SAP Data Archiving

Top three reasons to archive your SAP data:

• Stabilization of system response times.
• To improve system availability.
• Better use of hardware resources.

Data archiving can shorten the response time and improve data processing because performance of your system depends on the size of the SAP database.
Note: Data archiving is not the same as a database backup.

The main goal of the data archiving is to reduce the total cost of data administration.

Data Archiving is an essential system component which ensures effective SAP data administration. Application data from closed business transactions, that are no longer necessary for your daily work, can be replaced from the database to an storage system.

The IT department, which is responsible for administration and system availability, soon becomes aware of the impending performance problems associated with the data volume growth. But purely technical solutions (server upgrade, faster backup device or disk array) often only postpone such problems. In some cases, notable decline in data growth can be achieved through deactivation of table updating or data summarization (aggregation). Physical deletion of the application data, with a few exceptions, is out of question.

For example, the figure on the left shows the total volume of archivable data which can be stored.
Note: The volumes of database tables and database indexes are shown together in the same chart.

Data archiving is also a practical tool for solving performance problems and is part of standard SAP system delivered to the customer. The IT department unfortunately cannot judge and predict the influence of data archiving on your application modules. Access to the archived data is not based only on internal needs of your organization, but also on legislation requirements. A successful data archiving project has always been a result of cooperation between the SAP system administrators and the application key users, and it has to provide a reasonable compromise between the IT department’s needs and requirements of the end users.

The figure on the left shows the cumulative growth of sales documents in time.

You need a high-quality information about your SAP system in order to make the right decision. You should consider the following:

• what application data do you want to archive (e.g. accounting documents, production orders, or costing-based profitability analysis);
• what access methods to the archived data are available;
  
• what is the growth rate of the application data;
• which archiving objects should be used and with what priority;
• what volume of data could be archived?

All these details are presented in the CONPEX ArchiveConcept. It is a concept of optimal archiving strategy made-to-measure for your SAP system. CONPEX ArchiveConcept helps to avoid experimenting with archiving objects and disappointment with the archiving results. The users will have a better understanding of what data archiving means and how they could access archived data.

We offer realization of the whole archiving project starting with the analysis and followed by the SAP system customizing, installation of an external storage system, test archiving, documentation and training of key-users and administrators, go-live support and optional database reorganization.

Read more about Accessing Archived Data.