Designing an effective SAP system landscape is a critical foundation for a successful SAP implementation. As organizations grow and their SAP environments become more complex, advanced landscape design principles are essential to ensure system performance, flexibility, scalability, and maintainability. This article explores the concepts, best practices, and considerations involved in advanced SAP system landscape design, aligned with SAP implementation best practices.
An SAP system landscape is the collection of SAP systems connected in an architecture to support development, testing, training, and production activities. Typically, the landscape consists of multiple environments such as Development (DEV), Quality Assurance (QA), and Production (PROD).
The most common setup providing separation between development, testing, and live operation. It supports controlled transport of configuration and code changes.
Larger organizations or complex projects may require additional systems:
Large enterprises with global operations often run distributed SAP systems across different data centers or cloud environments. This setup demands network optimization, replication strategies, and strict data governance.
Proper sizing ensures each system can handle expected workloads. Factors include number of users, transaction volumes, data growth, and custom code impact.
A well-defined transport path between DEV, QA, and PROD systems ensures orderly movement of configurations and custom developments. Use SAP Transport Management System (TMS) to automate and monitor transports.
Design for system availability by implementing failover clusters, backups, and disaster recovery plans. Use SAP HANA System Replication or traditional database replication techniques.
Segregate duties and control access between environments. Production systems should have strict access controls, while DEV and QA can have more flexible access for developers and testers.
Consider how SAP systems interact with third-party applications, middleware, and external databases. Design landscapes to facilitate smooth data exchange with minimal latency.
Advanced SAP system landscape design is more than just setting up DEV, QA, and PROD systems; it’s about building a resilient, scalable, and manageable environment that supports business agility and growth. By following best practices in sizing, transport management, security, and integration, organizations can ensure their SAP landscapes not only support current business processes but also adapt to future needs, thereby maximizing the return on SAP investments.