The target system
Verification of source system status and infrastructure - analysis of software versions, database disk layout, system status, etc.
A major risk to the availability of the entire SAP environment arises when system copies are not transferred to the QA system for reasons of time and resources. Development and test work then takes place on a QA system that does not correspond to the production system. The disruption of the production system - sooner or later - is then already pre-programmed.
Until now, it has been common practice to create test systems as a client or system copy of the production system on a specific date. In these cases, a single client or the entire SAP system is duplicated. The corresponding instances of the SAP system have to be reinstalled. In addition, a copy of the source database must be created. These are standard procedures, but they can be disproportionately expensive for productive data sets of several terabytes. SAP and third-party tools for selective data extraction can significantly reduce the cost of deploying non-production SAP systems.
Downtime
Tests are already worthwhile for the introduction of SAP solutions in the company and also for release upgrades and migration projects, the import of patches, customizing, modifications and in-house developments. A three-tier SAP landscape typically consists of development, test and production systems. In addition, there are often training systems.
Transaction IMIG comes with extensive online documentation. It describes the preparations, the general procedure in the form of a quick guide, the individual steps in detail, typical error situations and the problem-solving procedure.
A solution such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" offers an automatable solution for many of the activities involved in an SAP system copy.
The first tools for SAP system copy creation came from the mainframe environment.
The performance of modern tools has developed rapidly.