House-Keeping in the Customer Profile Data Used by the Maintenance Planner

Introduction

With the new approach to simplified and more comprehensive planning of landscape changes with the Maintenance Planner, the importance of getting the correct systems’ data from your IT landscape hasn’t changed. Therefore, it important to understand how this key data is kept in good shape. This blog post links to the mechanisms used to gather the data and upload to the Customer Profile in the SAP Support Portal for the use by the Maintenance Planner; its focus, however, is on those steps you should do in grooming this data: while most steps are automated, some house-keeping has still to be done.

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Content

Getting Data of the IT Landscape

Getting Data of the IT landscape hasn’t changed: SLD and LMDB gather the data from SLD Data Suppliers and host agents running on technical systems and the LMDB uploads it to the SAP Support Portal:

Figure 1: Data flow from the technical system to the Customer Profile read by the Maintenance Planner

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So you need not change these steps if switching to the Maintenance Planner – if still in doubt about these processes, see:

• Data and Topology of SLD, LMDB, and Customer Profile – How to Get Reliable Landscape Data in SAP Support Portal as a Basis for Planning

If all these things have been set up, still some problems may occur and some grooming is necessary – outdated data is still shown, systems’ data missing, duplicates occurring, etc… Best practice in such cases is to do house-keeping in the source systems of data and only in the end do it in the Customer Profile itself.

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House-Keeping in SLD, LMDB, or the Technical System

So the data upload in principle should work fine, systems’ data are sent constantly, updating the landscape descriptions in SLD, LMDB and Customer Profile. However, there are a few cases, where this data can be outdated or erroneous still: By de-installation of systems or by systems moved to a different host or if there is a problem affecting the SLD Data Suppliers on the technical system. In such cases, house-keeping needs to be done where the problem occurred – in the SLD, the LMDB, or the system itself – as described here:

• Technical System Data Delivered by SLD Data Supplier and Agents
• How-to Manage House-Cleaning in the System Landscape Directory – Duplicate System Entries.
• How to Ensure Your Landscape Data is Up-to-Data – House-Keeping in the LMDB

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House-Keeping in the Customer Profile

The blog posts mentioned so far will help you in most cases, where system data is missing or wrong – however, there are two points to mention:

• Having the Customer Profile as an important repository for system data requires a correct topology (the data flow from the technical system via SLD and LMDB to the SAP Support Portal).In case you have – sometimes – a violation of the principle to upload one system’s data only via one source, you can solve the resulting sync conflict manually.
• Similar to the SLD, the Customer Profile only adds or changes data to its list of systems – there is no automated deletion; so if system data that you do not need (for being outdated, or wrong, or a duplicate) has been uploaded to the SAP Support Portal, you can delete it manually via the Maintenance Planner UI.

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Coping with Topology Issues

If you have more than one productive SAP Solution Manager system, you should avoid uploading of the same system’s data by more than one of them. There is a description in the aforementioned blog post Topology of SLD, LMDB, and Customer Profile – How to Get Reliable Landscape Data in SAP Support Portal as a Basis for Planning;

The solution for missing data is addressed by the topology blogs comprehensively. Some things are still good to know…

Figure 2: Topology with more than one productive SAP Solution Manager uploading to the Customer Profile.

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In case – a few – systems’ data overlap (from time to time) this can be handled by the Maintenance Planner: The Sync status for the system will be showing conflicts being displayed in yellow:

Figure 3a: Sync status with warning for system ER1.

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You can then solve the conflict by clicking and deciding, which version shall be active (or which one shall be deleted) defining, which SAP Solution Manager to be the source for that system:

Figure 3b: Conflict resolution options – activation or deletion of versions of landscape data.

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Once you have decided for the active version or deleted an outdated…

• If you decide for an active version, then the SAP Solution Manager system sending the chosen data is considered as leading data supplier until you change the decision next time.

• If you delete an outdated version, nothing will really happen besides that the data is deleted from Customer Profile.

If there are a lot of such problems, the SLD/LMDB topology should be evaluated – you’ll find links to relevant blogs above in section Getting Dataof the IT Landscape…

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Extended SIDs

Note that if you have duplicate SIDs in your system landscape for the same system type (for example 2 systems C11 running on AS ABAP one on c11host one on prodhost), the LMDB will generate an Extended SID (adding numbers to distinguish between the two SIDs). The extended SID will be shown in the Customer Profile.
Note also, that in 2 SAP Solution Manager LMDBs, the extension may be assigned to different systems. So in our example,

SAP Solution Manager ABC might show:

• C11
• C1100001

SAP Solution Manager ABC might show:

• C1100001
• C11

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Deleting Unnecessary System Data

The Maintenance Planner UI allows deletion of system data for:

• Single systems – this is done directly from the list or after searching
• Multiple systems – this is usually done by filtering first

The deletion is available in the Maintenance Planner’s systems overview – you can:

• Filter for all system’s attributes by selecting the attribute you’re interested in and set it to a specific value
  Note that the combination of all attributes set will be used for filtering – so if you do get less hits than expected, check the selection for all attributes
• Select / deselect for deletion
  • one – if you know about a specific system being wrong
  • multiple – if you know some systems being wrong
  • all rows – this should be usually done after filtering (for example all system that have been sent by an SAP Solution Manager System, which has been replaced or a customer number no longer needed)

Figure 4: Functions related to systems data deletion in the Maintenance Planner.

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Note that…

• …if you press the Delete button, all data of the selected rows will be deleted – be sure not to have selected systems erroneously in rows not shown.
• …if system data is used in…
  • … a track, it cannot be deleted before the track is deleted.
  • … a product maintenance dependency (PMD) it can be deleted. The PMD is then deleted as well. If you still need it…
    • …if there is the same dependency (product system) in LMDB, the PMD will be uploaded and reflected in the Maintenance Planner again.
    • …if there is no PMD in the LMDB, then it has be created again after the uploading.
• … if the SAP Solution Manager SID is empty, probably the data will be corrupt. You can filter even for the SAP Solution Manager SID field being empty if that is the case for at least one system in your landscape.

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(Seemingly) Missing Data in the Customer Profile

The solution for missing data is addressed by the topology blogs and in upload description under “Getting Data of the IT Landscape”.
Two things to mention in addition are that…

• …the automated upload from the LMDB runs once a day and data may take an additional day to be visible in the customer profile. In case you need the data immediately after a change, use the manual upload, which can be triggered all the time in the LMDB technical system editor on tab SAP Support Portal.
• … data in the Customer Profile is only updated when changed – this include the upload date; so the upload may seem to be outdated.

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Further Information

For further information on…

• … the handling of system data, see Landscape Descriptions @ the SCN
• … the Maintenance Planner, see Maintenance Planner @ the SCN
• … process of dealing with the IT landscape, see Landscape Management @ the SCN

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