Upgrade to 7.20 kernel on top of 7.00 kernel

[Former Member]

The new 7.20 DCK kernel for our Production system has been installed into the same folder as our old 7.00 kernel, leaving about 60 old executables & files in place. For our Dev & QA systems, it was installed into a new folder, so the old files don't exist. No issues in testing, or in production so far.

I understand it would have been the standard practice for a simple kernel patch, but not for the upgrade to the 7.20 DCK since so much has changed.

We're on Windows 2003 64 bit, Oracle 11g, ECC 6.0, NW 7.0.

What are the risks of continued live operation with the old files in place?

And if we need to get back to a consistent set of files, how should we do it safely?

a) Take the system down & do a fresh kernel install in an empty folder

b) Simply delete the 60 or so files that are not found on our Dev & QA servers

c) Some other approach

Note that the original upgrade caused our DB to grow by between 5 Gb and 15 Gb per database, in both SAPSR3700 & SAPSR3 tablespaces.

I think this was caused by the dictionary changes for the 7.20 DCK, which also caused a number of application issues.

Advice much appreciated, thanks.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

    Please perform the following actions.

1. Take a backup of the exe folder.

2. Download and uncar the latest 720 Kernel .

3.Copy the extracted 720 kernel to the exe folder.

Please refer the Note 1629598 - SAP Kernel 720 will replace older kernel versions

for more details

You need to set few profile parameters that are described in 1636252 - Installing a 7.20 kernel in SAP Web AS 7.00/7.01/7.10/7.11.

Ensure SAP NOTE 1610716  is applied to prevent DDIC TYPE INCONSISTENT ABAP Dump occuring .

You can see lot of additional features available in 720- kernel which are described in detail in the above two notes.

Thanks and Regards,

Vimal

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Many thanks Vimal.

I've checked many of the installation tasks in note 1635252 and found a number that were done only in Dev/QA and the recommended profile parameter settings are missing in all systems. So I will review everything in more detail with our technical support team.

I was interested in note 1610716 which WAS applied to our Dev box, but not QA or PROD. But I can't tell if the corresponding abap was executed at the time. Our regression testing in Dev found a related issue for a 3rd pary add-on (Ebydos), which let us to a patch from the its supplier. So I don't know if this abap would have detected the problem or resolved it without us needing the patch. I will follow up by transporting the abap to QA and production, and checking them directly.

We're still trying to decide how to get PROD clean again. Our favourite solution is to reinstall the kernel in an empty directory, I'm just nervous because this is a change in PROD we cannot test first.

Thanks again.

[Former Member]

Hi Mike

As far as i know the active exe should contain all the files from the kernel 7.20.

Here are the things you can go for:

1. create a backup of the current exe

2. delete all files from the current exe.

3. extract the 720 kernel

secondly for the 60 old files , can you explain if there any additional functionalities installled on the prod box which are not there on the Dev&QA?

[Former Member]

Thanks for your reply. I am pretty sure there are no files on PROD that are not also in DEV or QA. We are careful to avoid making untested changes in PROD.