Upgrade planning for an entire landscape

[Former Member]

Hi,

I have done many upgrades, but they were all for CRM systems (without Java). And there was only 1 system to be upgraded. The accompanying BW system just had to undergo patching.

But now, I am faced with a situation where I am asked to plan for upgrade of systems which are part of a landscape. In the landscape, there are R/3 systems, XI systems, Portals, etc. Now, the doubt that I have is, it was simple to upgrade just 1 system, but in this landscape, how do I plan my upgrade? Do I need to upgrade the XI, Portal systems also? Do these systems need to be upgraded at the same time as any 1 R3 system?

Basically what I am asking is this: When faced with a complex landscape containing numerous solutions like XI, EP, etc, how do we go about planning/doing the upgrade?

Please help me with this. This is a generic question and not really version specific.

Thanks and Regards,

Shitij Bagga.

[former_member194360 · Accepted solution]

Hi Shitij Bagga

I would recommend you, to read the Upgrade and/or Master Guide for the application, which you intend to install/ upgrade (http://service.sap.com/instguides).

In the SAP ERP Guides for instance, can you find different system landscapes, and the corresponding installation or upgrade steps. Which systems you actually need to touch in your system landscapes, can not be said generally. The Master/ Upgrade Guides thus provide you with planning aid.

After you know, which systems you need to touch, you use installation- or upgrade guides to actually perform installation/ upgrade.

The answer to the question "if you always need to upgrade the complete landscape" very much depends on the business processes, which you use. So, it is worth to invest the time to plan the project.

A further consideration is the strategic lay out of your system landscape. For instance in the Portal area can you set up systems in a way, that you minimize the need for an upgrade. These scenarios are described there as well (i.e. if you run SAP ERP, SAP CRM and a Portal, it might be possible minimize the impact of an CRM upgrade - depending on your landscape)

regards,

Andreas Rudolph