SAP Basis Administrator

 

Joseph P. Haynes
9915 Grove Court ♦ Westminster, CO 80031
Ph: 303-325-3552

Summary

• 18 years managing complex SAP environments

• 20 years running Unix/Windows servers and networks

• 18 years developing applications and scripts in Java, Perl, Python, and Bash
  
  
  

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Lockheed Martin, Inc., Senior SAP Basis Administrator - 03/16 to Present
Senior SAP Basis Administrator responsible for the day to day management of large SAP installations including Solution Manager 7.2, and Focused Run 3.0. My experience includes: migrating terabyte sized systems from on-prem into private GovCloud AWS environments, installing and upgrading Focused Run 3.0 and Solution Manager 7.2 systems, implementing Business Process Monitoring, using Ansible to apply security remediation's, setting up connectivity through Cloud Connector (for Ariba/BTP/SAC, and Neo) and assisting with the implementation of connectivity to/from NS2 Rise. My previous experience was managing two large portal installations (both internal and external) and I have held two previous US security clearances.

TekSystems, Inc., Senior SAP Basis Consultant to DigitalGlobe (now Maxar Technologies) - 08/15 to 03/16
Completed daily duties of transports and security updates for both commercial and secured government systems (security clearance required). Improved system performance by implementing standard monitoring and housekeeping routines (removed data back to 2004). Improved system up-time for non-production systems by setting up monitoring and alerting in Solution Manager 7.1. Generated transport system analysis report (self guided procedure in Solution Manager) used to decrease the time needed to deploy into productive systems and reduce the number of import errors. Reduced licensing costs by removing outdated accounts. Installed GTS 11 and completed multiple hetergeneous system copies to improve testing.

Nimbl, LLC., Senior SAP Basis Technical Analyst and Architect - 06/13 to 07/15
Created SQL Server indexes that allowed financial a close process to complete within minutes instead of hours. Managed five clients on the daily administration of multiple SAP systems hosted within a variety of operating systems (most on virtualized environments including HP-UX, AIX and VMWARE-VSPHERE). Mentored five basis administrators on daily management practices (including housekeeping tasks and researching system issues). Performed performance analysis (i.e. reviewing slow SQL executions), researching issues, incident recovery and assisting with loading of large data sets/transports over cut-over weekends. Managed multiple tier NWDI based portal landscape. Transitioned CCMS based alerting into Technical Monitoring in Solution Manager 7.1. Sized BW systems in preparation for migration into HANA.

Lockheed-Martin, Inc., SAP Basis - NetWeaver Technical Analyst - 01/11/ to 06/13
Assisted in the management a 90+ SAP system environment that included SRM (including SUS and LAC), PI, ECC, BW, EP, SRM-MDM, GRC, Vertex, ReadSoft, BOBJ, HANA and NWDI. Upgraded SRM from 5.5 to 7.0. Responsible for transports (utilizing both CTS+ and NWDI), SAP Note implementations, system monitoring, system refreshes, upgrades, migrations, DR testing and application of service packs/patches. Interacted with performance teams in sizing systems prior to go-lives that included anywhere from 500 to 40000 new users. Setup centralized monitoring through Solution Manager 7.0 and created standardized daily/weekly checklists. Split and then upgraded a dual-stack BW 7.0 system to 7.3. Migrated those systems from Oracle 11 to HANA DB. Upgraded an internal portal (this provided front end reporting to SRM, ECC, and BW/BEX) from 7.00 to 7.30.

CaridianBCT, Inc., SAP Basis Team Leader - 03/09 to 01/11
Created process for refreshing QAS from PRD utilizing Oracle RMAN. Completed a heterogeneous migration of two remote systems from Solaris 9 to AIX 5.3 (by copying files from Sweden to a local data center in Colorado). Migrated four systems from IBM branded SAN to new NetApp SAN. Upgraded Solution Manager to Enhancement Pack 1 and configured centralized CCMS alerting, Early Watch reporting, standard SLD updates via RZ70, and remote system administration. Standardized system profiles across two separate ERP landscapes to better identify performance issues. Established procedures for monitoring systems and managing system copies/migrations.

Mindworks Inc., SAP Basis Consultant - 02/08 to 03/09
Internal Basis administrator assisting in the development of client support programs and the setup of SAP NetWeaver ECC systems used for remote training sessions. Responsible for system security and expanding the internal infrastructure to meet future client support requirements. Migrated client systems to new servers in an effort to resolve performance issues.

Startek Inc., Independent SAP Basis Consultant - 08/07 to 02/08
Responsible for all Basis administration management tasks in a four landscape SAP environment that included ECC 6.0, BI 7.0, XI, and Enterprise Portal. Monitored systems via Solution Manager 4.0, applied support packs, imported transports, and managed user/role authorizations. Created ASAP testing scenarios for the accounting department prior to the application of support packs into production. Generated SAP sourced reports for Sarbanes-Oxley auditors. Mentored a StarTek IT staff member who took over all Basis administration tasks.

Heritage Propane, Inc., SAP Basis Administrator - 06/06 to 07/07
Transitioned SAP R/3 installations into both a SAN and VMWare based environments. Coordinated system administration of SAP/non-SAP systems among a three member team. Incorporated project management software to control upcoming implementations (which included both Solution Manager and ERP 2005). Improved data consistency among systems by implementing homogenous system copies utilizing MAX DB backups. Installed Gold Client software to further improve data validation testing in the QA environments.

SAP Basis Consultant to Heritage Propane - 08/01 to 06/06
Installed and managed SAP R/3 4.7 and BW 3.5. Ordered server hardware, installed server software (RedHat 2.1), and coordinated with SAP America on the install of the SAP application servers. Brought SAP and server based authorizations into compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements (coordinated with internal auditors). Installed and upgraded SAP systems (Central Instances, Application Servers, ITS servers, SAProuters, SAPGUI installs) on RedHat Linux. Managed the initial hardware/server sizing. Established ALE-IDOC master data transfers between systems. Completed multiple in-place upgrades of SAPDB 7.3 to MAXDB 7.5. Established quarterly upgrade cycles for service packs and SAP kernels.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

University of Dayton, Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, 1989
SAP Basis Administration, ADM100, 2003
SAP Logistics, ADM325, 2005
SAP MAX DB Database Administration, ADM515
SAP HANA Academy - Boston Bootcamp February 2014
NETg, Oracle Database 10g: Administration Workshop, SAP TechEd 2006, 2009, 2010 / Sapphire 2007
SAPInsider Administration/BI/Portals 2007

CERTIFICATIONS

ITIL Foundations v3
Microsoft Certified Professional, 2007
FCC Technical Radio Operators License, 1995
U.S. Secret Security Clearance, 2011, 2015

ZBasisAdm.com Consulting - Basis documentation you should have for your SAP systems

When I start with each client, I like to collect as much 'meta' information as possible. To make my job easier and to leave each client with a solid deliverable, I collect each of the following items:

I. General – Client Background

1. Where is the client located?
2. What is the clients business?
3. Are there access requirements for the site and building?
4. What are the operating hours?
5. Who are the key contacts?
6. What are the up time requirements?
7. Who are the client's other key vendors?
8. Who handles the operating system environments?

II. Infrastructure

1. How to connect with the client (is a VPN used)?
2. What operating system(s) and database(s) are utilized?
3. Which third party applications connect to the SAP systems?
4. Are there any special security requirements?
5. Which flavor of virtualization is used?
6. Are there any DR requirements?

III. Diagrams

1. Landscape
This should include all the SAP systems and any relevant connected systems
2. Transports/Updates
Shows the flow changes between systems
3. Network
How are the systems connected?
4. Server/Virtualized Instances and Systems
Where to the systems reside?
What processors and memory is on each system?
Do any of the systems share database instances?
5. Data Flows
How does data move between each of the systems?

IV. Processes

1. Change management
How are changes approved and moved through the systems?
Is there a ticketing system such as Jira utilized?
2. Communication
Who should be alerted when issues come up?
Is there an incident call tree?
3. Incident Management
How are issues and problems managed?
Are incident tickets created and are RCA's expected after problems resolved?
4. Security
Who and how are security requests handled?
5. Project Management
Is there an internal team that manages each project?

V. Strategies and Standards – Infrastructure

1. Backups
How and where are backups saved?
How are backups and restores requested?
2. Business Continuity
3. Downtime
When and how long are the scheduled maintenance periods?

VI. Strategy and Standards – SAP Specific

1. Client Strategy
Are there separate configuration and development clients?
2. Security Standards
Are there gateway or message server security requirements?
3. Authorization Standards
Are there firefighter roles available for production systems?
Is there a policy for who can run debug mode or SE16 in production?
4. Transports
Who imports transports?
Is there a scheduled date/time for production imports?
5. SLD
What infrastructure has been setup for the SLD systems?
6. ABAP
Is there a code review process in place?
7. System/Data Refreshes
Is there a scheduled process for refreshing data back to other systems?
8. Updates/Upgrades
How often are updates scheduled for the systems?
Is there a review process for SAP upgrades?
9. Monitoring
Is there a monitoring matrix that shows when alert messages should be generated and who should receive those alerts?
10. System Settings
Who approves the opening of systems?
Who should be notified what systems are opened and closed?

zBasisAdm.com Consulting - Scheduling Standard SAP Basis Housekeeping Tasks

When I first come to a client site, one of the first things I check is to see if they are running standard tasks to maintain their systems. Below is a template I created for the first SAP system I managed (way back in 4.7 on a MAX DB system nonetheless).

1. Housekeeping jobs for ABAP Systems
Job Name	Report	Repeat	Client Specific	PRD - Scheduled?
SAP_REORG_JOBS	RSBTCDEL2	daily	Y
SAP_REORG_SPOOL	RSPO0041/1041	daily	Y
SAP_REORG_BATCHINPUT	RSBDCREO	daily	Y
SAP_REORG_ABAPDUMPS	RSSNAPDL	daily
SAP_REORG_JOBSTATISTIC	RSBPSTDE	monthly
SAP_COLLECTOR_FOR_JOBSTATISTIC	RSBPCOLL	daily
SAP_COLLECTOR_FOR_PERFMONITOR	RSCOLL00	hourly
SAP_COLLECTOR_FOR_NONE_R3_STAT	RSN3_STAT_COLLECTOR	hourly
SAP_REORG_PRIPARAMS	RSBTCPRIDEL	monthly
SAP_CCMS_MONI_BATCH_DP	RSAL_BATCH_TOOL_DISPATCHING	hourly
SAP_SPOOL_CONSISTENCY_CHECK	RSPO1043	daily
SAP_REORG_ORPHANED_JOBLOGS	RSTS0024	weekly
SAP_CHECK_ACTIVE_JOBS	BTCAUX07	hourly
SAP_DELETE_ORPHANED_IVARIS	BTC_DELETE_ORPHANED_IVARIS	weekly
SAP_REORG_ORPHANED_TEMSE_FILES	RSTS0043	weekly
SAP_ADS_SPOOL_CONSISTENCY_CHECK	RSPO1042	daily
SAP_BTC_TABLE_CONSISTENCY_CHECK	RSBTCCNS	daily
SAP_REORG_XMILOG	RSXMILOGREORG	weekly

This is something that I've compiled over the years to better track scheduled housekeeping tasks. These I've compiled from Notes 16083, 1411877, and 1440439.

Most of these jobs can be scheduled from within SM36 (standard jobs). I like to manually check these against the list above to make sure the jobs are running with the correct reports and in the correct clients. If a job isn't scheduled, I'll create a new job and assign the task to a dedicated SAP Basis background account (something like 'BATCH_BC' should work). Please don't assign your account to these jobs! Almost every site I've worked at has had jobs fail because the Basis admin used their own account and these all failed when their account was deleted or locked.

Even more amazing is the number of sites that don't run all of these. I run some of these jobs at older sites and found one that deleted over 6 years of stale temporary variants! Needless to say, it took less time to create new variants after this cleanup.


You should also remove the jobs below. These are defunct and only generate errors in the system.

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2. Defunct Jobs
Job Name	Report	Reason
SAP_REORG_UPDATERECORDS	RSM13002
SLCA_LCK_SYNCHOWNERS	SLCA_LCK_SYNCHOWNERS	Only schedule on livecache systems
SAP_WP_CACHE_RELOAD_FULL		Only schedule on workplace servers

As a standard process, I'll add a check to standard system checks to ensure that these jobs are still scheduled (I'll check every month or so).

It is important to run these jobs so tables that hold transient data don't grow out of proportion to the rest of the data. Over time, you'll find the system starts to slow down as it reaches performance thresholds. As a Basis admin, you can return value to your client by ensuring that standard tasks are running and cleaning out those transient tables. Making sure these stay small, will make upgrades and migrations a bit easier.

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Joseph P. Haynes
SAP Basis Consultant
zbasisadm.com

SAP Basis – What not to do when you run SAP

The benefit of working for different SAP clients has give me a keen insight on how best to run SAP and what you should not be doing. Believe it or not, I've come across each of these conditions at companies that should have known better.

Don't do any of these:

Mix databases, hardware or operating systems
It is hard to believe but I've run into clients who have different hardware, databases, and operating systems all within the same system landscape! This makes is really hard to complete system copies and almost impossible to gauge upgrades.

Update components less than once a year
Keep up with your updates to your current version of SAP and get in the habit of updating almost twice a year. Yes. You will need to establish a standard validation process around this but you should already have one in place.

Upgrade less than once every 4 years

Get into the mindset that you need to upgrade SAP every 3 to 4 years. The functionality and tool sets that you will gain will make implementing new technologies much easier (i.e. in-memory databases, big data, etc.).

Run on the same hardware for over 5 years
Yes. It is expensive to buy and implement new equipment but not nearly as expensive as support contracts for older systems or long  production downtimes. Don't be that company that ends up searching Ebay for old hard drives just to keep an old Sun machine running. When it comes down to it, hardware is one of the cheaper parts of running an enterprise application.

Install or upgrade a system without sizing
I've shown up at sites where an application has been running fine but suddenly slows to a crawl once a new external application was implemented. You can quickly overwhelm a system by adding functionality without first determining if it can handle the additional load. Systems are funny. They run fine until they reach a certain threshold and then suddenly become an issue. Save yourself the trouble by first sizing the system before making any major changes.

Let your IT technical team determine your infrastructure
What you run for your applications and systems should be determined by the business and not your internal technical teams. I've been at too many places where the Linux/Windows admin dictates what gets installed. Don't marry yourself to a platform or a database because that is what your internal team is comfortable with. Go with the best technology at the best price.  

SAP Basis - Better questions you should be asking your SAP Basis candidates

On my last few jobs I was asked to help screen candidates for open Basis positions. The unfortunate side of the business is there are quite a few candidates that appear to be qualified who are really just book smart and not necessarily tech smart.


I developed the questions below to help identify candidates who had the requisite skills needed to be a Basis Administrator in a high volume environment. One of the services I provide is candidate reviews. Please call me at 720-335-5727 if you would like to discuss how I can play a key role in identifying the best candidates for your company.

I. General Questions

• What do you know about the company?
• How do you manage a high volume of tasks?
• What would you do in a case where there are more than one or two severity one issues?
• What type of environment do you excel in?
• How do your managers get the best out of you?
• When working remotely, how do you stay connected to others on your team?
• What tools can be used to find out more about an issue with which you are not familiar?
• How to you handle frustrating circumstances?

II. Technical Questions

• What are the first things to check when a SAP system is reported as being down?
• What transaction is used to tell if database backups are failing?
• Users report that data from a remote system is missing. What are the first things you would check?
• What transactions are used to check the flow of messages in PI?
• You attempt to RDP into a Unix system and the connection fails. Why?
• What files should be reviewed in the case where a Java instance is no longer starting?
• Users are reporting that the system is slow. What transactions would you use to identify the source of the performance issue?

In general, the best Basis candidates are well rounded individuals who can think laterally, know how to research an issue, and enjoy taking on technical challenges.