As of Solution Manager 7.1, the technical system editor lets you create and maintain landscape information in the Landscape Management Database (transaction LMDB). LMDB initially was meant to provide a better methodology to manage the system landscape information. However, there were continued tasks that led to the simultaneous use of both SMSY and LMDB to maintain consistent system landscape information. With Support Package 05, this information has been further updated, and further enhancements to LMDB allow maintenance of system landscape information. 

The main business benefit of this approach in the long term over the eight Support Packages of Solution Manager 7.1 is that you have a single system of record to enable maintenance and administration of the entire SAP landscape. This enables streamlining of effort during planning phases for upgrades and also for establishing maintenance windows for different tiers of landscapes.

I’ll walk you through the key recent enhancements to the LMDB with an emphasis on Support Package 05 and typical use cases for using that information.

Landscape Verification Integration

Administrators of system landscapes rely on the accuracy of data in Solution Manager to ensure that they have the updated system information while downloading Support Packages from the maintenance optimizer. In a complex SAP landscape, it makes more sense to use the landscape verification tool in collaboration with transaction LMDB or SMSY to identify and correct landscape information-relevant errors. With Support Package 05, the landscape verification tool has been brought within the LMDB. Figure 1 shows the view within the landscape verification transaction LVSM.

Figure 1

Landscape verification tool

The landscape verification tool is especially useful when fixing consistency issues of system information between Solution Manager and the System Landscape Directory (SLD). Some other typical use cases of the landscape verification tool include fixing the incorrect assignment of technical systems or product systems within the SLD.

Product system information is not provided by the SLD and has to be manually created and maintained in the LMDB. There are two ways to access the editor. You can navigate using the Solution Manager Administration work center by clicking Landscape in the screen in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Click Landscape

In the resulting screen under Type Selection, select Product Systems, which gives you the options shown in Figure 3.  

Figure 3

Product Systems options

Select the appropriate system and click the Edit button to produce the screen in Figure 4. Here you can maintain additional information for the systems.

Figure 4

System information overview (product system)

The verification status for this system is currently shown to be unknown. Select Verification status unknown and click Execute Verification Check (Asynchronous) to run the check (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Verification check for the product system

The verification process indicates an error in the system information based on the system information maintained in the SLD for the highlighted system (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Verification check results

If there are potential errors in the verification process, click the icon in the Info column to bring up the screen in Figure 7, where you can review them.

Figure 7

Verification check details

Another feature is the ability to directly maintain these attributes right within LMDB. In the screen in Figure 8, click the Maintain button to bring up the pop-up screen in Figure 9.

Figure 8

Click the Maintain button

Figure 9

System information screen

Select recommendations to product assignments based on either proposals or product instances. I’m focusing on proposals, so in this example I click the icon in the Proposal column for the appropriate system (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Selection of system change based on proposals

The recommendation provides you the information shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11

Automated recommendations based on proposals for system type

If additional functions of Solution Manager, such as Change Request Management (ChaRM), are being used, you see the alert shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12

Interlinked dependencies between LMDB and ChaRM

Similarly for the Java stack of the same system, you see the information shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13

Information on the dependencies in this example

This way system administration groups can benefit from performing landscape verification checks using the LMDB tool.

Create and Maintain New Product Systems

Until Support Package 05, new product systems were created only in transaction SMSY. With Support Package 05, managing product systems becomes easier by using the LMDB tool to manage the changes and create new product systems (Figure 14). I’ll use the same usage scenario as before.

Figure 14

The LMDB transaction entry screen

The LMDB potentially acts as the central repository of system information in Solution Manager, replacing SMSY. I highly recommend you update existing product system information in LMDB as soon as possible after upgrading to Support Package 05.

Integration with the Maintenance Optimizer

The integration of LMDB into the maintenance optimizer is also a new feature of Support Package 05. This way for a known and well-defined system, product maintenance can be directly performed as part of the maintenance strategy. The Where Used button in this case becomes equally important. You have to remember that though not explicitly indicated, technical and product systems are related to each other. Figure 15 shows how the technical and the product system relate to each other, and thus enable synchronized use of the maintenance optimizer to perform system updates.

Figure 15

The relationship between product and technical systems

At this point it’s important to make the distinction between the product and the technical system. A product system is a collection of similar technological product types (e.g., ERP, LiveCache, SRM, or CRM). A technical system, on the other hand, is a single system or environment that acts as a part of the bigger picture, such as a development system in the ERP environment. Technical systems are contained in logical components, and logical components are controlled to manage a release.

Another key term that administrators are expected to understand moving forward is the hub pattern or sidecar pattern of the technical systems within the landscape. When a technical system is being used in a single product system and has only one active product version, it’s called a sidecar pattern-based landscape. The active product version of the landscape helps determine the target status within the maintenance optimizer and helps plan for the upgrade effort. When it’s used in a single product system, it’s called a sidecar. When technical systems use more than one product system and thus can be separately maintained, so that the technical system is part of each of these maintenance transactions, that technical system pattern is called the hub pattern. Further elaboration on this topic is out of scope of this article.

Now I’ll explain some key administration tips for LMDB.

Forced Synchronization of a Single System to LMDB

Sometimes you face a situation that can lead you to manually resynchronize your system data with the SLD. There are two ways in which this can be resolved. The first is to use transaction LMDB_ADM (Figure 16).

Figure 16

Transaction LMDB_ADM

The screen in Figure 17 shows a host of administrative functions that you can perform with transaction LMDB_ADM.

Figure 17

Operational options for transaction LMDB_ADM

The instance and the change log browser also allow for viewing the activities performed (History view) or associated instances and memory use data for the LMDB server.

The second option is to run the report RLDMB_SYNC_TECHNICAL_SYSTEM, which has been particularly useful to me while trying to synchronize with a single system (Figure 18). Select the appropriate SLD (Figure 19).

Figure 18

Running a single system synchronization report

Figure 19

Select the SLD

I highly recommend checking the Detailed Trace indicator to obtain accurate details about the following resynchronized objects:

• Select the Simulate (do not save changes) indicator
• Don’t select the Delete before Resync option for the simulation run. Instead this is useful when you are performing a dry run to see if there is indeed data inconsistency.
• Run the report to check which changes would be performed by a resynchronization
• When you are sure that the report will achieve the desired result, uncheck the Simulate indicator

After performing the upgrade to Support Package 05 or 06, a common error is that the LMDB destination is not found, even though the destination, the fully qualified domain name (FQDN), and the server name or namespace are active. To resolve this, see SAP Note 0001664132.

SAP and industry experts recommend that Content Repository (CR) content and the Common Information Model (CIM) content on the SLD be maintained at the latest level to allow for optimal synchronization.