Technical Prerequisites to Consider When Moving from Central Finance to SAP S/4HANA

A successful transformation from Central Finance to SAP S/4HANA requires a solid foundation of technical, functional, and organi­zational readiness.

In this post, we’ll explore system landscape requirements. We’ll cover prerequisites for your infra­structure readiness, security, and technical components such as SAP Landscape Transfor­mation Replication Server and SAP Application Interface Framework.

Infrastructure Readiness

There are several points to consider when preparing the infrastructure for the transforma­tion. The following are some of the network connectivity requirements:

• Low-latency connections between source systems, SAP Landscape Transformation Rep­lication Server, and the Central Finance system.
• RFC connections for data transfer and system communication.
• Firewall configurations to allow required ports and protocols to be used.
• VPN or direct connections (which may be necessary mainly for hybrid cloud deploy­ments).

When we talk about hardware specifications, we must consider the following:

• SAP HANA database as the underlying platform for SAP S/4HANA Central Finance.
• Sufficient processing power for real-time data transformation and replication (special­ized teams can help with adequate sizing projections).
• Adequate storage for staging tables and logging.
• Separate SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server (recommended deployment option, especially with more than one source system).

Finally, the following are some performance considerations:

• Database triggers for real-time replication.
• Sufficient network bandwidth for continuous data replication.
• System sizing based on number of source systems and transaction volumes for each sys­tem, including projections for future usage/predicted growth.

Security and Compliance

For security and compliance, manual extension of RFC authorizations in source and target systems is required. This involves the following activities:

• Role maintenance via Transaction PFCG.
• Extension of role SAP_IUUC_REPL_REMOTE.
• Addition of BDCH to RFC object whitelist. This is done to ensure that change pointer–related processing can be executed remotely and securely in distributed/integrated sce­narios (such as in Central Finance).

There are also some prerequisites to fulfill for database security. For the use of DB6 (Db2 for LUW) as a database in the source system, parameter CUR_COMMIT must be set to ON to avoid some issues with how DB6 auto-organizes indexes and to ensure compatibility with SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server replication. This parameter is available start­ing from version 9.7 of DB2. SAP Note 975352 describes how to set up this parameter. SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server does not support releases older than v9.7. Version 10.1 (and later) have that parameter turned on by default.

Basic Setup for SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server

SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server is the core component for data replica­tion. Going into in-depth instructions is the purview of database experts and beyond the scope of this post, but for the purposes of this section, we’ll outline the key setup consid­erations.

SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server has the following installation require­ments:

• DMIS 2011 SP12 or higher (SP13 is strongly recommended as the minimum). SAP Net­Weaver 7.50 or higher is required when using SAP S/4HANA 1809 (or higher) as a source or the Central Finance system. This is because data type INT8 is used in relevant tables, so this data type needs to be also available in the SAP Landscape Transformation Replica­tion Server so that data can be transferred. This same restriction applies if a source sys­tem is in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
• Unicode system is required for non-ABAP source systems.

SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server needs database triggers to monitor data changes in source systems and to replicate them to the Central Finance system. The follow­ing triggers are required:

• INSERT triggers for all replicated tables.
• UPDATE and DELETE triggers. These triggers can be disabled for specific tables on some instances (e.g., CFIN_ACCHD, to improve performance).
• Logging tables to document the changes.

Logging table requirements include the following:

• CFIN_ACCHD as the header table for financial accounting documents.
• Staging tables for initial load processing.
• SAP Application Interface Framework monitoring tables for document posting process­ing status and error handling.

Different SAP S/4HANA releases may require different SAP Landscape Transformation Rep­lication Server content versions. To check the current content version, follow these steps:

1. Execute Transactions MWB or MWBDISP.
2. Enter “REPL_CFIN” for Project and Subproject.
3. Select Subproject and click Display.
4. View the content version in the description field, as shown in this figure.

The content files by release are listed in SAP Note 2154420. To update new content versions, follow these steps:

1. Upload new content using the DMC_UPLOAD_OBJECT program.
2. Deactivate the existing configuration (following the safe deactivation procedure described in the following box).
3. Update the predefined objects using the program IUUC_REPL_PREDEF_OBJECTS.
4. Reactivate the configuration.

Safe Deactivation Procedure

Deactivation of the SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server content version leads to a hard cancel of the load job, and it can result in a retransfer of packages and potential duplicate entries in SAP Application Interface Framework. Here are the steps to safely deacti­vate the existing configuration in SAP Landscape Transformation Replication Server to avoid duplicates:

• For each table in the configuration, choose Action: Suspend Replication.
• Wait until the Current Action changes to Replication (Suspended).
• Deactivate the configuration.
• Carry on with the tasks that require you to follow the safe deactivation procedure. After these tasks are done, move on with next step.
• Activate the configuration.
• For each table in the configuration, select Action: Resume Replication.

Conclusion