System Landscape

Define System Landscape

The purpose of this activity is to establish the system landscape. The system landscape consists of the SAP Systems and clients that will enable you to adapt the SAP standard software to meet the needs of the company. This process begins with the first SAP installation, customizing and development to meet the business needs, testing and verification, and finally to the start of productive operation.

The many things to consider include:

  • The required number of systems and clients needed
  • Specific client roles and the appropriate client settings
  • Acceptable levels of quality assurance and testing
  • Management of all customer development and customizing settings
  • Use of Pre-configured Systems as an implementation accelerator

The system landscape definition involves stating the purpose of each SAP System, providing each system with a system identifier, and establishing a transport route between the systems for the distribution of Customizing and development efforts. Clients are then distributed in this landscape. Once the system landscape has been defined, an implementation strategy is created for both the setup and maintenance of the systems and clients within this landscape.

sap system landscape

Although many implementations begin with a single SAP System (knowing additional systems will be added), the system landscape should be established from the beginning. This helps to ensure that all Customizing and development changes are recorded and correctly distributed to the necessary systems. 

The outcome of this activity is:

  1. Design of the company’s system landscape, including its setup and maintenance strategy
  2. Design of the company’s system landscape, including:
  • The definition of the required systems and clients
  • A strategy for the setup of the system landscape (systems and clients)
  • A strategy for the maintenance of the system landscape (systems and clients) during the implementation project
  • A strategy for the continuous improvement needed after the start of production 

Determine Required Systems

The purpose of this task is to determine the number of systems needed for your SAP implementation. SAP recommends that customers use a three system landscape, dedicating separate systems to development activities, to quality assurance testing, and to the actual production environment. Some customers may have constraints that require an implementation that uses a one or two system landscape. Others may find that more systems are necessary (for example, a large, multinational implementation).

Once all names and roles have been assigned to the systems making up the system landscape, you must define and establish the transport route for all changes that originate in the development system. 

Procedure

Define the system landscape:
The system landscape must be defined, regardless of the landscape chosen. Definition involves stating the purpose of each SAP System, providing each system with a system identifier, and establishing a transport route between the systems for the distribution of Customizing and development efforts.

Although many implementations begin with a single SAP System (knowing additional systems will arrive), the system landscape should be established from the beginning. This helps to ensure that all Customizing and development changes are recorded and correctly distributed to the necessary systems.

Define system purposes:
While there are various systems that can be planned in the implementation of the SAP System, SAP recommends the following systems:

Development system.

All Customizing and development takes place in the development system.

Quality assurance system

Change requests from the development system are imported into the quality assurance system where testing and validation can be performed without affecting the production system.

Production system

All changes once verified and signed off from the quality assurance system are imported into the production system.

Additional systems (not required) depending on the need or your implementation may include:

Sandbox system

Training system

Technical sandbox system

Determine system names
All SAP Systems must be provided a system identifier, also known as the system ID or SID. A SID must be a combination of three alpha-numeric characters. Only uppercase letters are allowed. The first character must be a letter (not a digit). In addition, some names are reserved and you cannot assign them to your SAP system. Refer to the SAP Installation manual for the list of reserved SID names.

Although a system may not physically exist yet, its identifier should be determined from the start. This ensures that the proper import queue is maintained for that system. This requires, for example, establishing a virtual system for the production system until the physical hardware arrives and is installed.


Also See: How to Lock all the Users in SAP System?

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