need to develop additional security to only display data that a customer is licensed to be viewing; or you need to talk with SAP and have them provide the guideline(s).

There is no technical way (that I'm aware of) to only collect certain data from SAP systems, based on a customer's support level; the SMD agents are just going to forward information to the Solution Manager that has been defined.

[Former Member]

Hello!

Thank you!

Once again we do not need to provide Solution Manager functions to our customers, but use Solution Manager for our purpose.

The question is:

Do we have with approach (mixed customer landscape enterprise and standard support customers)

any restictions by usage of E2E MAI/Technical Monitoring?

[bxiv]

You should contact SAP with these questions.

[TomCenens]

Hi Alex

Billy is right, check with SAP.

Basic rule:

E2E MAI/Technical Monitoring is only allowed support contract wise for customers with Enterprise Support.

If you want to host SolMan for multiple customers, certain rules & limitation exist. SAP has separate content (presentations) on the supported scenarios etc.

Best regards

Tom

[Former Member]

Hello Tom!

Many thanks!

Is it right that if you are service provider you cannot integrate customer systems for ccms monitoring centrally in own Solution Manager system?

Where can we get information regarding this?

[TomCenens]

Hi Alex

Don't pin me on this but if I recall correctly, monitoring scenario is not supported in VAR scenario.

One of the main problems for such scenarios for multiple customers is the ability to separate everything out. A lot of scenarios are not (yet?) build in this fashion.

Matthias Melich of SAP can definitely connect you to the correct person(s).

https://websmp109.sap-ag.de/solutionmanager - usage rights has some information but not enough for what you are asking.

Best regards

Tom

[Former Member]

Hello Tom,

many thanks!

We do not want to set up system monitoring as a part of VAR in same Solution Manager.

We have a separate Solution Manager, where there is no access of several customers into this Solution Manager.

In this Solution Manager we would like to set up central monitoring (CCMS) for all the customer systems.

Is it not allowed to to this in one client of Solution Manager?

Which status should we have in order to to this?

[bxiv]

Contact SAP.

[Former Member]

Sorry, but I cannot imagine that such simple question cannot be answered in this forum.

Situation

You have your own SAP systems. Futhermore you are able as a SAP partner to sell the SAP licenses to the customers with Enterprise and standard support.

Now you are considering to set up central monitoring function (CCMS) for all the SAP systems within your own Solution manager system

Question

Is it allowed to integrate all the sap systems (own and customers) into one Solution Manager and ONE client in order to provide CCMS monitoring?

Or in this case is only allowed to use own Solution Manager for each customer?

[TomCenens]

Hi Alex

Lemme recap to get this right:

You have multiple customers or you host for multiple customers and you want to monitor them with one Solution Manager.

This shouldn't be a problem. The only thing you have to think about is how this works license wise if they have a combination of standard vs enterprise.

CCMS would be allowed in both cases but of course CCMS is the "old way" and it's not exactly clear what SAP will do in the future so the question then becomes do you want to setup CCMS now and risk it will be "end of maintenance" in the next (or one of the next) SAP Solution Manager versions?

I know of a SAP partner who does hosting for customers and who monitor all the customers through a single SAP Solution Manager instance using CCMS so it's definitely being done elsewhere, yes.

Best regards

Tom

[Former Member]

Hello Tom,

I also thought so, until I read the information on service.sap.com/solutionmanager and have seen the following picture:

It seems that the situation for service provider/hosting partners has been changed?!

So in order to roll out the ccms-based monitoring for all the customers you have to install a separate Solution Manager for each customer.

Is it possible to check this information with SAP?

[TomCenens]

Hi Alex

Feel free to check this, I gave the correct contact person already earlier on .

It really depends on the situation as I mentioned already before.

The screenshot is definitely "best practice" as told by SAP. Why? Because they assume customers will want to access SAP Solution Manager and at the moment only a few scenario's (note the limited SAP Solution Manager processes enabled on the VAR scenario) are available which support per customer access / seperation of data / security.

CCMS is not one of those scenarios nor is Technical Monitoring which means there is no clear separation by customer number.

Is that a problem? Maybe not. For legal reasons you really have to check with SAP.

I know of at least one hosting company that does monitoring for all customers (who have separate customer numbers) through one SAP Solution Manager.

Best regards

Tom

[Former Member]

Hello Tom,

I know of at least one hosting company that does monitoring for all customers (who have separate customer numbers) through one SAP Solution Manager.

The question is whether or not this is allowed or not and perhaps there was some changes since last months/years?

According to the slides of SAP independent of usage (own/customer) and access (no access/access for all customers) system monitoring will not be mentioned...