SAP BASIS Backup Interview Questions

Your Company’s Take on Backups
Backup and recovery for a SAP instance is best handled along with the other
backup and recovery needs of your company’s computer systems. But for those company’s who do not yet possess a solid backup and recovery solution, or who simply want to segragate the SAP landscape from all other internal IT solutions, here are a few things you need to know.
Online versus offline, high availability, frequency, are all decisions your IT staff need to make based on their history with similar procedures at your company, the recommendations of SAP, and the guidance of your implementation Basis consultant. Enforced backups, and detailed and tested recovery procedures should be part of any Disaster Recovery plan, and a documented part of any SAP implementation project.
If your company falls into the latter category, SAP does supply tools for your uses which can be used in either line command form or from within the SAP instance. If you SAP server contains a tape drive or has access to the network tape unit, transaction DB13 can be used to schedule periodic backups. This is the same transaction where weekly statistics, log cleanup, and database verification jobs are scheduled in the post-installation work after installation of a new SAP instance. DB13 scheduled BRCONNECT runs which can also be CRONed in command line form by the IT staff.
For more information, please see the SAP Online Documentation for DB13 by going to the DB13 transaction and clicking Help -> Application Help or referring to the section Creating Database Statistics, Index Rebuilds, and Log Backup Jobs – Oracle. More information regarding BRCONNECT can be found in the SAP BRCONNECT Guide which can be found at http://service.sap.com/instguides.

What Needs to Be Backed Up?
The PRD Instance
Daily backup should be made for these SAP specific directories:
/usr/sap/
/sapmnt/
/usr/sap/trans on the TMS Domain Controller Server
Any directories containing flat files that are used by the SAP instance
Daily backups should be made for these Oracle specific directories:

/oracle
Directory holding redo logs if not in the /oracle structure
Weekly backup should be made for these OS specific directories:
Root
/etc
/dev
For Oracle, the entire /oracle directory should be backed up daily if there is only one Oracle Instance on the server, and each separate /oracle/ directory if there is more than one instance on the server.
It is also recommended that a full offline image of the entire server be made before the monthly closing cycle.
The DEV and QAS Instances
Weekly backup should be made for these SAP specific directories:
/usr/sap/
/sapmnt/
Any directories containing flat files that are used by the SAP instance
Weekly backups should be made for these Oracle specific directories:
/oracle
Directory holding redo logs if not in the /oracle structure
Monthly backup should be made for these OS specific directories:
Root
/etc
/dev
For Oracle, the entire /oracle directory should be backed up daily if there is only one Oracle Instance on the server, and each separate /oracle/ directory if there is more than one instance on the server.
It is also recommended that a full offline image of the entire server be made at the same time every month.

Working with saprouter
Starting saprouter (OSS Link)
1. Log on to the appropriate server as adm.
2. Click Start → Administrative Tools → Services to open a Services window.
3. Right-click on the SAPROUTER service and click Start.
4. You may now log off the server.

Verifying the Status of saprouter

If you have previously successfully established SAPNet (OSS) communications with SAP via saprouter in the past, there can only be three reasons for a “broken” SAPNet connection to SAP: the SAP VPN is down (which rarely happens); your saprouter configuration has been incorrectly changed (also very rare); or your saprouter is not running (happens all the time).
1. Log on to the appropriate server as adm.
2. Click Start → Administrative Tools → Services to open a Services window.
3. Look at the SAPROUTER service. If is not started, right-click to start the service. If it is started, right-click & Stop the service and then right-click & Start the service. This should “bounce” your saprouter instance.
4. You may now log off the server.
Return to Index...
Stopping saprouter
1. Log on to the appropriate server as adm.
2. Click Start → Administrative Tools → Services to open a Services window.
3. Right-click on the SAPROUTER service and click Stop.
4. You may now log off the server.