Tools which support your Upgrade from a technical and functional perspective

  

These days a lot of customers are in the planning or execution phase of an upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0. And especially during the planning phase customers ask for tools which support the execution from a technical and functional perspective.

In this blog I would like to give you some insights into the new ASU toolbox 2008 and the Upgrade Accelerator.

The so called Application-Specific Upgrade (ASU) toolbox is one of the tools which customers can use during the upgrade implementation.

The ASU toolbox

• provides you a detailed task overview of steps which you have to perform before and after your technical upgrade
• shows you a description of each step, links to the related SAP notes, and gives you the possibility to insert comments regarding this step
• gives you the chance to plan and organize your pre and post upgrade tasks to your own needs
• enables you to transport the once generated task list within your whole upgrade landscape
• and helps you to get the system quickly and with a minimum of effort and cost into a stable condition

The content of the ASU toolbox which helps you to recognize the necessary steps and perform them in a controlled manner during your upgrade project, is provided via XML file attached to SAP Note 1000009 - ASU toolbox 2008. This SAP note describes you the handling in detail. 

If you would like to use the ASU toolbox you can choose between two application cases:

• Stand-Alone Application Case, the steps are in this case executed independently before or after the upgrade. That means you can open the ASU related transactions anytime, not only during your upgrade implementation.
• Integration in the SAP Upgrade, the XML file in this case is already provided in initial form by the SAP upgrade process and is automatically updated by newer versions. That shows that the ASU toolbox uses the technology of the Upgrade Accelerator which is the tool described below.

Currently the ASU toolbox is only available for the AS ABAP and provided with the following ST-PI add-ons:

• ST-PI 2005_1_[46C, 620, 640] SP08,
• ST-PI 2005_1_700 SP06
• ST-PI 2005_1_710 SP04

The integration of ASU with the SAP system upgrade is currently only supported for SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP BI. Other applications will follow soon.

To operate the ASU toolbox the user needs the authorization for transactions /ASU/START, /ASU/UPGRADE and /ASU/SSM, and also for the ASU-specific authorization objects that are checked in these transactions. Therefore we recommend that the user has SAP_ALL authorizations.

Please note that due to the namespaces /ASU, you have to enter „/n/asu/start" or „/n/asu/ upgrade" as transaction code.

The Upgrade Accelerator is a tool which is included in the upgrade procedure itself and can also be used to support customers during the upgrade implementation.

The Upgrade Accelerator

• helps you to get the system in a stable condition
• performs the manual application-specific pre-upgrade steps automatically during the PREPARE and the POST downtime phases
• is called via SAPup during the prepare phase RUN_UACC_PREP and the post downtime phase RUN_UACC_POST
• decreases the number and effort of manually triggered application-specific pre-upgrade steps

The content of the Upgrade Accelerator is delivered within the newest upgrade fix buffer which is available via SAP Service Marketplace and should always be part of the upgrade implementation.

The Upgrade Accelerator is always part of your upgrade, because the add-on ST-PI is mandatory and checked by SAPup in the ASU_CHK phase of your upgrade.

For more information, see service.sap.com/upgrade