[467] in sapr3-soft
Re: R/3 version 2.2 upgrade to version 3.x
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dennis Barrett)
Fri Oct 3 08:37:16 1997
To: sapr3-soft@MIT.EDU
Date: 3 Oct 1997 07:27:14 -0500
From: Dennis Barrett <dbarrett@fc.net> (by way of SAP Moderator <sap-request@realtimeusa.com>)
Macrae Morse (by way of SAP Moderator ) wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am a SSA with a mid-sized telecom equipment and semiconductor
> manufacturer. Through an acquistion we now have a R/3 system to
> support and maintain. We are still running ver 2.2 h and want to
> move to version 3.x.
>
> Question 1.
> Should we upgrade to ver 3.0 x or 3.1 x from version 2.2h?
Depending on which OS & DB you run, going to 3.1x may be a "two-step"
upgrade. If yourproduction system must be available on Monday morning, a
two-step upgrade may be a lot of
extra work.
We chose to go just to 3.0F because 3.1(G at the time) seemed like an "A"
release to us, and we
don't want to be on the bleeding edge of technology. I've heard a couple
3.1 stories since then,
and they've been successful, with no more problems than a 3.0 upgrade. If
we were to start now,
I'd consider going to 3.1 straight out.
>
>
> Question 2.
> How long will this likely take... I have been getting estimates
> from one week to 4 months! We do not have any custom objects. Just
> some ABAPs for some batch processing and reports. What have other
> people's experience been going from version 2.x to 3.x?
>
We are upgrading from 22E to 30F in a couple weeks. The production system
upgrade will complete over theweekend of Oct 11, and we've been preparing
for it since early May. If you are in production, then you want
to be very sure that your system will really work after the upgrade, that
all your ABAPS and interfaces work,
that the reports work, etc. etc. The hardware and Basis guys have plenty to
do to increase disk & memory
(you'll probably need it), and very likely upgrade the operating system and
the database before they can do
the R/3 upgrade. And they have to upgrade the GUI on all user machines:
GUIs are backwards compatible,
but not necessarily forwards. Finally, the business people and the
hardware/Basis must plan out when you'll be
down in your Development and Test systems, and finally when your Production
system will be down (very
likely more than once as they work through OS & DB upgrades & swapping
disks). After each upgrade they'll
have to install all the hot packs that have been issued. They've got a lot
of work to do.
Your Business Analysts, Programming Analysts and Superusers must assure that
all the business transactions
work, and they need time to (1) determine what they do daily, weekly,
monthly, annually so they remember to
test everything, (2) write test scripts for all the various ways they use
the system, (3) test everything from soup
to nuts in the Development system after it has been upgraded, (4) prepare
"delta" training docs for all the users,
(5) schedule and conduct delta training with all the users, (6) make sure
the Test system comes up properly after
its upgrade, and everything still works - use this as a dress rehearsal for
the Production upgrade, (7) with fingers
crossed and prayers said, make sure the Production system comes up properly
after its upgrade - if they can't
accept it by perhaps Noon on Sunday, then the Basis guys must restore it
back to a running 22 system for
Monday morning.
Lots of planning go into a successful production upgrade, and lots of
practice. You should plan on practicing
the upgrade three or four times (including upgrading Dev & Test) before the
"real" upgrade. Our project is
about five months long. We could probably could push hard to do it in three
months now that we've done it,
but it's a lot better to have some recovery time in the schedule - things
will go wrong.
--
Dennis Barrett - SAP Project Leader
Hart Graphics, Inc. - Austin, Texas
barrett@hartgr.com - (512) 467-4424
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