Migration at Ulm University Hospital: A Success Story

In the course of converting its SAP landscape to S/4 HANA, the Ulm University Hospital (UK Ulm) replaced the existing Microsoft MS SQL 2017 database with a HANA DB 2.0. The goal was to migrate the business warehouse to BW on HANA. This meant that Suse Linux Enterprise for SAP, which had not been used at the UK Ulm until then, and the HANA DB could be introduced.

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The BIG.Cube standard process for migration projects. © 2021. All rights reserved.

During this changeover, BIG.Cube provided support from the kick-off to the actual migration. The technical installation of the target environment, migration preparation and project management were also components of the BIG.Cube service. Furthermore, BIG.Cube will also take over support and maintenance from now on.

All those involved at UK Ulm and BIG.Cube demonstrated excellent cooperation during the project. The targeted work enabled a changeover within the planned schedule.

The following services were successfully implemented:

  • Kick-off meeting and sizing of the Netweaver 7.50 BW on a Hana system landscape
  • Support the infrastructure team in setting up the database servers
  • Installation of the HANA database with setup of system replication, backup and connection to HANA Cockpit
  • Testing backup/restore, system replication and failover
  • Carrying out the 1st DMO migration of the development system
  • Performing a DMO test migration on a clone of the live BW system for runtime optimisation, real database size analysis and error detection
  • Creating a list of tables for online migration using "near zero downtime" techniques
  • Executing productive downtime in only 4 hours
  • Supporting the BW team in the BW-specific follow-up work for a BW on HANA migration
  • Migrating the BW JAVA Portal instance into a separate HANA tenant

Technical Migration a Complete Success

As a result, the technical migration has a great track record: By temporarily enlarging the hardware, migrating the largest tables online and test migration, the downtime was reduced from 20 hours to just 4 hours. To do this, the productive database was reduced in size by 75%.

Screenshots from the migration process at UK Ulm (left: Configuration of „Near Zero Downtime”, right: “Active DMO Table migration”) © 2021. All rights reserved.

Screenshots from the migration process at UK Ulm (top: Configuration of „Near Zero Downtime”, bottom: “Active DMO Table Migration”) © 2021. All rights reserved.

UK Ulm takes Another Step in Digitalisation with
the BIG.Cube

UK Ulm takes Another Step in Digitalisation with the BIG.Cube

“The technical migration is leading to a significant improvement of all our systems. BIG.Cube completely fulfilled our expectations in this project and carried out the technical migration on time, within budget and in great quality,” says Michael Ducke, SAP Basis Project Manager at Ulm University Hospital. The UK Ulm is taking a further step in digitalisation with the introduction of HANA DB 2.0 and the subsequent migration to BW on HANA. With the help of BIG.Cube, the stable operation of the SAP Basis & HANA landscape can now also be ensured after installation.
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