Service Level Managementthe ITIL Process in SAP Operations

Vital Anderhub

Contents Introduction
................................................ 5 5 5 5 6 6 7 7 7 8 9 9 9 11 13 13 13 13 14 14 14 15 16

2.2

General Conditions ............................... Escalations ............................................ Financial Conditions ............................. Legal Aspects ........................................ Technical Requirements for the System Landscape ................................. Organizational Factors .......................... Documenting the General Framework ............................................

17 17 18 18 18 19 19 19 19 20 21 22 23 23 25 25 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 29 29 29

Content of this Book ............................ Target Audience .................................... Prerequisites ......................................... Contents of the Individual Chapters .... Acknowledgments ................................

Service Level Management

...................

Growing Importance of Service Level Management ......................................... Implementing Standard Software ......... 1.1 Basic Principles of Service Level Management ......................................... Scope of Service Level Management ... Advantages and Disadvantages of Service Level Management ................... Components of the Service Level Agreement ............................................ 1.2 Service Level Management and ITIL .... Service Level Requirements Phase ....... Service Level Agreements Phase .......... Service Quality Phase ........................... Structure of Service Level Agreements 1.3 Dening Requirements ......................... Identifying Risks .................................... Regular Tasks and Special Activities ..... Interfaces to Other ITIL Processes ........ 1.4 Limits of ITIL ......................................... 2.6 2.7 2.4 2.5 2.3

Organizational Structures ..................... Company-Internal SLAs ........................ SLAs with External Service Providers ... Service Level Management Team ......... Business Processes and the System Landscape ............................................. Integrating the Business Processes ....... Integrating the Technical Infrastructure ........................................ Tasks in System Operation .................... Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs ) ...... Dening KPIs ........................................ Integrating KPIs in the SLA ................... Checking KPIs .......................................

2.8

Frequent Errors and Potential Problems in an SLA ...............................................

Service Desk
3.1 3.2

...............................................

Integrated Support Processes ............... Incident Management and Problem Management ......................................... Benets and Potential Problems ...........

Service Level Management in Practice ....................................................

2.1 Maturity Stages of Service Level Agreements ...........................................

17

3.3
17

Change Management ........................... Benets and Potential Problems ...........

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Contents

3.4

Agreements and Reporting on Support Processes ...............................................

30 31 31 31 32 32 32 33 33 34 34 34 35 35 35

Service Level Reporting

6.1 6.2

..........................

45 45 45 46 47 47 48 50 51 51 51 52 53 53 53 54 54 54 54 54 57 58 58 58 60 60 61 61 62 64

Creating Service Level Reports ............. SAP Solution Manager .......................... Functions in SAP Solution Manager ..... Collecting Data in SAP Solution Manager ................................................ System Landscape and Business Processes ...............................................

Technical Inuencing Factors

4.1

...............

Factors for Dening SLAs ..................... System Role .......................................... Sizing and Data Growth ....................... Hardware and Software ........................ Availability ............................................ Performance .......................................... Local Error Handling ............................. Security ................................................. Backup and Recovery ........................... Technical Change Management ........... Special Characteristics of the Individual Application ..........................

6.3

Connecting the Satellite Systems ......... SAP Solution Manager as a Central Monitoring System ...............................

6.4

CCMS Enhancement Options .............. Monitoring Agents ................................ Availability Monitoring Using CCMSPING ........................................... Availability Monitoring with GRMG ..... Monitoring Specic Transactions and Batch Jobs .............................................

4.2

Monitoring ............................................ Types of Monitoring ............................. Continuous Improvement of the Monitoring Concept ............................. Selecting and Calibrating Monitoring Objects .................................................. Technical versus Business Process Monitoring ............................................ Interface Monitoring ............................

6.5
36 36

Autoreaction and Notication Methods ............................................... Email and Service Desk Notications ... Alert Management ( ALM ) ....................

6.6
37 38 39 39 40 41 41

Data Structures in SAP Solution Manager ................................................ Logical Systems and Logical Components ......................................... Solutions and Solution Landscapes in SAP Solution Manager .......................... Solution Directory ................................ Service Sessions in SAP Solution Manager ................................. Service Data Download ........................

Possible KPIs for SAP

5.1 5.2

..............................

From the Business Process to the KPIs ....................................................... Technical KPIs ....................................... Technical Availability ............................ Response Times .................................... Operating System, Network, Disk Systems ......................................... Database Management System ............ SAP System Management ..................... Communication and Interfaces ............ Internet Scenarios ................................. Other Components and Product-Specic KPIs ............................
42 41 42 42 42 42

6.7

Solution Monitoring ............................. Central System Administration and Reporting .............................................. Setting Up System Monitoring ............. Business Process Monitoring ................ Alert Overview ..................................... EarlyWatch Alert ( EWA ) ...................... Self-Monitoring of SAP Solution Manager Functions ................

6.8

Service Level Reporting in SAP Solution Manager .................................

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Contents

Setting Up Service Level Reporting ...... Selection Options in the Service Level Report ......................................... Interpreting the Results ........................ Postprocessing the Service Level Reports ................................................. Publishing the Service Reports ............. 6.9 Evaluations in Solution Reporting ........ Services ................................................. System Administration and System Availability ............................................ Change Management ........................... Service Desk, Issues, and Top Issues ....

64 66 68 72 72 73 73

6.10

Enhanced Data Collection Techniques ............................................ Central Performance History ( CPH ) ..... CPH and Service Level Reporting ......... SAP Business Information Warehouse ( SAP BW ) ............................................. EarlyWatch Alert and SAP BW ............. CPH and SAP BW .................................
77 77 77 79 81 83 76 76 77

7
74 75 75

Conclusion

................................................... ...............

Sources and Further Reading Index

..............................................................

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Introduction

During my time at the Technology Center of Expertise ( CoE ), which is part of SAP Active Global Support, I repeatedly noticed that SAP customers encountered many complex problems in their dealings with IT departments and service providers. These problems often arose because of the deciencies inherent in service level management, which usually caused breakdowns in the actual system operations, and consequently jeopardized the regular ow of business processes. On the one hand, customers expectations cannot always be met due to the limitations of the given technical infrastructure. On the other hand, the assumptions that service providers have regarding specic requirements of the many business areas are not always realistic. This discrepancy is often caused by a lack of communication between the involved parties. In many cases, the relationships between customers and service providers have grown historically, which may complicate the implementation of a service level management process substantially at a later stage. Furthermore, many problems result from frequent staff changes and reorganizations, for example, when company-internal functions are externalized. Most companies dont begin implementing service level management processes until problems with the operation of their systems occur, for instance, due to longer system breakdowns. This is precisely why SAP Active Global Support must solve many of these problems in its daily work with customers. It is because of SAP Active Global Supports necessary intervention that we recognized the need for a comprehensive and coherent description of service level management in the SAP environment, namely, to provide customers with best practices that would enable them to improve their relationships with suppliers and service providers. For this purpose, we refer to theoretical considerations taken from the generally used best practices

in the IT Infrastructure Library ( ITIL ) and also to practical experience gleaned from the area of service level reporting. Content of this Book Based on the best practices in ITIL, this book introduces you to the service level management theory in general, and it discusses the implications of this theory on your daily work in the SAP environment. For our example, well use SAP Solution Manager Version 4.0 as a tool for creating a service level reporting process. Note that SAP Solution Manager contains different software components and add-ons. This means that the functions described here may differ from the actual functions, depending on the version you use. You should note that the SAP Solution Manager descriptions provided in this book are not meant to replace a user manual. Rather, they are intended to provide an overview of the basic options and procedures for which the tool can be used. You can nd additional detailed descriptions in the online help, in various SAP notes, and other advanced documentation that is available at SAP Service Marketplace ( http://service.sap.com/ solutionmanager ). Target Audience This book is intended for users who are responsible for maintaining the system operations in the SAP environment directly or indirectly, and are faced with having to implement service level management when necessary. This audience consists of both employees of SAP customers and their service providers. Prerequisites This book does not require any specic previous knowledge; however, you should have a need-to-know attitude

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Introduction

regarding service level management and how it can better serve SAP operations. Moreover, it helps if you have technical knowledge of SAP. Contents of the Individual Chapters Chapter 1 provides an overview of service level management and denes it as an ITIL process, while Chapter 2 discusses the possible practical implications of service level management as an ITIL process. Here, we focused on describing the business process itself and the inuencing factors that result from the technical environment. Legal aspects or a comprehensive cost analysis, however, play only a minor role, albeit you should by no means neglect them in your daily work. Yet those two aspects are often very specic to a company and usually require an individual expert consultation. The service desk as a central function within ITIL plays an essential role in the support of a productive IT solution in companies, and should therefore be included in the service level management processes. Chapter 3 describes the possible design of accompanying support processes such as incident management, problem management, and change management. In addition to organizing the support, the technical key gures to monitor are critical in service level management. For this reason, Chapter 4 addresses the technical aspects of the SAP environment. Chapter 5 then tries to answer the question of which technical key performance indicators ( KPIs ) can be measured in SAP systems in order to use them as a control tool for ensuring

a smooth system operation. In this situation, wed like to point out that we cannot provide any universally valid KPIs. Instead, we dene general requirements that can be enhanced in the service level management process to become specic KPIs for the relevant solutions. This procedure should make you aware of the need to implement a service level management process. Youll learn how you can adjust general requirements to meet the actual needs in the course of that process. Chapter 6 provides a detailed description of service level reporting as a central control element. Here, well introduce SAP Solution Manager as a tool that you can use to support the ITIL processes in order to describe how you can implement service level reporting. Well focus on monitoring possibilities and the associated service level reporting functionality. Chapter 7 concludes what has already been stated in the previous chapters. The Appendix provides a list of secondary sources and a bibliography that contains all titles, which have been referenced in the text. Acknowledgments I would like to thank my colleague, Liane Will, for inspiring me to write this book and for proofreading the text. Furthermore, I would like to express my thanks to Dr. Hartwig Brand and all of my colleagues for their great support. Thanks also to Florian Zimniak at SAP PRESS for the guidance he provided when I wrote this book.

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Service Level Reporting

6.8 Service Level Reporting in SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager enables you to set up a standardized service level reporting system, which is based on data from the service data download ( SDCC ) as well as data from the Computer Center Management System ( CCMS ). The service level reporting processes are based on service sessions within a system landscape. The service combines information from several EarlyWatch Alerts within a solution landscape. The trend analysis displays specic data over a period of three months. In addition, you can also include the average response times of certain transactions from the CCMS into the reports in standard service level reporting. For this purpose, the denitions of the business processes that are stored in the Solution Directory are needed. Finally, the latest version of service level reporting allows for the integration of a limited amount of data from the Central Performance History. You can integrate additional functions with regard to business process monitoring. Another advantage of service level reporting within the solution landscape is that you can combine different weekly reports to generate monthly reports. Moreover, in later versions of service level reporting, you can set target values for specic parameters that cause red ratings in the reports.

If you prefer to have more inuence on the selection of data, you should consider the option of data staging in BW reporting. For this purpose, you can transfer data from the EarlyWatch Alert and also from the Central Performance History into the BW system. Figure 6.21 illustrates the basic data ows within SAP Solution Manager. Setting Up Service Level Reporting Each solution landscape in SAP Solution Manager contains a service session in which you can dene the contents of a service level report. You can access this service session by selecting Operations Setup Setup SL Reporting. First you can dene the name of the report in the Specify SL Report check ( see Figure 6.22 ). If you vary the names in that check, you can generate several different report types. This can be useful, for example, if you want the weekly reports to contain something other than just the monthly reports. All other entries always refer to the report name that you have specied here. You should then select the systems from the system landscape, which you want to include in the reporting process. You can do this in the Select Systems for SL Reporting check ( see Figure 6.23 ). Depending on the selection available in that check, additional check trees are displayed.

Satellite System
Data Sources
Service Data Download

SAP Solution Manager

Service Sessions
EarlyWatch Alert

BW
Business Content

SDCCN

Service Level Reporting

BW Reporting

CCMS

CCMS

Central Performance History (CPH)

Business Content

Data Storage
Figure 6.21 Data Sources for Service Level Reporting

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6.8 Service Level Reporting in SAP Solution Manager

Figure 6.22 Creating the Service Level Report

Figure 6.23 Selecting the Systems for Service Level Reporting

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Service Level Reporting

Selection Options in the Service Level Report In the Report Content for System <SID> check, you can only select the sections from the EarlyWatch Alert report that you want to include in service level reporting ( see Figure 6.24 ). For this purpose, you can select content from the following areas:

Transports* Monitoring Objects from CCMS Central Performance History

The areas marked with an asterisk ( * ) are only available in service level reporting and are not part of the standard EarlyWatch Alert. The accounting prole enables you to create statistics for specic user groups. For this purpose, each user must be assigned to an accounting number. 1. A requirement for the settlement statistics is that the system users are assigned to an accounting number in the Logon data Other Data Accounting Number tab in Transaction SU01 ( see Figure 6.25 ). 2. Once the assignments have been made, the corresponding settlement statistics are displayed in Transaction ST03N. To view the settlement statistics, you

System Conguration System Availability Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs ) Transactions with the Highest System Load History of Response Time Maximum Resource Consumption of the Hardware Accounting Prole* Trend Analysis Dump Statistics Update Errors and Involved Programs/Transactions

Figure 6.24 Selecting the Content of Service Level Report

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6.8 Service Level Reporting in SAP Solution Manager

Figure 6.25

Settlement Statistics

must go into the expert mode and select the corresponding accounting period. 3. Then a detailed assignment of dialog steps that have been performed under the corresponding accounting number and other key gures is displayed under User and Settlement Statistics Settlement Statistics Accounting Numbers. Furthermore, you can include other values in service level reporting according to your specic requirements:

the availability in the Week Table. When you click on the Generate Time Table button, you can select or deselect single hours in the detailed Time Table. Different System Performance KPIs ( Including Target Values )

System Performance Max. Active Users Avg. Availability Avg. Response Time in Dialog Task Avg. Response Time at Peak Dialog Hour Max. Dialog Steps per Hour Query Performance Avg. Total Runtime of the BW Queries Avg. DB Runtime of the BW Queries Database Performance Avg. DB Request Time in Dialog Task Avg. DB Request Time in Update Task Database Space Management
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System availability ( including a detailed schedule of the systems availability ) The purpose of the availability plan is to distinguish planned from unplanned downtimes to report both values. When you select System Availability, a separate check is displayed under each system ( see Figure 6.26 ). Here, you can dene a general timeframe for

67

Service Level Reporting

Figure 6.26

System Availability Settings

DB Size DB Growth Hardware Capacity Max. CPU Utilization on DB Server Max. CPU Utilization on Appl. Server

Interpreting the Results The EarlyWatch Alert reports and the service level reports based on them often contain essentially technical details. However, with some practice over time, you can obtain very useful information from the data, which is not only relevant to technicians but can also be used in the different user departments. Therefore, we advise you to analyze the data in a common process and further prepare it for other target groups, if necessary. The example described in the following sections uses some statistics and graphics that are supposed to clarify the necessary considerations for interpreting the data. First, each EarlyWatch report contains an overview of the system conguration ( see Figure 6.27 ). The system conguration is subdivided into the hardware congura-

Central Performance History Select Business Process for SL Report Standard

Analysis of Business Process Update Errors Alert Limits BW Queries Alert Limits Transaction Reports

With regard to business process monitoring, you can use even more values, but we wont describe those values any further here.

68 Galileo Press 2006. All rights reserved.

Index

A
ABAP dump 15 Accelerated SAP (ASAP) 46 Add-on ST-A/PI 58 ST-PI 58 ST-SER 57 Alert 35 Alert management, ALM 54 Alert monitoring 35 ALV grid 74 Application Link Enabling (ALE) 42 Application management lifecycle 8, 36 Application modules 41 Archiving 32 Archiving project 32 Automatic Session Manager (ASM) 58 Availability 32 Availability requirements 10

C
CCMS_OnAlert_Email 53 CCMS_Send_Alert_to_ALM 53 CCMS agent 50 CCMS monitoring infrastructure 50 CCMSPING 51 Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) 11 Central monitoring system (CEN) 48 Central Performance History (CPH) 47, 76 Central system administration 58 Change advisory board (CAB) 15, 29 Change management 29 process 34 Change Request Management 47 Check 57 Client copy 15 Configuration items (CI) 15 Configuration management database (CMDB) 15, 50 Core business process 23 Core Interface (CIF) 35, 42 Cost control 9 CPU load 41 CSV file 74 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 35 Customer satisfaction 11 Customizing 32

eCATT 46 Email notification 53 End-to-end management 7 Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP system) 19 Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) 7 Escalation 17 External audits 11

F
Financial management for IT services 15 First-line support 28

G
Generic request and message generator (GRMG) 42, 52 Go-live 46 GoingLive 57 GRMG-Lite 53

B
Backup 15 Backup and recovery concept 42 Best practices 7 Business blueprint 46 Business content 77 Business continuity plan 18 Business Information Warehouse (BW) 42 Business process 23, 55 details 56 monitoring 37, 60 optimizations 7 owners 22 step 55 Business scenario 55

H
High availability 18 Hit ratio 42

I
Incident 27 InfoCubes 77 Initial reaction time (IRT) 30 Interfaces 10 Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC) 48, 56 ISO 9000 7 Issues 75 ITIL conformity 16 ITIL management areas availability management 16 capacity management 15 change management 15

D
De-facto standard 16 Dialog transaction 41 Dumps 10

E
E-Learning 46 EarlyWatch 57 EarlyWatch Alert (EWA) 61

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Index

configuration management 15 continuity management 15 incident management 15 problem management 15 release management 15 ITIL publications Application Management 12 ICT Infrastructure Management 12 Planning to Implement Service Management 12 Security Management 12 Service Delivery 12 Service Support 12 The Business Perspective 12 IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 11 IT Service Management Forum (itSMF) 11

Online transaction processing (OLTP) 43 Operation level agreements (OLAs) 13 Outsourcer 8 Outsourcing scenario 20

Security 16 Security Audit Log 42 Self service 57 Serv_Desk_Mess_on_Alert 53 Serviceability 16 Service achievement 13 Service catalog 13 Service channel 62 Service data download (SDCC) 47, 64 Service desk 27 Service desk message 75 Service improvement program (SIP) 13 Service level agreement (SLA) 8 maturity stages 17 Service level management (SLM) 7, 8 phases 13 process 8 team 21 Service level reporting (SLR) 8, 45 setup 64 Service level requirements (SLR) 13, 14 Service manager 22 Service quality plan (SQP) 13 Service sessions 57 Service specsheets 13 Single point of contact (SPoC) 27 Single point of failure (SPoF) 33 Sizing 14 SLA customer-based 13 multi-level SLA 13 service-oriented 14 SM:EXEC_SERVICES 58 SM:SCHEDULER 58 Small and medium-sized companies 9 SNMP traps 51 Solution 54 Solution Directory 46, 54 Solution landscape 54 Solution Management Assessment 57 Solution Manager Diagnostics 47, 62 Solution Monitoring 58 SQL statement 42 Standard service levels 13 Storage area network 24 Supply Chain Management (SCM) 35 Swap space 41 System copy 15 System Landscape Directory (SLD) 50 System monitoring 37 System role 31

P
Peak load periods 14 Planned downtimes 33 Problem resolution time (PRT) 30 Process theory 11 Program dump 42

Q
Queries 43

K
Key figures 8 Key performance indicator (KPI) 8, 25, 39, 45 Key user 28 Knowledge transfer 9 Known error database 15

R
Rating 57 Real-time monitoring 47 Recovery 34 Release policies 15 Reliability 16 Remote function call (RFC) 46 Report 57 Request for change (RfC) 15, 28 Return on investment (ROI) 18 RFC queued (QRFC) 42 transactional (tRFC) 42 RFC connections 50 RTCCTOOL 58

L
Level retention time (LRT) 30 Lines of business (LOB) 8

M
Main memory 41 Maintainability 16 Management areas in ITIL 12 Manual expert monitoring 35 Maximum processing time (MPT) 30 Mean time between failures (MTBF) 33 Mean time to repair, MTTR 33 META Group 17 Monitoring concept 35 Monitoring tree element (MTE) 51 Multi-sourced environment 21

S
SAPCCM4X 51 SAPCCMSR 51 SAPCM3X 51 SAPconnect 53, 72 SAP Developer Network (SDN) 77 SAP NetWeaver Portal 35 SAP Reference IMG 48 SAP Service Marketplace 53, 62 SAP Solution Manager 45 Implementation 46 Operations 46 Operations setup 46 self-monitoring 62 Sarbanes-Oxley Act 7 Second-line support 28

O
Office of Government Commerce (OGC) 11 Online analytical processing (OLAP) 43

84 Galileo Press 2006. All rights reserved.

Index

development system 31 live system 31 quality assurance system 31 System security 34

RZ21 51, 53 RZ23N 76 SCOT 72 SDCC 58 SDCCN 58 SE16 53 SMSY 48, 50, 54, 56, 74, 77 SOLAR_EVAL 73 SOLMAN_DIRECTORY 54, 56 SOLUTION_MANAGER 54, 61 SPRO 48 ST03N 66 SU01 66 Transport Management System (TMS) 50 TREX search engine 56 Troubleshooting 25, 36 Trouble ticket system 36

U
Underpinning contract (UC) 13 Unplanned downtimes 33 Update error 38, 42

T
Table ALBTCMON 53 ALTRAMONI 53 Target value 64 Test management 46 Third-line support 28 Three-system landscape 32 Threshold values 25, 35 Top issues 75 Transaction ALRTCATDEF 54 DSWP 56, 61 RZ20 51, 53

W
Workflow 36 Workload 14

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