A few questions about LVM...

[Former Member]

1. From what I heard from experienced administrators, LVM is quite cumbersome to configure.

Setting up an LVM-managed landscape can be extremely time-consuming and error-prone, they claim.

For example, to be able to use the post-copy automation component, you have to implement up to 200 SAP Notes,

depending on the NetWeaver release. This on its own can take a couple of days.

Are you planning to automate the setup process?

2. In addtion, I learned about severe quality issues and prolonged support message processing.
Is product quality properly ensured?

3. LVM's enterprise edition supports an automated, end-to-end system copy process.

How many customers are currently using this feature in their PROD environment, and what are their time savings?

4. Does LVM support dual-stack system copies?

5. Other products available in the market support parallel and synchronous system copies, meaning automated landscape copies.

Will LVM offer such a feature in the near future?

6. Apart from system copy functionality, what are other key features of enterprise edition?

7. LVM's enterprise edition involves staggering license costs per source system to be copied.

Other products in the market are definitely more affordable while providing similar or even more advanced functionality.

What's so special about LVM to justify such outstanding license costs?

8. Is there any ROI calculation model available?

Thanks,

Ron

[markus_winter · Accepted solution]

Dear Ron,

too bad we missed each other at SAP TechEd in Vegas - I am sure we could have clarified many questions directly in our sessions.

Let me try to answer here - and I do highly recommend our SAP TechEd material that is on the USB thumb drive and available online for participants.

1)  LVM is a tool for the SAP Basis administrator that helps to standardize and automate the basis operations of SAP environments.

The basic LVM installation is pretty straightforward and can be completed in half a day.

Depending on the level of standardization and automation features one would like to use, there are of course standardization requirements towards the managed landscapes.

Customers who have their landscapes already pretty much standardized and up-to-date do not see any major issues.

LVM requires the SAP Host Agent for basic operations - no other agent needed.

With this in place already a big portion of standard LVM features can be used.

For the automation of the end-to-end SAP System Provisioning features in LVM (Clone / Copy / Refresh), there are more requirements on an overall standardized infrastructure and system setup.

The SAP notes you are referring to depend on the base release you are coming from for the third step of a SAP System Copy automation  - the so called SAP Post Copy Automation (PCA) component for ABAP and Java.

We provide the SAP Note Analyzer that helps customers to identify what needs to be implemented into their specific setup.

2) LVM has been used as an SAP-internal tool for many years - and we do have a very large SAP-internal “testbed” for all LVM releases.

LVM performance and quality is taken very seriously.

If there are any issues in processing customer tickets, please forward them directly.

3) We have many SAP customers - including SAP itself - and Service Providers who rely on SAP LVM, both the “Standard” edition, which is available to all SAP NetWeaver customers at no additional charge, and the “Enterprise” edition, which requires a product license.

Please see SAP SCN for several reference customer stories.

4) SAP is moving away from SAP Dual Stack installations. Therefore SAP LVM is not supporting dual-stack System Copies. We recommend to proceed with the required stack split.

However, you can use SAP LVM with a dual stack system by using the ABAP System Copy  - then running the Java PCA procedures as a secondary stand-alone step. This is a working routine for most customers - but not the strategy for moving forward.

5) There is no other product in the market that can support native SAP System copies beyond SAP Basis like LVM - including SAP application specific post copy operations (e.g. for BW, CRM, etc.)

With LVM 2.1 we introduced the support of executing synchronized clones on storage level that can be used for sequential landscape copies.  With the in-place SAP BW System Refresh / Copy routine, we do support BW in landscape setups.

We plan to continue to invest in the direction of SAP Landscape operations.

6) The Enterprise Edition has many other features beyond SAP Provisioning (Clone/Copy/Refresh): Configurable Dashboards, Built-in Reporting, Global Search, Landscape Visualization, HANA Management / Data Center features, Automatic Capacity Management for Dialog Instances, Performance Monitoring, Customization Options like custom tabs, custom provisioning; detect multi-node databases; near-zero-downtime management, SAP rolling kernel maintenance, etc.

7) LVM Enterprise edition is licensed by the overall number of managed systems - plus the System Clone/Copy/Refresh option by the number of source systems that shall be used for clone/copy/refresh operations - with unlimited number of clone/copy/refresh operations.

LVM is the only product from SAP that addresses the basis management of SAP systems in such a holistic fashion.

LVM is not just only about SAP System Copy - but a solution that helps to standardize and automate entire SAP landscape operations.

With regards to SAP System Copy it is the only product in the market that can deal with the complexity and details of a wide range of SAP products and their specific automation requirements during an SAP System copy / refresh procedure.

😎 We did not publish an official ROI model - but we did help some of our customers on the ROI calculation, where needed.

The LVM case is pretty straight forward, when you pick the classical areas of SAP operations and the benefit of a standardized, automated operation that delivers reliable high-quality repeatable results - and makes everyday life of the basis admin a lot easier.

Overall I can highly recommend our SAP SCN page for LVM with much more information - and in particular our FAQ page that will guide you to more details - especially around SAP System Copy/Refresh.

Thanks & regards,

Markus

[Akshay_G · Accepted solution]

Hi Markus,

I had few questions related to LVM, which I had asked in another thread here

Would appreciate if you can throw some light.

Posting it here:

I have a very Basic question to ask about LVM at the cost of being looked down (But I am still trying to learn and find more about LVM).

We are starting to evaluate the LVM and its automated capabilities to perform System Refresh and Copies. In particular, our objective is to perform System Refreshes. So far we have TDMS set up by which we do System refreshes bi-yearly and it has got lot of challenges as the Production Database is huge (Upto 15 TBs), so we are kind of looking at a lean solution that can help us Automate (Totally LVM capability, isnt it?), perform faster refreshes and more frequently.

With so far what I have been able to learn about LVM is that, it can almost automate all the steps for performing a System Copy, post system copy steps (For that matter System Refresh as well). What I would like to find out is that does, the LVM Solution can reduce the "runtime" of system refresh activities by great factor for very large production environments? Or the time savings of system refresh is only the effect of automation of tasks i.e. No as such real break-through in term of the traditional steps involved during system refresh/copy such as Backup/Restore of the Database?

Can LVM also possibly expedite the System Refresh beyond the times saved by automating the steps involved? We are looking for a solution to Refresh System in recurring fashion frequently (like each week). LVM seems to be a good tool to automate the step, but does it help to expedite the refresh by leaps and bounds?

Please help understand or point to to right resource/documentation. I have gone through the LVM notes and roadmap, but couldn't find any significant information on what I am trying to figure out.

Would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks & Have a nice day,

Akshay

[markus_winter · Accepted solution]

Dear Akshay,

LVM is in deed a tool that can help you to automate many of the routine tasks of SAP Basis administration. In particular for SAP System Copies and Refresh operations, LVM can provide an end-to-end automation. In high-level this consist of three steps:

1) SAP System Clone

=> physical clone of the storage volumes or the virtual machine.

This is triggered via partner technology from the hypervisor or the storage management system.

When using e.g. snapshot technologies, this can be a huge time-saving when performing System Copies.

Please refer to your storage partner for more details.

2) SAP System Rename + Isolation

The system gets isolated and System Rename operation is performed

3) Post Copy Automation Routines

This step happens inside the SAP ABAP / JAVA system => we provide task lists that can be adjusted to customer needs and help to automate all the required steps, specific for the application (Basis, BW, CRM, etc.)

With LVM PCA we also perform improvements in BDLS that will reduce the overall runtime significantly.

In our FAQ page you can find more details on PCA, BDLS, System Copy Automation with further links to details.

Thanks & regards,

Markus

[Akshay_G · Accepted solution]

Thanks Markus.

The main challenge is the huge size of the DB and as you say that LVM supports to automate the cloning of storage volumes or doing the snap-shots using the storage partner technologies it should help in that regards and additionally BDLS improvements will further cut short the time.

Is there any guide/documentation that can provide more details to move one step forward from here i.e. How LVM automates the storage cloning? I am just trying to find more as much as I can..

Thanks,

Akshay

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks a lot, Markus, for your elaborate repy.

One of my customers is currently evaluating various orchestration tools with a special focus on automated system copy and capacity management. Apart from LVM, products from other vendors such as Libelle, Automic and Redwood are being evaluated.

What makes LVM stand out against these products regarding these features?

Thanks,

Ron

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

What makes LVM stand out against other products such as Libelle, Automic and Redwood?

One of my customers is currently evaluating various orchestration tools with a special focus on automated system copy and capacity management. This customer has a large landscape with 200+ systems, with about 40 systems to be refreshed once a month from their source systems in a synchronized manner. Are there any LVM reference customers with a similarly large landscape that are doing a synchronized, fully automated landscape refresh? Are there any reference customers using fully automatic capacity management?

Thanks,

Ron

[adarshs_kapoor · Accepted solution]

Hi Ron,

LVM provides E2E automation for SAP system copy/refresh operation including automation of post-copy tasks for both ABAP and Java applications including SAP HANA systems.

LVM has much more to offer in addition to automation of SAP copy/refresh operations but, when it comes to automating the provisioning of SAP systems (like clone, copy, refresh, rename, application server, PCA) we are confident that we have by far the best solution in this space and who would understand the SAP applications better than us? 🙂

Landscape refresh is a topic that we are currently evaluating and this is very much on our roadmap (planned for future). As far as large customers are concerned, many large SAP customers like Bosch, T-Systems are currently using LVM to fully automate their SAP system copies/refreshes and much more and some of these customer references are publically available on our SCN page as well (more to come).

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-56471

If you would like to learn more about our solution and its competetive positioning and discuss how it could help in addressing some of the business challanges/use-cases for your customers, I would recommend to setup a call with our team and discuss that in detail.

Best Regards,

Adarsh

[adarshs_kapoor · Accepted solution]

Hi Akshay,

Yes, LVM supports both storage-based and VM-based system copy/refresh for SAP systems. Since you would typically use the storage snapshot to clone the volumes, it's really fast and E2E automation that LVM provides for SAP system copy/refresh operations including automation for post-copy processing tasks (PCA) significantly reduces the turnaround time for SAP system copies and refreshes as compared to other approaches.

In addition, we provide BDLS optimizations that are built-into the PCA (post-copy automation) tool which can help reduce the BDLS runtime by up to 50% in most cases as compared to standard BDLS.

You can find more info. on PCA and BDLS including best practice guides and whitepapers on our SCN space here:  http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-43270

Additionally, you can refer to our official product documentation on SAP Help Portal:

SAP Landscape Virtualization Management 2.1, Enterprise Edition – SAP Help Portal Page

Hope this helps!

lemme know if you have additional questions...

Best Regards,

Adarsh

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Adarsh,

other vendors such as Automic claim they can copy an entire SAP solution landscape in a parallel and synchronized way, with full automation. This is mentioned in their success story about their customer REHAU. You said that LVM will provide such a feature in the future. When will this be available?

Thanks,

Ron

[Former Member]

LVM claims to support NetWeaver Java system copies. Is this an automated end-to-end process? Is this feature available for dual stacks? Are there any references available? How many customers use this in their PROD environment?