Beyond the Application Level—Best Practices for Your SAP Systems

SAP's decision to use open source infrastructure for Hana, NetWeaver and other ERP components brought new opportunities and challenges. The Unix systems previously used were considered extremely robust and thoroughly tested. The new environment has to replicate this reliability, while reducing costs and enabling faster updates.

The focus is on business-critical systems and applications. These must be designed for their intended purpose, operated with high availability, regularly maintained, secured and updated on schedule.

Best practices at a glance

If the necessary expertise is lacking internally, external expertise should be brought in to design your environment correctly. If an external service provider operates or manages SAP for your company, make sure that they have this expertise - or ask them to bring in the relevant specialists. Ideally, this step should be taken during the planning phase to avoid having to make corrections later on. Sound advice can not only prevent technical errors, but also help to identify and exploit process potential at an early stage.

Rely on established approaches to high availability. Use portable, supported components - such as certified Linux. Cloud-native technologies such as SAP's Edge Integration Cell require flexible strategies, such as container management. Where possible, rely on proven technologies and avoid dependence on a specific provider. If certain applications require a robust disaster recovery concept, this should be part of the planning and budget. Regularly check your backup and restore processes and carry out test scenarios so that you can react quickly and in a structured manner in the event of an emergency. Monitoring and alerting systems should also be implemented at an early stage.

Use suitable management tools: Whether on-premises or in the public cloud, user-friendly and powerful infrastructure management tools help to keep systems up to date, avoid outages and minimize security risks.

Invest in security and training: In addition to regular patches and updates, new vulnerabilities (CVEs) that emerge weekly require a rapid response. Suse Live Patching enables critical updates in the Linux kernel and Hana components without rebooting. Training in the use of such tools is straightforward and available online. Many companies carry out SAP infrastructure audits to assess and document the security situation. In addition, employees should be regularly informed about current threats and trained in security guidelines. Investments in awareness programs and recurring training courses strengthen security awareness in the long term.

Long-term infrastructure planning: A 3 to 5-year plan should take into account updates to SAP components, operating systems, firmware and more. Unscheduled projects such as server upgrades or cloud migrations should also be planned early to avoid disruptions and delays. Regularly reviewing and adapting the plan to new technological developments or business requirements will ensure that your SAP landscape remains future-proof.

Future-proof operation

With these measures, SAP ERP operations can be made stable and future-proof - whether for ECC 6.0 in your own data center or for a complete S/4 migration to the cloud. If an external provider is commissioned, they should implement the best practices mentioned. Good luck!

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