Admin Center Instance Refresh

[Elizabeth_Ruck]

Good Day SF Community,

Does anyone have experience with using the Admin Center Instance Refresh tool? I am posting this in the Life Science LMS board because: 1. the Platform community post redirects to Help Center with old expired URLs; and 2. there seems to be some additional limitation for validated customers.

I am specifically interested in Configuration Copy (Instance Synchronization). This feature could come in handy during validation efforts by allow changes in our test instance to be migrate it to the live environment once all testing is approved versus doing manual configuration and testing a second time. However, it was indicated that this particular feature should not be used when setting it up. There were no boundaries, reasoning, or background provided for this comment.

Any insight/experience would be helpful.

[JeroenT]

We also have some questions on the instance refresh functionality.  Maybe this KBA is helpful for you: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2791468

We opened a ticket with SAP, but  our main issue is that we do see the possibility to schedule an instance refresh for BizX. It only isn't available for LMS . Maybe  somebody knows if this is because of our LMS being a validated environment? The KBA states that we should be able as we are in DC2

We also need to provide a confirmation to our Quality control department in order to have the Validation Approved. The system seems to provide a timestamp in the instance refresh tool, but doesn't provide much information, e.g.  from which instance to which instance the copy has been made. 

If we are not allowed to do this ourselves, until now SAP didn't seem to be able to provide proof of this refresh which poses a major issue from quality perspective. Maybe somebody has experience with this or knows  if there is any place in the system (learning administration / environment) where we can find these details of the system copy as a proof.

[Elizabeth_Ruck]

Our team has setup the refresh tool following the KB. Just recently we completed test run using the Preview as the source and Sandbox as the target. Initial review has shown that configuration was copied successfully. However, our test run was a Full Copy (Instance Refresh) as we were directed not to use the Configuration Copy (Instance Synchronization). This will limited the use of this feature for us. I have not found any documentation or reason as to why we should not use the Instance Synchronization. Any information or experience on Instance Synchronization would be helpful.

The LMS refresh is a different process which is not automated at this time https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2165346. The automated process is still a beta phase https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2835061. Regarding the Source and Target, this is setup by the Admin user as a prerequisite step. Once the run is complete, one can download the log that documents the date, status, source, and target.

If we can use Instance Synchronization, I will most likely include this as a UR and test correctness such that all future use will be validate. We have a very limited use of platform such that the risk is low. However, if I cannot use Instance Refresh and must syn data too, it will likely require testing activities each time used (data migration/data integrity).