Application Operations

Technical Monitoring and Alerting

The business unit expects that performance problems and errors will be detected proactively and resolved before they affect business continuity. The monitoring of SAP NetWeaver, operations system, and database are subject to system monitoring. The goal is to ensure smooth technical operation. During operations, exceptions may arise from SAP NetWeaver or the underlying technology. Effective and efficient handling of these exceptions is a crucial factor for stable technical operations. While root cause analysis aims at problem resolution, system monitoring detects incidents automatically. When agents report diagnostics data that exceeds thresholds defined in a central alert definition, alerts are created and the responsible experts in IT are notified so that they can take corrective action. If the required corrective action is not obvious, root cause analysis has to be performed to resolve the incident.

SAP Solution Manager provides both real-time and historical monitoring. While real-time monitoring goes down to a resolution of 15 seconds, historical monitoring starts at an hourly level and can be aggregated in SAP Solution Manager to day, week, and year levels with the help of the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) component.

Real-time monitoring is presented with the dashboard technology in CA Wily Introscope. All dashboards are shipped preconfigured by SAP and are part of SAP Solution Manager. If you want to create your own dashboards (for example, for custom code or legacy applications), you can purchase the SAP Extended Diagnostics application by CA Wily (a reseller product on the SAP price list), which entitles you to use the full version including all preconfigured instrumentation and dashboards for non-SAP applications.

Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis - Overview (Support Portal login required)

Root Cause Analysis Demo

SAP Solution Manager supports end-to-end root cause analysis to identify the component that is responsible for the error. This top-down approach systematically helps you target the cause of the error; you no longer have to perform an untargeted, intuition based approach using various component experts. The latter method involves much more time and expense.

You can envision the end-to-end root cause analysis approach as a type of "crime scene investigation" systematically leading to the solution.
End-to-end root cause analysis is supported by the following:

• End-to-end change analysis provides transparency on changes (code, business configuration, and content) that were applied recently to a production application. This analysis is particularly instrumental if the few ad hoc changes result in disruptions after they were applied.
• End-to-end workload analysis provides unified access to serverside workload statistics.
• End-to-end exception analysis provides unified access to exceptions reflected in high-severity log entries and dumps. Component-specific log and dump viewers can be accessed directly from this analysis.
• End-to-end trace analysis records performance and functional defects in a single activity of a single user or process, from browser to disk. The measurement is started at the UI of the end user, and the trace level for the round-trip is selected. When the request hits downstream servers, all components switch their traces on or change the log level according the selected trace level.

Technical Administration

Regular routine tasks are part of a customer's runbook for technical operations and include performing backups and restarts, managing printers, and performing identity management tasks.

Technical Operations Video Presentation
(Support Portal login required)

Automation of Lifecycle Management Tasks: New Initial Configuration Process with SAP NetWeaver CE 7.20 (Time 4:05)
This demo shows initial configuration of SAP NetWeaver 7.2 based on functional units.

Management Console for SAP NetWeaver 7.2
One of the important tools to operate the system is the SAP Management Console. This presentation shows new features of the SAP Management Console for SAP NetWeaver 7.2.

Java Administration Improvements
This presentation shows new and enhanced features for SAP NetWeaver Application Server Java in the area of administration.

Demos on Technical Administration
How to handle downtimes and Java parameter changes using SAP Solution Manager Downtime Management and SAP NetWeaver Administrator.

Making active changes on a system sometimes requires a restart and involves downtimes. Here is an example on how you can manage the downtime and perform the required administration activities from within SAP Solution Manager as single point of access.

• See how you can use SAP Solution Manager work center "Technical Administration" to access the local NetWeaver administrator tool (with enhanced functional and UI capabilities in 7.20) and verify the configuration settings. Part 1 (00:05:00)
• Now let's use downtime management to plan and document downtime, notify business users, and stop the system. Part 2 (00:05:00)
• Perform configuration changes on the java server using the Config tool. Part 3 (00:05:00)
• From within SAP Solution manager downtime management restart the system and double-check new success of configuration settings. Part 4 (00:05:00)

Data Volume Management

Data Volume Management to Manage the Growth of Business Data

The optimal management of business data is another important aspect of business process operations. Data volume management requires technical consideration for optimal storage management for business data. Just adding additional disks to storage area networks (SANs) and storage subsystems over time may make the situation worse. For example, system management can become more and more difficult, or performance may degrade. On the other hand, your business and business application requirements have an impact on the management of business data. For example, business and legal requirements define the data retention period of critical financial data.

Blogs:

System Monitoring on an iPad

Dimitri Sannen, a SAP NetWeaver Solution Architect at Step-@-Site, struggled a bit setting up a demo using the App and a SAP Solution Manager sytem. That's why he decided to put every step in this blog to get and give a clear overview of what has to be done to build the demo.

More on Application Operations:

Application Operations (on SAP Help Portal)

Mobile Apps for SAP Solution Manager

Solution Extensions for ALM