This is the first part of a series of posts that I’ll submit in the following days as soon as I can (!), covering the Support Package Stack Upgrade process. Directly or indirectly, many of you have already been in projects were you’ve heard this term. Weather you seek deep technical knowledge or just an overview of the process, understanding the necessary involved components and roles, this post is definitely for you.

First of all, and for the beginners’ sake, I want to start by defining what is a SAP Support Package. In the same context, it is also important to understand what is a SAP Online Support System (OSS) Note. On a normal day, in the more than 140.000 SAP system installations worldwide, errors occur within these systems. Normally business critical situations happen less frequently but since SAP is composed by several pieces of software designed by humans, divided into Application Areas or Modules, there are quite a few bugs, errors and misconceptions which go through to clients’ live systems.

So SAP provides a support portal on which clients can report these situations, categorizing them accordingly and assigning them with a different priority (most frequent are medium and high). The way these tickets are dealt with is also according to the type of agreement the company has with SAP – the bigger SAP clients usually have little response time. But they pay for it.

The so called Online Support System – OSS – is the system SAP uses to manage these tickets and interaction flow with the Clients.

SAP Notes

When an identified issue is considered by SAP as a software defect, it will be solved by change of code, table configuration, etc, and it’s correction will be issued by SAP in the form of a SAP Note. SAP notes are an excellent way to keep our systems up to date with SAP so it’s a common task for a SAP Basis administrator to make sure the systems he works on are aligned with the most current versions implemented. Typically, large companies have predefined dates on which they apply what we’ll cover on the next point – the Support Packages.

SAP Support Packages

SAP Support Packages are bundles or collections of SAP notes (typical volume of grouped notes is 200). They’re also referred to as “Support Pack (SP)”. Support Packages are compiled periodically and are a set of SAP applications or specific components which are made available in the SAP Support Portal. SPs can be implemented using basis transaction codes like SPAM (Support Package Manager) or SAINT (SAP Add-On Installation Tool). For the JAVA stack of WAS a tool called Java Support Package Manager (JSPM) is used for SP deployment. So it is already clear that as a Basis Administrator, you will have to deal with the ABAP Stack (for the backend) and the JAVA Stack (for the front-end).

Before starting with the Support Package Stack (SPS) upgrade, please make sure to cover the following points:

1. Ensure that a full back of the system up has been performed.
2. Read thoroughly the related SAP documentation. I recommend that start by reading the standard SAP documentation available in the SAP Support.
3. Lock all SAP users except the ones used for the upgrade during the entire process.
4. Ensure that the front-end server is in the correct version of the JAVA runtime environment.
5. Ensure that you have the correct patching on the Oracle database.
6. You should also have a complete check-list of whatever cut-over activities you’ll need to perform after the SP upgrade. A Z developments inventory is also a good idea.

Preparation and organization play a critical part in this process!

On my next post I’ll describe the Support Package Upgrade process step by step, covering the SPAM execution, the ABAP Stack, the JAVA Stack and the Kernel Upgrade.

Please comment and visit SAPLAB.org for the rest of the series. Thanks!