SAP S/4HANA conversion and migration to AWS Cloud without the SUM DMO “System Move” option

This blog post aims to address the challenges faced by customers running legacy SAP ECC systems who are transforming to S/4HANA on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The classical migration approach (SUM DMO “System Move” option) is often complex and requires longer or multiple downtime windows.

The IBM® HANA Migration Centre (HMC) is a next-generation migration factory designed to further automate and accelerate the journey to an intelligent enterprise and give clients more predictability on their path to SAP S/4HANA.

HMC works with customers running legacy SAP ERP applications to reduce project and prep timelines, maintenance team effort and system downtime:

• 50% automation for code remediation—reducing project timelines
• 15% downtime reduction through the usage of reconciliation tools
• 20% reduction of preparatory work through tools in finance and master data
• 25% reduction of time in managing fixes and code changes in a dual maintenance mode—reducing effort for the maintenance team

Using IBM HMC’s experience and tooling an S/4HANA conversion and migration to AWS can be completed in a single step.

IBM is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner (link resides outside ibm.com) with 13 AWS Competencies (including the AWS SAP Competency), 16 AWS service validations and over 10,000 certified AWS practitioners. IBM participates in AWS Partner programs such as the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (link resides outside ibm.com)(MAP), which offsets the migration costs of cloud adoption for customers and accelerates migration with more AWS resources.

Customers face several challenges when modernizing SAP systems, including years and years of legacy data, old database versions, performance issues and the cost of running systems on-premises. These factors contribute to lengthy downtime windows when transforming to S/4HANA.

HMC has developed tooling and processes to help address these challenges, coupled with the standard SAP migration approaches.

There are various migration scenarios (link resides outside ibm.com) when migrating from any database to HANA on AWS. One of the most common approaches used for S/4HANA conversion and migration scenarios is using SAP SUM DMO with System Move (link resides outside ibm.com):

Figure 1: Classical S/4 HANA conversion using SUM DMO with the “System Move” option.

• Prepare the target AWS infrastructure. For a more guided deployment option, the AWS Launch Wizard (link resides outside ibm.com) can deploy a target S/4HANA environment in less than 2 hours.
• Set up the connectivity between the customer’s on-premises systems to AWS. This can be done through the AWS Site-to-Site VPN (link resides outside ibm.com) or AWS Direct Connect (link resides outside ibm.com).
• Start the SAP SUM Tool on the on-premises SAP ECC primary application server.
• Before the downtime window, transfer all the required directories, including the SUM folder, to the target application server in AWS.
• Keep running the synchronization between on-premises and AWS.
• Start SUM downtime on the target application server on AWS.

The classical migration approach needs meticulous planning, including copying and synchronizing files between source and target systems. Also, the speed and performance of the migration can be significantly impacted by network connectivity and database size.

The IBM HMC team used AWS services and SAP’s SUM Tool to run an innovative approach to eliminate the above complexities involved with the classical migration approach:

Figure 2: S/4HANA Conversion using DMO without the “System Move” option.

• Set up a VPN connection between on-premises systems to AWS.
• Prepare the target AWS infrastructure. For a more guided deployment option, the AWS Launch Wizard (link resides outside ibm.com) can deploy a target S/4HANA environment in less than 2 hours.
• Install an additional application server for the source SAP ECC system on AWS.
• Run the SAP SUM Tool with the standard SUM DMO option on an additional application server running in AWS.

The key difference here is the elimination of the System Move aspect of the approach, thereby reducing overall complexity. This was developed based on SAP Blogs (link resides outside ibm.com) and is supported by SAP for AWS.

Here are some benefits of this approach:

• There is no need to export the source database to the file system.
• You can run the conversion on larger AWS EC2 instances (link resides outside ibm.com) for a quicker transformation. Once the transformation is complete, you can downsize to the correct production-sized instance.
• You can use AWS services such as the AWS Launch Wizard (link resides outside ibm.com) to minimize the time taken to build out a target system on AWS.
• The conversion and migration can be completed using AWS Site-to-Site VPN (link resides outside ibm.com) and AWS Direct Connect (link resides outside ibm.com).
• Total technical downtime is further reduced using downtime optimization techniques such as Downtime Optimized DMO, Data Archiving and Downtime Optimized Conversion.
• You can reduce business downtime and complexity by using the above steps.

The IBM HMC team successfully converted an ECC6 Ehp8 system running on the SAP ASE database on-premises to the target S/4HANA system running on AWS without using the SUM DMO “System Move” option.

Using this approach, we found a reduced level of complexity, thereby reducing the time taken to complete the migration and transformation procedure. Because the manual intervention required for DMO File Transfer is eliminated, there is no need to run the rsync utility or manually copy files. This simplification of the process minimizes the need for continuous monitoring and the potential for human error.

We would recommend this approach for our customers going forward depending on their requirements.

IBM has over 50 years of experience in the industry, where no other SAP partner has more Global Partner Program Certifications. IBM has also completed over 6,500 SAP projects including hundreds of SAP S/4HANA implementations.

As a follow-up to this blog post, we are drafting a SUM DMO without System Move white paper, so keep your eyes peeled.

Many thanks to the following additional contributors for their help in this blog post:

• Arvind Deshpande, Sr. Managing Consultant—HANA Migration Centre
• Aniruddha Deshpande, Sr. Managing Consultant—HANA Migration Centre
• Naeem Asghar, AWS Sr. Partner Solution Architect
• Vamsi Yanamadala, AWS Sr. Partner Solution Architect
• Sachidananda Sahoo, AWS Sr. Partner Solution Architect