The following section provides you with important information of the technical update procedure to enable you to set up the schedule for updating your SAP system.

The update procedure is a sequence of roadmap steps (Get Roadmap (with the initial dialogs), Extraction, Configuration, Checks, Preprocessing, Execution, Postprocessing). User interaction is required at the beginning and at the end of the update procedure, whereas in between the procedure can run unattended. For the user interactions at the beginning until the first phases of the Preprocessing roadmap step, you can calculate approximately one day.

The following figure shows the chronological sequence of the update procedure:

The update procedure requires a system downtime of several hours starting with the Execution roadmap step. If you have a defined maintenance window for the downtime, start the Software Update Manager in good time. You can easily stop the program when the update procedure is ready to start the downtime and then resume the update procedure when it fits your maintenance window. For example, when you plan the downtime for the weekend, start the Software Update Manager at the beginning of the week.

During the Preprocessing roadmap step, the Software Update Manager builds up a second system (the shadow system) by cloning the original system. Therefore, consider to run the Preprocessing roadmap step during a phase with low database load (for example, at a predecessor weekend).

At the beginning of the Preprocessing roadmap step, the ABAP Workbench has to be locked. This has an impact on the development system as you can no longer provide corrections. The production system is also affected as no emergency corrections can be implemented in the system.

Right before the downtime starts, you have to back up your database and important directories.

Finally, consider the time needed for follow-up activities such as manual clean-up steps, load generation, adjustment transports, tests, or validation and backups.