ECC and BW in the same system - Gotchas?

[murray_lahn]

From the documents, and from the information from SAP, it appears that BW 3.5 can be installed into an ERP 2004 / ECC 500 system. Does anyone have any experience with this during the ECC 5 rampup?

I have a client that is considering this and would like to know of any gotchas before we hit them.

For instance the documents mention you need to tune the Oracle database with the parameter "star_transformation_enabled=true", which is normally used in a BW system. What impact, if any, will that have the ECC side of things?

[Former Member]

I did one MCOD with BW ECC and Portal and the performance was terrible. And this was on beefed up IBM p series server.

BW will eat at your performance when doing extracts and tranforms....and your ECC side will suffer...

And if you run batch sessions on ERP the BW side will be hit....

But here is the real truth....if you have a restart the server for ERP then BW will have to come down...so anytime one application requires a server reboot the other application is affected....

Likewise when applying patches or doingclient copies, all systems will be affected by this type of maintenance.

The headaches just are not worth it....especially since server prices are low...

John

[former_member181887]

Hi John,

Just to respond to your post and clarify some of the areas.

1. The mySAP ERP 2004 ECC 5.0 and it's internal SAP BW is <b>not</b> an MCOD implementation. The SAP BW is internal with the ECC (same instance, same database schema, and same database. Whereas MCOD is different instances, different schemas, but same database. One important point is that MCOD and mySAP ERP 2004 fully support three tier architecture.

2. MCOD was <u>not</u> recommended for a mix of OLTP and OLAP applications on all databases until recently (e.g. recommended for SAP R/3 Enterprise and mySAP SRM but not SAP R/3 Enterprise and SAP BW). This has recently changed where a combination of OLTP and OLAP is now supported: See http://service.sap.com/mcod or see SAP note 712777.

3. SAP BW Performance: In a mySAP ERP 2004 ECC 5.0 system with the internal SAP BW functionality active, the system must be configured for both the transaction processing and OLAP functions. This configuration must include load balancing if you have high usage. Without load balancing you are unable to target activities to specific servers or separate different user groups. Obviously if you have only one server load balancing is not available. It is strongly recommended to use the three system configurations for SAP ERP applications and SAP BW.

4. Automatic multiple Instance shutdown:

For MCOD this is not the case that shutting down one system in your MCOD installation will also shutdown your other MCOD systems; this only happens if you also close the database (remember it is the only part that this shared). The instances can be started and shutdown independently.

For the internal SAP BW within ECC 5.0 you have "one system" so if you shut it down, you really shut it down.

5. Impact of applying patches or doing client copies:

For MCOD systems, the systems are independent and can be patched and administered independently. The only common part is the database. The database maintenance and patching does affect all the connected MCOD systems. For processes like system copies, these are also independent of the other systems. Obviously if you share the same server for the different systems you need to take care with CPU and memory usage of these functions.

As SAP BW within ECC 5.0 is the same system, you have to patch the system all at once (recommendation is to use SP-Stacks). A SAP_BASIS support package applied to ECC is also applied to SAP BW at the same time. With regard to client copies, client copies are only supported for ERP 'OLTP' clients (not for the SAP BW client).

6. "The headaches just are not worth it....especially since server prices are low…"

I would not totally agree with this comment. For mySAP ERP this low price server argument also works for adding more app servers to ERP and doing load balancing. The use of MCOD or the internal SAP BW within ECC will be made on a number of factors by the customer with different weighting being applied to each of the Pros and Cons.

The new "internal SAP BW within ECC 5.0" gives customer's system architects more options and increases the flexibility of the total solution in general (delivery of a centralized EDW, deliver of operation reporting, deliver of application or organization specific datamarts to name a few). With more options and flexibility, more decision points need to be reviewed and analyzed which can be a good thing.

I hope this helps,

Mike.

[Former Member]

Hi Mike,

We are going to be implementing BW/ECC5 same server setup for one of our customers soon! SAP have said that this set-up is only recommended for DEV and QAS and that PRO should be on two separate servers, with each server containing BW <u><b>AND</b></u> ECC5 to match DEV and QAS.

This means that the advantages you mention would not materialise as PRO is still a 2 server setup. It also raises the question of how the transports from QAS to PRO can be handled for cross client configuration. I assume we would have to keep BW-side and R/3-side BW config separated so it could go into the different PRO servers.

Any comments??

Regards, Lea

[Former Member]

Hi,

Anybody knows if there are now official recommendations in having OLAP & OLTP in the same SAP system (same SID)?

Thanks,

CLM

[former_member181887]

Hi Murray,

Being SAP, I'll let some customers answer the experience part of the question. We do have some customers that have used this option.

With regard to the oracle tuning parameters, we are working on a new/update d Oracle tuning parameters SAP Note with the parameters that should be set. As the use the internal BW system within ECC is still a project solution, the information has not been released.

In short, it appears that the OLAP (BW) Oracle settings will be base for the mySAP ERP Oracle settings.

As part of the "project" solution, validation of the performance on both the BW and ERP side is tested.

The expectation is that there will be minimal impact.

As soon as the information is released we will update this forum. In the meantime, if your customer is interested in this combination, I would suggest you contact your SAP representative.

I hope this helps,

Mike