More data usually means better insights for your employees and your company as a whole, right? But what happens if your system performance begins to suffer from an overload of active and less frequently accessed data? Longer run times, more data backlogs, and a slower overall response time — all of which are no fun for anyone involved..
Luckily for you, SAP Archiving provides a solution to this all-too-common issue.
Read on to learn how SAP Archiving can transform your data archiving processes and help manage your SAP database more effectively.
What is SAP Archiving?
In a nutshell, data archiving processes provides secure data locations throughout your organization to enable long-term data storage and retention. “Archiving” refers to the process of removing data that is no longer involved in business-critical production systems and moving it into long-term storage systems. This way, your organization can still access old, unused data if needed, but it no longer occupies as much storage space in your SAP database.
Data Archiving is the SAP solution used to manage and maintain efficient data extraction, archiving, and storage processes throughout the entire SAP system. The Archiving solution gives users a better way to remove business-complete data from the database and store it in a way that allows for simple and secure access in the future.
Key Benefits of SAP Data Archiving
Now that you know a little more about what SAP Data Archiving is, let’s chat about a few key advantages of the solution for your organization.
Improved System Performance
When you’re trying to process, manage, and store large quantities of data, longer run times and reduced system performance are inevitable. This is where data archiving comes in. Archiving processes reduce the amount of data stored in the active database by transferring less business-critical data to long term databases.
By removing some of the unnecessary data from the online database, systems are able to complete dialog transactions and reports in a shorter amount of time, and employees have less data to sort through to find the relevant information they need.
Lower Data Administration Costs
Data Archiving in SAP helps keep all data, whether active or inactive, in a singular system. This way, archived data can be stored in less expensive data systems, and active data can be accessed more efficiently in database records.
With a reduced need for additional data archival hardware to access less frequently accessed data (and the right employees to manage that hardware), companies can greatly reduce both hardware and system administration costs in the long run.
Increased System Availability
By reducing the amount of data stored in your active databases, Data Archiving in SAP helps to reduce the amount of downtime a system suffers during release upgrades. With less active data taking up space in your SAP system, your team can complete and manage administrative tasks more efficiently.
An advanced data archival process, like the one provided within the SAP applications, not only reduces the amount of time a system is unavailable during system updates, but it also speeds up data backup and recovery processes and reduces the amount of time it takes to reorganize a database to fit upgrade standards.
Risk Reduction
Records management teams often provide specific data retention periods, and, when that period expires, historical data is considered a potential liability risk for the company. Data Archiving in SAP not only helps avoid costly exposure for sensitive data, but it also outlines the initial steps to take to destroy data after retention times expire.
SAP Archiving is the only approved mechanism for removing important data and records from the active database, and the solution is also responsible for removing SAP Archive files and their corresponding meta-data from the database.
Improved Compliance
The SAP Archiving solutions help retain relevant data and protect important information from modifications or unapproved deletion. The pre-built Data Archiving format also protects archived data from updates, keeping the database secure in the long run.
Archiving data in SAP also allows system administrators to control the implementation of guidelines and procedures meant to validate and guarantee the authenticity of the information found in the database.
System Integrations
The SAP Data Archiving tool is built into a company’s SAP system, meaning it has the ability to seamlessly integrate with other SAP applications and modules with no added costs or headaches for IT management teams.
While Data Archiving does have the capability to integrate with multiple other SAP applications, one of the most useful integrations is with XML-Based Archiving functions found in the SAP Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) application. Integration with ABAP allows users to archive XML structure, save data objects for future use, and move and archive data to and from the involved systems and databases.
Note: Read our latest SAP ABAP article, “What is SAP Basis? Overview and Benefits for Your Organization”, to learn more about the solution and other key integrations.
Important Prerequisite System Settings
Before your team can begin implementing a solution like SAP Data Archiving, you need to make sure you’ve checked all of these boxes:
- Logical File Path: Paths and name conventions for each archiving object must be maintained in basic “FILE” settings before data archival processes can begin.
- Archiving Objects Basic Settings: Archiving object definition (AOBJ) transaction code settings are needed to maintain archiving objects in the system.
- Global Control: All implemented archiving objects must be maintained through global archiving controls.
- Residence Time Definition: Object-specific customization settings are needed to maintain residence times for all archiving objects in the database.
- Parallel Processing: Parallel processing job distribution needs to be maintained for each application type connected to each of the archiving objects.
Data Archiving Process: Steps and Considerations
- Online Storage: In this step, the SAP database stores frequently accessed data that can be created or changed in real time.
- Nearline Storage: Next, relevant data is selected from the SAP database and is temporarily stored as “Cache” in online file systems. After the data is selected, users can relocate it to the external storage system.
- Offline Storage: This step provides external storage (Open Text SAP Archiving) for previously archived files within the SAP system.
- Access to Data: Now, users are able to access the archived data from online SAP applications and use standard SAP reports and transactions to view such data.
How Can We Help?
Need help implementing a new SAP Data Archiving solution to help keep up with your organization’s rapidly increasing data growth? Our consultants are implementation experts, and they’re here to help you. Or maybe you need an extra hand with app integrations to help optimize your information lifecycle management processes? Our team can help with that too.
Whether you need help managing database size, reducing system response times, removing unnecessary application data from your SAP system, or anything else SAP-related, our team of senior-level SAP consultants have the skills and experience needed to lead your team to success.
Even better, we’ve included a sample profile of one of our SAP consultants to give you an idea of what to expect when partnering with Surety Systems.
Surety Senior SAP Archiving Consultant
- US Citizen
- 25 years of total SAP experience, including 20+ years of SAP Basis experience
- Started career as an SAP Archiving Consultant (~4 years)
- Excels with SAP Basis Administration in Linux environments
- Comfortable with SAP PI/PO Administration
- Strong understanding of SAP Security
- Maintains Professional Certifications – SAP ArchiveLink & SAP S/4HANA
Contact us today to learn more or get started with one of our consultants.
