On-premises: all involved source/target systems in the company's own data centers
Consistency of database disk blocks - stopping I/O activities or executing DATABASE BEGIN ONLINE BACKUP command, flushing cache, etc.
Quasi tick boxes instead of time-consuming handling of programming lines, so that the use is also possible for less experienced experts who have never or only few SAP system copies created. And this after little system training.
Today, thanks to tools for creating SAP system copies, it is possible to create such system duplications practically at the push of a button, and that too in a very short time. Even several at once.
TM-TMS (Transport Manager)
In this context, generated jobs adapt to changes, even if, for example, a DB change, a release change or other changes have taken place. Nevertheless, once created copy jobs can be reused, which minimizes the maintenance effort and a certain susceptibility to errors. This is also the case when switching from one Any DB to another or when moving from an Any DB to Hana.
Preparation before system copy - All information about transport requests that should be re-imported on the target system of the system copy is evaluated and collected: Already released transport requests that have not yet landed on production. Open transport requests that should survive the system copy (maintain development status). The respective owners of the transports have the possibility to discard an obsolete development.
A solution such as "Shortcut for SAP Systems" offers an automatable solution for many of the activities involved in an SAP system copy.
Sensitive personal data is secured in accordance with current data protection requirements, while at the same time high test quality is achieved through realistic data.
Usually, three to four days have to be planned for this, during which the QA system - which in two-tier SAP environments is also the development system - is not available for the actual work.