Difference between homogeneous system copy and heterogoneous system copy?

This article answers the following queries:

• What is System refresh?
• What is the difference between homogeneous system copy and heterogeneous system copy?
• What is the difference between System refresh and System copy?
• What is the need of System refresh?

-============================================================

System Refresh:

System refresh is nothing but copying an SAP system to another.

Let us say the system from which copy is being done is called as source system and system in which data to be copied as target system.

If the target SAP system already exists then this is known as system refresh.

Difference between homogeneous system copy and heterogeneous system copy:

 If the target SAP system doesn’t exist and you are building a new SAP system on the same o/s and database then this process is called as homogenous system copy.  In case the o/s and database are different in your source and target SAP systems, then that process is called heterogeneous system copy or migration.

What is the need of System refresh?

In real time scenarios,

i)               If Quality system data is outdated with Production system, testing may succeed in quality system but may fail in Production system. So, it is required that Quality system should have  same data as Production system, so that better testing can be done in Quality system whose data is similar to production. So, it is suggested to refresh quality system with production system data periodically.

ii)             There might be a requirement to perform a production system upgrade (like support pack / version upgrade.) Instead of performing upgrade directly on actual production system, it is better idea to setup a mock / test system similar to production system with the actual data and perform the upgrade there first. After performing upgrade on mock system, some details related to errors likely to occur, actual time it took for upgrade, major issue if any can be identified so that necessary precautions can be taken while performing the upgrade on the actual production system.

iii)            In case a newly inducted team should be given training, instead of providing training to them on the actual system( DEV/QA/PRD), a system refresh can be done and a test/training system can be setup and access can be given to those systems. This makes sure that no damage is done to DEV/QA/PRD systems.