SAP Solution Manager

This page summarizes what is presented in many presentations, books, and classes about SAP's Solution Manager product.

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* SAP's Glossary,
* help.sap.com
* SDN Forum: SolMan

Summary

Solution Manager consists of both methodology and software.

SolMan is intended to be a central repository and user interface for Application Management personnel.

SolMan Java server apps complement tools previously available for ABAP R/3.

Solution Manager is abbreviated "SolMan" or "SOLMAN" — its Java instance name. SolMan adds tools for managing Java components used by SAP NetWeaver:

• J2EE System Heap Memory, CPU Threads, JDBC, Enqueues, Jco, Servlets, User Management (UM), JNDI
• EP (Enterprise Portal) JDBC, iViews, PCD, KM
• CRM
• XI

Information	ABAP (ECC)	Java (Portal)
End-User App. Performance	tcode ST03N (Workload Monitor)& tcode STAD (Statistical Record per Dialog Step)	CA Wily Introscope
Work Processes	tcode SM50 (Work Process Overview)
OS Performance	tcode ST06 (OS Monitor)
Memory Usage	tcode ST02 (Setup Buffers)	Java memory analysis
Application Activity	tcode SM50, tcode SM66 (Global Work Process Overview)	Thread Dump Analysis
Database	tcode ST04 (SQL Server Performance Analysis)	OS and DB > Remote DB Monitoring (DBA Cockpit)
SQL	tcode ST05 (SQL Trace) tcode ST12 (Single Transaction Trace)	Wily Introscope Transaction Tracer
Client	-	Client Trace

Solution Manager is the central part of End-to-End (E2E) SAP system scenarios to efficiently implement, operate, monitor, and support SAP solutions.

1. Implementation or Upgrade of SAP Solutions
   • Document (Blueprint)
2. Gateway to SAP Support - Service Marketplace, AGS (Active Global Support), Service Delivery Platform
3. Solution Monitoring
   • Monitor and Optimize
4. Change Request Management
   • Train
5. Service Desk
   • Manage Incidents
6. Root Cause Analysis (of incidents and problems)

SAP Library (help.sap.com/saphelp) on SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager (SAP Press, 2007) by Marc O Shafer and Matthias Melich (of SAP)

SAP OKP (Online Knowledge Product

SAP /rkt-solman in the SAP Support Portal

Solution Manager Extensions include the
SAP Solution Manager Adapter for SAP Quality Center by HP
and Process Scheduling Adapter for SAP Solution Manager

The Sales Kit for SAP page contains demo scripts for IDES (DL1).

SAP /solutionmanager has order info.

A CD recording the SAP Solution Manager info day 04/27/2006 in Brussels is available in sap.com/shop as Material number 50 079 668.

SolMan Standards

SAP's 16 Standards for solution operations are:
1. Incident Management describes the process of incident resolution.
2. Exception Handling explains how to define a model and procedures to manage exceptions and error situations during daily business operations.
3. Data Integrity avoids data inconsistencies in end-to-end solution landscapes.
4. Change Request Management enables efficient and punctual implementation of changes with minimal risks.
5. Upgrade guides customers and technology partners through upgrade projects.
6. eSOA Readiness covers both technical and organizational readiness for enterprise service-oriented architectures (eSOA).
7. Root Cause Analysis defines how to perform root cause analysis end-to-end across different support levels and different technologies.
8. Change Control Management covers the deployment and the analysis of changes.
9. Minimum Documentation defines the required documentation and reporting re-garding the customer solution.
10. Remote Supportability contains five basic requirements that have to be met to op-timize the supportability of customer solutions.
11. Business Process and Interface Monitoring describes the monitoring and super-vision of the mission critical business processes.
12. Data Volume Management defines how to manage data growth.
13. Job Scheduling Management explains how to manage the planning, scheduling, and monitoring of background jobs.
14. Transactional Consistency safeguards data synchronization across applications in distributed system landscapes.
15. System Administration describes how to administer SAP technology in order to run a customer solution efficiently.
16. System Monitoring covers monitoring and reporting of the technical status of IT so-lutions.

• Roadmaps
• Best Practices
• Workflows
• KPIs and SLAs
• Services
• Transaction SPOR for IMG Reference Guide leads thru sys & app configuration activities

SolMan Technical Architecture

SolMan runs as a separate web app server instance (but connected to ECC thru role S_RFCACL) satellite systems within a solution landscape setup by executing a BC Set within an Maintenance Optimizer IMG (Implementation Guide).

The Solution Manager server requires 6GB RAM minimum and JAVA_HOME to an installation of
Java 2 SDK_SE 1.4.2 for 32-bit or (the recommended) 64 bit for SAP.

Satellite systems become "Managed systems" when Plug-ins (Agents and Extractors) are installed on them to collect data (on an hourly basis) for the EFWK (Extractor Framework):

• ABAP Extractors on R/3 ('ST-A/PI' release: '01J_CRM500' with minimum Support Package/patch level: '0'), BW, XI, APO, CRM systems (using RFC calls) go straight to the EFWK
• Solution Manager Agents go through Solution Manager
• Single Statistical Records go through the ESR Extractor
• Wily Introscope Byte Code Instrumentation (BCI) data (collected every 15 minutes) go through default port 6001 to the Wily Enterprise Manager. EM has a WebView service which presents (on default port 8081) dashboard (at various levels of detail) graphics using SVG graphics within HTML

Introscope is installed on /usr/sap/ccms/wilyintroscope. CSS component XX-PART-WILY is used for customer messages.

(SAP_SDCCN_ADMIN roles are needed to configure on satellite systems).

The EFWK stores data in a Product Instance Perspective within InfoCubes of a central NetWeaver BI (Business Intelligence) instance. Data more than 60 bytes long are stored as a hash which is resolved when data is retrieved.

SAP product instances tracked are identified by unique PPMS-IDs used during data enrichment, extraction, and status tracking.

The database is queried by E2E Root Cause Analysis applications:

• E2E Workload Analysis
• E2E Exception Analysis
• E2E Change Analysis

Product Version History

Version	Release	Features	End of Mainstream Maintenance
4.0 SP11-15	July 2007	optimized collaboration with SAP services.	Mar. 2011
3.2 SP09	Sep. 2005	added change req. mgmt.	Mar. 2009
3.1 was	June 2004	added a service desk upgrade.	Dec. 2006

Per SAP Note 628901, Solution Manager software is free to licensed SAP customers. For an additional price, SAP Solution Manager Enterprise Edition add-on enhances Standard SolMan to provide collaboration for SAP Enterprise Support by SAP's Active Global Support (AGS) organization.

• Test Management enhancements include
  • Definition of test sequences (successor/predecessor relationships) among test cases and test packages;
  • different execution order within each test package;
  • email notification at workflow status changes; and
  • improved test management from digital signatures protecting progress in the workflow.
• The Traceability Management Package enhances management of documents and process structures by locking of documents for changes with display of signed documents with signatures and links among documents.
• Change Request Management enhancements include the ability to assign solution structure objects to change requests, which enables coordination of parallel development environments.
• Solution Documentation Assistant analyzes systems automatically to create a system usage report and core business process models.
• Process Structure Management Extensions include
  Customer defined attributes at objects on tab development;
  transaction and configuration including electronic signature;
  Lock of process substructures in Business Blueprint (only structure not the tabs).
• Management of custom development
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For SAP Solution Manager to make full use of business process monitoring (BPM) and other features, the latest support packages need to be installed:

• SAP Basis Release 7.0
• Solution Manager Release 4.0 (ST 400). The installer is mounted as the SAP material numbers for 6 DVDs:
  1. 51032955 Installation IM_WINDOWS folder, sapinst.exe Centeral System install
  2. 51032956_1 Export (EXP1 & EXP2)
  3. 51032956_2 Export (EXP3 & EXP4)
  4. 51032958 Java
  5. 51033032 Kernel
  6. 51032923 MaxDB
• Technical Release ST-SER 700_2006_1
• Add-On Release ST-A/PI 01H_CRM500

Jon Reed notes that Solution Manager is "one of the few bridges between pre-NetWeaver SAP, NetWeaver SAP, and the eSOA and analytics era -- you don't have to be on the latest version of SAP to get access to this tool. You can use Solution Manager to manage your SAP upgrade, and then for performance management and optimization afterward. Solution Manager even contains a comprehensive change management program for handling the cultural and role changes involved in new SAP rollouts.

Solution Manager also positions you to get involved with cutting-edge eSOA projects. You can generate "process objects" with Solution Manager, allowing you to start down the road toward composite application development.

You can also port data from Solution Manager into Master Data Management (MDM) for number-crunching. As SAP continues its push toward a "business process platform," it is also making an effort to automate routine processes and provide a central spot for managing system performance and business processes. More and more, it looks as if Solution Manager will be integral to this vision."

SolMan Application Menu

The Solution Manager application has this top-level menu structure:

Root Cause Analysis | Diagnostics Administration | Diagnostics Setup

Diagnostics Administration and Setup Application Selection

The menus are expanded here for you to compare and contrast:

Diagnostics Administration		Diagnostics Setup
Diagnostics System	Managed Systems	Diagnostics System	Managed Systems
Landscape Management Access Management Self Check	Scheduler Task List Host List Advanced Scheduler Task Management Statistics Agent Administration Agents Agent Connectivity Applications Viewer Applications Management Applications Configuration Agent Credentials Agent Log Viewer Advanced Settings	Setup Wizard Advanced Setup j2EE & Abap Statistics Wily & NWA (default port 50000) Abap Connectivity Last Setup Results Upgrader Self Monitoring	Setup Wizard Setup Results Troubleshooting: Setup EarlyWatch Alert Introscope Agent

To View Last Diagnostics Logs, at the upper right corner click icon See SAP Note 896981

Self Check Groups

Here are the choice of Groups listed in Diagnostics Administration > Diagnostics System > Self Check > Expert Mode:
• Groups
• Agent-Diagnostics connectivity
• Agents prerequisite
• CCMS BI setup
• CCR (Change Control Revision/Cluster Continuous Replication?)
• Connection prerequisite
• Connectivity to managed systems
• Data Collector
• Diagnostics agents
• Diagnostics local connectivity
• Diagnostics prerequisite
• Diagnostics system setup wizard
• Diagnostics users/roles
• E2E exception analysis
• E2E trace analysis
• E2E workload analysis
• EWA (Early Watch Alert)
• Extractor framework
• FVR
• File system browser
• Host agents
• Intorscope EM (Enterprise Manager)
• Introscope agents
• J2EE command consle
• Java memory analysis
• SQL command console
• SQL monitoring
• Scheduler
• System info
• Thread dump analysis
• Upgrader
• Navigation
• OS command console
• SAP connectivity
• SDM (Software Deployment Manager) log browser
• Log Viewer
• MCR (Multi Country Region?)
• Managed systems prerequisite
• Managed systems setup prerequisite
• Managed systems setup wizard
• Managed systems users/roles
• NW Admin plug-ins

Solution Directory (Repository)

The repository Solution Manager uses to its store data is called a Solution Directory defined and displayed using transaction DSWP, Operations Setup option > Solution Landscape tab > Solution Landscape Maintenance.

• Business processes defined in the Business Process Repository (BPR) within the Structures tab and with pre-defined Process Names templates
  • Contact Person (perhaps a user replicated from transaction SU01)
  • System documentation
  • Authorization Requirements
  • Test information
• Monitoring data
  • Capacity data
• Service Level data
  • Service Requests
• Change information
  • Central System Data
  • Mapping of Business Processes to IT Landscape
  • Training information
  • Change Requests, Authorizations
  • Customer developments and functional enhancements
  • Maintenance activities
• Incident and Problem information

SAP Class ADM315 ??

System Landscape Management

Solution Manager links a company's system landscape to downloads from SAP's Service Marketplace and expert knowledge from SAP's Active Global Support which provides EarlyWatch Alert services.

Solution Manager is the domain controller in the TMS (Transport Management System).

Solution Manager helps manage complex system landscapes with servers and applications (solutions) over the globe.

SAP transaction SMSY (Landscape Model) defines the systems landscape with 5 components:

• Physical Server names
• Database
• System of software products (such as CRM or the main instance SAP ECC Server)
• Each Logical Component is an administrative entity that groups systems which belong together, such as a productive (production) system and its respective development, test, and training systems.
• RFC connection to client satellite (other R/3) systems

Implementation or Upgrade of SAP Solutions

Activities of the SAP Implementation Guide (IMG) flagged using SOLAR_EVAL transaction project view reports

• ASAP Roadmaps are built-in to Solution Manager for initial implementation, upgrade, solution management, and global.
• Blueprinting
• BC (Business Configuration) Sets of customized settings (preconfigured templates) for selected industries and apps
• e-Learning Management
• Customizing Synchronization

Upgrading SAP (Infinity Science Press 2008, 344 pages) by Maurice Sens

SAP class ADM326

ASAP and RunSAP Roadmaps Compared

While ASAP is oriented toward the system,
RunSAP is focused on operations on which systems operate.

ASAP Phase:	Project Planning	Business Blueprint	Realization	Final Preparation	GoLive
RunSAP Phase:	Assessment and Scoping	Design of Operations	Setup of Operations	Handover into Production	Operations and Optimization
RunSAP Tasks:	Operational Requirements Analysis Scope Definition Technical Requirements and Architecture Project Setup Governance Model for Operations Solution Transition to Enterprise SOA	Conceptualization and Design of ... (see below)	Implementation of ... (see below)	Knowledge Transfer Training and Certification Final Testing and Sign-Off Handover Go Live of Operations	support & management of ... (see below)
		End-User Support Change Management Support Application Management Support Business Process Operatons Custom Dev. Management Technical Operations Management Technical Infrastructure

Scenarios to Work Centers to ITIL

The "Scenarios" of version 3 is repacked in version 4 as "Role-Based Work Center Workflows" that map to the ITIL Service Management life-cycle framework. SolMan Stack SPS15 adds Work Centers, accessed from nav bar tabs in one trasaction: solman_workcenters

ITIL	Scenario	Work Center
Plan (Requirements)	Implementation of SAP Solutions	Solution Landscape Operations Setup System Landscape Management Implementation & Upgrade
Build	Test Management	Implementation & Upgrade
Deploy	Change Request Management	Change Management
Operate	Solution Monitoring	Business Process & Interface Monitoring Job (Scheduling) Management
	Service Desk	Incident Management
	Root Cause Analysis (of incidents and problems)	Work Center Analysis
	Administration	System Administration System Monitoring
Optimize	Delivery of SAP Services	Service Delivery
	Upgrade	Implementation & Upgrade

Notice that "System Configuration" is not considered a scenario.

SAP IT Server & Application Management ISBN 1592290499 Aprl 2006 by Sabine Scholer

SAP Solution Monitoring

• Central System Administration
• EarlyWatch Alert Reports (Last Alert Refresh date)
• Real-time System Monitoring
• Business process monitoring
• Access to Services to monitor and optimize the performance and availability of system landscapes.

Availability Analysis

Change Request Management

The role-based workflow within Work Centers (new to 4.0):

• Business Process Champions request business change and sign-off on that change.
• The Program Management Office manage change.
• Application Management implement and test the change.
• Technical Operations deploy the change.

Manage change requests, with workflow to trace and audit changes and transports.

• Change Administration
  • Change Request Management
  • Change Request Categorization
  • Change Documentation
  • Approval Workflow
  • Status Reporting
  • Complete Change History
• Project Management
  • Project Planning & Budgeting
  • Project Documentation
  • Customizing & Development (Specifications)
  • Test Management
• Change Logistics
  • Customizing & Development (Realization)
  • Test Execution
  • Seamless Integration into TMS
  • Transport Scheduling
  • Transport Tracking

E2E Change Analysis was added as of SAP Solution Manager 4.0 SP13. It provides transparency on changes (code, business configuration, content) applied to so that disruptions can be traced back to changes made.

Planning and executing heterogenuous System Copies

SAP Class TADM70

Incident Management

SAP's AGS (Active Global Support) in each Global Support Center (GSC) uses Solution Manager Diagnostics to (remotely) monitor, operate, and support SAP NetWever.

Service Desk

Create and Process Problem Messages

• Service planning, delivery, and follow-up
• Service Level Reporting
• Note Management

Root Cause Analysis

Application Selection

The Solution Manager's Root Cause Analysis application sub-menus provide a single cental view of tools to manage all systems in the landscape. The sub-menus are expanded here to make items easier to find:

Exceptions	OS and DB	Configuration	Traces	Workload	Availability
E2E Exception Analysis Log Viewer Java SDM Log Browser Thread Dump Analysis	SQL Command Console OS Command Console File System Browser LDAP Browser Remote DB Monitoring	E2E Change Analysis Configuration and File Reporting Compare Multiple Instances Java System Info User Management Command Console Properties Log Configuration Configuration Browser Keystoreage/SSL Virtual Hosts Logon Groups Application Modules Application Resources	E2E trace analysis Java E2E SQL Monitoring	E2E Workload Analysis Introscope Webview Introscope Workstation Java Java Memory Analysis Thread Dump Analysis SAP Memory Analyzer	Java Systems Applications

These menus are used during two types of Root Cause Analysis:

1. End-to-End (E2E) Root Cause Analysis is performed by the application management organization (second-level customer support) when trigged proactively from Solution Monitoring or reactively from Incident Mangement.
2. Component Root Cause Analysis is performed by developers.

The Solution Manager provides several tools for determining the root cause of incidents and problems.

1. Safe Remote Access through SAPRoute (on American IP 204.79.199.2)

On R/3, to compare differences in settings between two independent client systems (e.g., QAS vs. PRD), use tcode SCU0 (Client Compare).

Performing End-to-end Root Cause Analysis Using SAP Solution Manager Diagnostics (SAP Press, Paperback, Jan 30, 2008) by Michael Kloffer (of SAP AG CoE)

3rd-Party Tools provided for Solution Manager root-cause analysis as part of the SAP add-on Solution Enablement Pack (SEP):

CA Wily Introscope for server workload analysis (instrumentation and dashboards)

BMC Appsight for SAP client trace analysis.

How to Perform Root Cause Analysis for Master Data Management with Solution Manager Diagnostics SAP How-to Guide

Root Cause by Symptom Using Metrics by Layer

Layer	Units of Work / Metric	Symptom	Root Cause of Bottlenecks
Client	Requests / Responses	Occassional spikes in response time	Proxy & networking equipment?
	Amount of data between client and server	Each transaction > 500 KB either way	Can program use smaller chunks of data?
Dispatcher	Requests	-	-
App. Servers	Transactions	-	Put expensive batch jobs on a separate server?
	Processes	-	-
Load Balancers	Highest Percentage of Sessions to each host	Disproportionate load on some machines	Load Balancing Algorithm?
Database	SQL Compilation Time	A large proportion of slow response time	SQL Inefficient?
	Wait Time within DB	A large proportion of slow response time	Indexing scheme efficient? Allocation to sessions adequate?
	Win. Page In to RAM from Disk Unix Page Out to Disk	> 20% of RAM per hour	?
DAS/SAN/NAS	Read / Write (I/O)	High	Too much Logging specified?
JVM	Thread Utilization	High percentage of available threads are used	Maximum Threads set too low? Threads are blocked?
	Heap Memory Available and Memory Recovered From Each GC	Sudden Out-Of-Memory Fault	Perm. Space Set Too Low?
	OLD SPACE GROWTH BYTES	Decreasing Trend over time until Out-Of-Memory Fault (Memory Leak)	Java coding holds file structures?
	Full GC FRACTION (& vs. Regular GC)	Occassional spikes in response time where GC time > 5% of total time	Java program string concatenation generates objects?
OS	CPU Utilization	Consistenly > 80%	If there are no other bottlenecks, speed of CPU too slow for load? Can processing be delayed until requested?
	Memory Utilization	Consistenly > 80%	Are all dlls/daemons necessary?
	Cache space (SAP Note 1041556).	Consistenly > 80%	Allocation to swap space adequate?
	Win. Page In to RAM from Disk Unix Page Out to Disk	> 20% of RAM per hour	?
Email Out	Files
Email Virus Scanners	Files

Workload Analysis

E2E Workload Analysis is invoked by executing Solution Manager transaction DSWP > Solution Manager Diagnostics > Workload.



Database workload analysis uses tcode ST04.

The breakdown of ABAP and Java response time stats are conceptually different:

ABAP Dialog, Update, and RFC (batch) response times.

Java iView and WebDynPro response times.

Clicking Memory Analyzer sends you to this SDN page which contains this link to download Eclipse RCP application.

Exception Analysis

ABAP Exception Analysis

Java Exception Analysis

OS and DB Analysis

OS and DB > Remote DB Monitoring (DBA Cockpit) provides the same information as ABAP tcode ST04 (SQL Server Performance Analysis)

SAP R/3 Performance

I/O

Server I/O
Database I/O
Datafile I/O
Memory
Buffer
Other

J2EE SQL Trace Analysis Open SQL Monitors

Menu

SQL Trace - Click "SQL Trace ON".

TableBufferMonitor

SyncLogMonitor

ConnectionMonitor

CatalogBufferMonitor

"Add backtrace (stack trace) to SQLTrace output" checkbox.

Configuration Analysis