Central system monitoring for service providers

[Former Member]

Hello Solman-experts!
We have own SAP systems and we act as service provider for our customers.
In order to monitor all the systems (own and those of customers) we would like to roll out the functions of central system monitoring CCMS delivering from own Solution Manager.
Can we do it in one/own Solution Manager (integration of all the systems in one/main client of Solution Manager) or we “must” use separate Solution Manager of each customers?

Thank you!

kind regards

[jon_friesen2]

I want to concur with what Jansi and Prakhar said.  It is common for hosting companies to monitor hundreds and hundreds of customer systems from a single SolMan using Central CCMS.  I've seen this done at several hosting companies.

But the new Technical Monitoring will probably work better for you; for one thing, it is much easier to manage thresholds centrally (rather than in CCMS where the thresholds are stored locally on each system) and also there is much better support for non-ABAP systems.  Also the use of the SLD to automatically populate the system landscape information in SolMan saves you some data entry.  And the Diagnostics Agents are much more stable than the CCMS agents ever were.

However it is worth noting that 4.6C and below is not yet supported in Technical Monitoring so if your mix of customers includes some old systems, CCMS will be your only option. 

[Former Member]

Hello!

Many thanks!

>It is common for hosting companies to monitor hundreds and hundreds of customer systems >from a single SolMan using Central CCMS.  I've seen this done at several hosting companies.

Which status/license model (hosting partner, gold partner, etc.) should have the service provider allowing him to provide the central system monitoring functions (ccms) from Solution Manager for all the customers?

What I have found on site service.sap.com/var-partner --> SAP Solution Manager for Partners --> Service Provider Information

The Hosting Partners are serving midsize and larger enterprise customers. So the recommendation for those is to run a separate SAP Solution Manager per customer. As the SAP Solution Manager is not a multi client SAP system, it is necessary to install a SAP instance for each customer.

[jon_friesen2]

Hi Alex,

Maybe I misunderstood your scenario.  I thought you were talking about a service provider centrally monitoring their customer systems.  For this scenario, a central SolMan is appropriate, including (and especially) for hosting partners as well as other service providers.  The central SolMan is also appropriate for centralized EWA and Maintenance Optimizer activities.  Customers would not have access to the central SolMan, but since the hosting partner is the one who is responsible for monitoring and basis administration, the customers would not need access to it for these scenarios anyways.

However, each customer should also have their own SolMan, for other scenarios such as ChaRM, test workbench, solution documentation, business process monitoring, etc.  These are scenarios where the customer themselves need access to the SolMan.  As an aside, one nice thing about SolMan 7.1's technical monitoring (compared to CCMS) is that it is perfectly feasible to have two SolMans monitoring the customer (the central one owned by the hosting partner, and the customer's own SolMan) with no conflict. 

Regarding licensing, you will want to talk to your Partner Service Advisor.  Different types of partners may have access to different license models.  There's a new licensing model under the RunSAP program which specifically allows a RunSAP partner to use a central SolMan for monitoring their customers, for example.

[Former Member]

Hello Jon,

no, I think you got me right.

I talking about the central Solution Manager system of service provider in order to monitor their customers with different license models and contracts (VAR, non-VAR, maintenance contract, etc.).

In this case those customers do not have their own Solution Manager, but all the required services will be provided from the central Solution Manager of service provider (e.g. EWA/SLR, maintenance certificates, MOPZ).

Additionally the service provider would like to integrate all the customers SAP systems into his own Solution Manager for central system monitoring (ccms).  The customers do not have access to the Solution Manager of service provider.

And now the question

Does this service provider need any special status/license in order to monitor all the customers centrally from his own Solution Manager?

If it is allowed, why SAP published this picture for the usage of Solution Manager for partners?

[jon_friesen2]

Hi Alex,

Hopefully someone from SAP will read this thread and clarify the licensing options for you.  Your PSA should be able to help.  I am certain that licenses are available to channel partners (VARs) and hosting partners but don't know the details of how much it costs or what the licensing terms are. 

The image you shared is confusing and contradicts itself (since for hosting partners it refers both to "one Solution Manager per customer" and yet "no dashboard functionality in CENTRAL SAP Solution Manager") and I think it is not oriented so much towards licensing options, but rather to appropriate functionality.  For example I think it is saying that a large Enterprise Support customer should have their own Solution Manager (definitely true), which would be appropriate for joint use by the customer and hosting partner for Diagnostics capabilities for example, but this does not preclude the hosting partner from having their own central SolMan for centralized monitoring.  I am not aware of any hosting partner who attempts the folly of monitoring 50 customers with 50 SolMans

[Former Member]

>I am not aware of any hosting partner who attempts the folly of monitoring 50 customers with 50 SolMans

This is exactly my opinion on that issue.

Otherwise I am wondering that I cannot yet find some official information besides the slide/picture above.

[Former Member]

Hi Jon,

I appreciate it has been some time since this thread was active but we are in a similar scenario whereby the hosting partner will use their own Solman instance for monitoring and maintenance management of the Project landscape, while our BAU support partner will utilize our internal Solman instance for monitoring and maintenance management of BAU landscape. We are looking to expand the scope of internal Solman to Project/Change/Test/Transport/Upgrade Management and Analytics.

You said it is possible with the new infrastructure to have more than one Solmans. Have you seen this work? Multiple SMD agents can be deployed for ABAP systems but this will not work for Java systems. I have opened a new thread here. Can you please expand on your answer?

Thanks.

[jon_friesen2]

Hi Sherhryar,

Yes this definitely works.  Even for non-hosted customers, it is common to have Dev systems monitored both by the Dev SolMan (for testing purposes) and the Prod SolMan (for actual monitoring).  The key is that both SolMans pull data from the same Introscope instance (so each hosted customer should have their own Introscope if they want to use their own SolMan). It's true there can be only one Java bytecode agent for each Java system, which reports to the customer's Introscope instance, but both SolMans can pull from the same Introscope.  This scenario is briefly depicted in the attachment to note 1365123 on slides 13 and 14, where they show a QA system monitored both by a Dev SolMan and Prod SolMan.

So as far as Introscope is concerned the data flow looks like this for ABAP and Java (with "DAA" being the diagnostics agent used by the customer, and "DAH" being the diagnostics agent used by the hosting partner):

[Customer ABAP] ---> [DAA agent] ---> [Customer Introscope]

[Customer ABAP] ---> [DAH agent] ---> [Customer Introscope]

[Customer Java] ---> [DAA agent] ---> [Customer Introscope]

[Customer Java] ---> [DAH agent] ---> [Customer Introscope]

[Customer Java] ---> [bytecode agent] ---> [Customer Introscope]

In Introscope (under the "lens") you will see multiple diagnostics agents and one bytecode agent, all feeding data into the Introscope system.  Meanwhile both the customer SolMan and the hosting SolMan will be pulling data out of Introscope. 

Note that there are a few other datafeeds into the SolMan to be aware of, besides the data from Introscope.  The DAA agent itself sends certain data directly to its SolMan and skips Introscope; in my example the DAA agent would send directly to the customer SolMan and the DAH agent would send to the hosting SolMan.  Also each SolMan will have a DBACOCKPIT connection to the monitored database (and I recommend having a separate database user for each connection).

Feel free to reach out to me or hook me up with your hosting partner if you need more specific assistance.

[Former Member]

Thanks Jon. This is quite helpful.

From system monitoring point of view then, this should enable us to utilize our own Solman instance for monitoring and maintenance management. What about other ALM areas like Project Management, Change Management, Quality Gate Management, Test Management, EhP Scope and Effort analysis, Custom Code Management, Business Process Monitoring, etc. Have you seen these working in federated landscape also?

Thanks.

[jon_friesen2]

Hi Shehryar,

In general all of those functions can coexist with multiple Solution Managers (as of SolMan 7.1). Two nuances:

• if you use the "help" menu in a satellite system to submit Incidents to a central SolMan, it can only connect to one of the SolMans
• if you use Cross System Object Lock in conjunction with ChaRM, only one of the SolMans can hold the locks.  This would generally be your own SolMan and not the service provider's

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post links like this on the SDN, but I'm doing a webinar on these kinds of topics in January 2014 in case you are interested: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7526891919954708481.

[Former Member]

Thanks Jon. This is really helpful.

I have registered for the webinar as well. I don't see any reason why you can't post the links here but it might be good to ask the SCN team and also publish the link on the SCN landing page to reach wider audience.

Regards.

[Former Member]

Hello,

where do you got that picutre from?

i tried to google it up, but only got back to this thread.

I just spoke with the sap hosting certification team. It is true what is point out in that picutre, on the other side it totally contrary to the marketing aspect. There should be no SAP Hosting Provider going with the approach one solution manager per customer. The effort would kill any use of the solman.

Please let me know where i could get those information you pointed out.

[Former Member]

Hello Rainer,

the picture you will get via Solution Manager site on SAP Service Marketplace:

http://service.sap.com/solutionmanager --> SAP Solution Manager for Partners --> Service Provider Information

[Former Member]

Hi Alex,

this one is funny. You can only access the link you provided as an VAR Partner.

It is not possible for a sap hosting partner to get that information.

Also i asked the sap hosting team to provide me the information stored there. It seems like the picture is gone.

kind regards,

Rainer

[Former Member]

Hi,

you can do for one solution manager with separte solution, I had seen some customers using.

But I prefer dont use CCMS monitoring now. go for TechMon System monitoring with SMD agent.

And also your solution manager would be in HA to handle all systems ( even it its exceed 20 more systems) you must make sure all Hard ware and memory align to the scenario, can get it via quicksizer or Solman sizing kit in service.sap.com/instguides

Thanks

Jansi

[Former Member]

Hello!

Because we have a mixed customer structure with standard and enterprise support customers we cannot activate the new monitoring and alerting infrastructure (MAI) for all the customers due to license reasons.

The question still is the usage of one central Solution Manager system for central system monitoring (CCMS) for all the customers?

SAP recommends in this case the usage of separate Solution Manager for each customer.

Whether it is just recommendation or the "must condition" cannot be clarified yet...

[Former Member]

hi,

Technically it is posible, solution manager do support multiple customer number, one of the best usecase is the VAR scenairo. please refer

http://www.slideshare.net/wlacaze/sap-solman-work-several-customer-numbers-presentation

But I am not sure,  if SAP recommended to do separate solman, do check with them again. They are the one can answer you finally, whereas ours only view.

Thanks

Jansi

[prakhar_saxena]

Hi Alex,

Just to add,

CCMS will be completely replaced with MAI as per my latest discussion with SAP so it will be better if you can slowly move remaining customers from CCMS to MAI.

But this is not going to happen very soon and will take time.

CCMS has lot of problems and that is why MAI is been introduced and it really works in a fabulous way so if you can present other customers a business case highlighting the advantages of replacing it and new features with MAI .......I presume they will go for it.

Many of my customers are already going for it and we are even replacing it in a similar fashion as part of upgrade or enhancement etc

But again this is all based upon our experiences ...finally its your choice

all the best

Regards

Prakhar