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SAP IBP Blog 11 - Landscape Options, transports and tenant copy

rudimeyfarth
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎03-22-2022 11:03 AM
*********************  Update Dec 2023   ******************

Further updates on SAP IBP landscape options & transports, please refer to this SAP Support Content page: SAP IBP: Landscape Options, transports and tenant copy

*********************************************************

This blog post is about the landscape options (2-tier and multi-tier), the transport between tenants, the transfer of data between planning areas and in exceptional cases a tenant copy for SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain, short SAP IBP.

Many SAP colleagues contributed to this blog: Irmhild Kuntze (SAP Consulting), Harry Dietz, Michael Mack, Venkat Madireddi (SAP Product Management),  Bryan Charnock (SAP Solution Management), Alejandro Flores and Rudi Meyfarth (SAP post-sales organization).

A remark considering the abbreviation CI-DS: Officially CI-DS is called SAP Cloud Integration for Data Services and formerly known as CPI-DS or HCI.

We divided the blog into the following chapters: 

A) The SAP IBP landscape options, meaning a 2-tier consisting of one Test and one Production tenant, or multi-tier, i.e., more than 1 Test tenant and one Production Tenant.
B) The transport mechanism between SAP IBP tenants
C) Transfer of data between planning areas
D) In execptional cases a copy of an SAP IBP tenant performed by SAP 

To the purpose of brevity, the following abbreviations are used: 

  • DEV = Development tenant/environment 

  • QA = Quality tenant/environment 

  • PROD = Production tenant/environment 


 

A) SAP IBP Landscape Options


With the standard SAP IBP subscription from July 2019 on, the IBP landscape consists of one Test and one Production tenant. Customers can buy additional test tenants which requires an additional subscription.

More than 90% of IBP customers are using a 2-tier landscape and it works perfectly fine for them. Only a few customers acquire additional test tenants, which can be bought at same time as the IBP subscription, or later.

Regarding CI-DS (SAP Cloud Integration for Data Services):

  • For CI-DS one tenant is provisioned for the IBP environment, independent of the number of IBP tenants

  • The CI-DS tenant comes with a Sandbox and a production environment

  • For > 2-tier IBP landscape, customers could request in exceptional cases sub-organizations in the CI-DS tenant





    • Please see the SAP Help Link how to work with CI-DS in multiple environments.

    • To request sub-organizations, please create a ticket for CI-DS cloud Ops on component “LOD-HCI-DS-OPS” and SAP Cloud Ops will enable the sub-organization.




Here a comparison of single vs multiple org setup for CI-DS (provided by Parveen Kumar): 























Single Org Setup Multiple Org Setup
Single Promote to Prod Two step promote to production
Doesn't require separate agent Requires a separate agent
Less separation of concerns Proper separation of concern
Easy Setup and maintenance Requires extra setup and maintenance

 

2 tenant landscape: DEV/QA -> PROD

Benefits:

  • Comes with standard subscription, no additional costs involved


Considerations:

  • Every export will show up in production in the import queue which could include untested  content

  • There is a risk that not all required objects are part of the export collection

  • No tenant copy possible from PROD to DEV


3 tenant landscape, sequential alignment: DEV -> QA -> PROD

Benefits:

  • Clean separation of development and quality/test activities:





    • Ensures that everything forwarded to production is tested

    • Ensures that everything needed in production is exported from development

    • Different user groups like “developers” and “testers” can be assigned different authorizations





  • In exceptional cases a copy of production onto QA system is possible (please see also chapter “Tenant copy)”


Considerations:

  • A subscription to an additional Test tenant is required (higher cost)

  • Administration of 3 instead of 2 IBP tenants


3 tenant landscape, parallel alignment: DEV -> QA and DEV -> PROD in parallel

Benefits:

  • During upgrade phase DEV -> PROD could be possible if ticket is created for keeping systems in sync


Considerations:

  • QA tenant does not act as gatekeeper for PROD and all exports from DEV reach import queue of PROD

  • A subscription to an additional Test tenant is required (higher cost)

  • Administration of 3 instead of 2 IBP tenants


4 tenant landscape: DEV -> QA -> PRE-PROD -> PROD

Benefits:

  • Enables further separation of activities: configuration or IT test/quality activities versus test/quality activities with end-users in pre-production


Considerations:

  • A subscription to 2 additional Test tenants is required (higher cost)

  • Administration of 4 instead of 2 IBP tenants


Summary slide of pros and cons for 2-tier vs 3-tier: 


 

B) Transport mechanism between SAP IBP tenants


The current transport mechanism between IBP tenants was introduced in 2021 and has been rolled out to customers in waves until release 2111.
Usually this transport mechanism is called "New Export/Import for IBP" or “Collection-based Export/Import”.
Sometimes it´s also called ATO = Adaptation Transport Organizer.

To get an overview please read this SAP Help article first, also showing the different landscape options: 2-tier and > 2-tier.

Here some useful links that help understand how the transport mechanism of SAP IBP works:

 

C) Transfer of data between planning areas


Transfer of IBP configuration data between planning areas of different tenants

From SAP IBP release 2111 on, a tool is available which allows customers to download planning area configuration as a file and upload it to another planning area. The upload will behave as if one would have done all changes manually in the upload system:

Transfer of IBP master and transactional data between planning areas

You can use the copy operator to copy transactional data (keyfigures) between planning areas in the same tenant. For master data there is currently no standard function to copy between planning areas.
For transfer of transactional or master data across tenants there is currently no tool available.
There exists a customer influence item for this requirement, and you can influence with your vote the priorities of the IBP roadmap. SAP IBP Influence Portal.

A workaround is, for example, to manually up- and download transactional or master data via CI-DS.
Another manual option is to use the SAP IBP Excel add-in and go into the master data tab and copy data from the current Excel sheet into the target sheet (planning objects with keyfigure data).

Best Practices for Extracting Data from SAP IBP: SAP Help  , SAP Note 2493042

Section in the IBP Security Guide about data extraction: SAP IBP Security Guide - Data Extraction

 

D) In exceptional cases an SAP IBP tenant copy performed by SAP


The tenant copy for > 2-tier landscape is not a standard service that SAP offers, and each request will be evaluated before approval.
For > 2-tier landscape (e.g., 2 Test and 1 Production tenant) a system copy is possible, but not onto the Dev tenant. The tenant copy is only recommended for a new tenant, not for an existing landscape with one or more QA tenants.

For a 2-tier landscape the tenant copy is not possible.
The reason behind this is that overwriting (=copy) of a development tenant where configuration is done, would cause the loss of the so called "software collections" including the history of exports and changes to items. This information is only available in the development tenant.

To request an SAP IBP tenant copy the customer needs to create an incident:

  • Component:  SCM-IBP-OPS-SRV

  • Title: IBP tenant copy from source "SID" to destination "SID"





    • Remark: SID is the 3 letter System ID of the IBP tenant, for example ABC





  • Description should include:





    • Source and destination SID

    • Permission to copy tenant

    • Statement that customer is aware of the concept of the transport mechanism (SAP Note 3005534)

    • Date and time when tenant copy should be performed




Customers are asked to perform the following steps in the target tenant after a tenant copy:

  1. Once the target system is handed over after refresh, to avoid source system jobs being executed in the target system, ensure the below steps are taken care of by the customer:

    • Update the job settings: Remove Production flag and adjust agent group to align with CPI non-production connection. (If required (considering the environment of refresh))

    • Revert the outbound communication user setting back to WEBSERVICESUSER.

    • Revert the Communication System settings

    • Revert the Ariba specific settings (If applicable)

    • Reconfigure the SDI agents (If applicable)



  2. Please note that during the tenant refresh, the SDI users' passwords will be reset, requesting you to provide the customer email id so that we can share the credentials once the activity is completed.

  3. Analytic stories created in Manage Analytical Stories app will not be copied to target system. 


Copy of CI-DS tenants and export/import of tasks

Options to copy / transfer data flows from one CI-DS tenant to another:

  1. Manual export and import of all CI-DS tasks and customer needs to create all datastores in the new tenant

    • The responsibility lies with the Customer

    • For Export / Import of CI-DS Tasks please refer to SAP Help Link

    • For details on CI-DS Tasks, Processes, and Projects please check the SAP Help Link



  2. SAP CI-DS Operations can clone the old CI-DS tenant to new, but everything from the old tenant will be copied to new tenant

    • Customer needs to create incident with details (Component = LOD-HCI-DS-OPS)



  3. It is also possible to point the existing CI-DS tenant to new IBP system

    • Customer needs to create incident with details (Component = LOD-HCI-DS-OPS)



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