I followed a very useful blog by Manfred Lutz called ABAP Trial Version for Newbies: Part 8 ‘Exporting development objects from SP8′ which along with the comments and other forum posts, helped me to get the TMS working.

I suggest you follow Manfred’s blog first to see if his approach works – If so, you’re in luck. If not, I’ll help you out… My problem was that I got a TP_CANNOT_CONNECT_SYSTEM error when tryin got distribute the settings.

If you have a closer look, there is an ABAP RFC connection called TMSADM@NSP.DOMAIN_NSP (Transaction SM59). When you look at the settings, it refers to a host called ‘PWDF3101′ – This is incorrect but we cannot change it here because the RFC is locked for editing. This is a system generated RFC. Here’s how to fix it:

You need to make sure that your host file is configured correctly. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and open it with notepad. Either make sure that it exists, or add an entry to map your computer name to the correct IP address:

K5ERP-SERVER   localhost

Note that K5ERP-SERVER should be replaced by your computer name. Save this and restart the computer.

After restarting and firing up the SAP server using MMC console, go to transaction STMS and click on the “Overview->Systems” menu. Highlight the NSP line and go to the “SAP System->Change” menu. Go to the “Communication” tab and enter your computer name as the target host. Go to the “Transport Tool” tab and enter your computer name as the DBHOST. Also change the TRANSDIR to match your computer name like \\k5erp-server\sapmnt\trans\ where “k5erp-server” is the computer name. When done click save and it should all now be working!

Now you can follow the rest of Manfred’s blog to find out how to save your development objects to transports and then export them from your system into another SAP system.

I will discuss the options I thought of to achieve this – Remote Desktop, VPN and Static IP Address.

Yes, there is the option to install the server on my laptop, but all the heavy resource requirements steered me away from that decision. In fact, I installed the Netweaver 2004 Trail on my previous laptop with Windows XP. It was very convenient, but it slowed down the performance of my laptop to a grinding halt, and every time I wanted to start or stop the SAP server, it would take about 10 or 15 minutes – during which I couldn’t do any work. It also used a huge amount of valuable disk space which meant I couldn’t store as much music any more – We can’t tolerate that, now can we!?

Remote Desktop Tool

The first option is to use a remote desktop tool. This would mean that instead of using your SAPGui to login directly from your laptop to your SAP server at home, you would need to literally control your home PC from your laptop. This is probably the quickest and easiest way to start out, but has a lot of downsides.

Using a free remote desktop tool such as Team Viewer, you will be able to see your home PC’s desktop and control it from a remote location, as if you were sitting right in front of it. I use Team Viewer for all remote support – it works really well. Make sure to install the Team Viewer client on your home PC as a windows service, and then have it start with Windows. In the options you can set a “permanent” password so that you can always connect to your home PC from anywhere.

VPN Access

Basically, a VPN connects you to your home network over the internet. Once you are connected to your home network, you have access to the IP addresses in the network – This means that you will be able to use your laptop with SAPGui to connect to the SAP server once connected to the VPN. I played around with this but was unable to find an easy to configure and free solution. If you have experience with any free VPN solutions, please comment and let me know more details. Using this solution you would probably have to enable port forwarding on your network router – I discuss this in the next section.

Static IP Address

My favourite solution is to use a static IP address or something similar. Usually your router at home works with a dynamic IP address – Every time you restart your router, it could be assigned a different IP address. To get around this, you can subscribe and get a static IP address, but there will be a price tag. The free solution would be to use Dynamic DNS – You are given a domain like mysapserver.dyndns.org, and you assign your router’s IP address to it. There is client software that you install on the server which updates your Dynamic DNS account every time your router’s IP address is changed.

Here are the summarised steps to setting up your new URL: (Go here for a really good step by step guide)

1. Go to www.dyndns.com and create a new account – this is free.
2. Once you have registered, from your home server (the one that has the SAP server on it), sign in and go to https://www.dyndns.com/account/services/hosts/add.html
3. Enter a host name – something that you will remember, like “mysapserver”, and then select a domain to use. It really doesn’t matter which domain you use – Whatever your preference is…
4. Select “Host with IP address”
5. Click the “Use the auto detected IP address …” link – This will fill the IP address that you are currently connected with (hopefully the IP address of your router!)
6. Now click “Add to Cart” – It will take you through a purchasing transaction process, but everything will be free, so don’t stress – Just click Next, and then “Activate Services”.
7. Go to https://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/ and download the client for your platform. Install on your SAP server and enter your dyndns account details – This will then keep your dyndns URL up to date, even if your router’s IP address is changed.

Ok, now you have a URL that points to your router. By default, routers have firewalls enabled that block incoming connections – This will prevent you from accessing your SAP server. You will have to open up certain ports and point them to your SAP server for things to work…

1. Go to http://portforward.com/ to get exact instructions on how to set up port forwarding for your router – Select your router from the lists. I have the Netgear DG834G. Once you click on the router link, you will be shown an advert page – Click the link on the top right to skip the advert. Read the instructions and background – Don’t worry about trying to find SAP in their program list. Just click on the “Default Guide” link.
2. Make sure to carefully read everything – especially the section on static IP address!
3. The guide will take you through all the necessary steps to enable port forwarding – You need to forward the following ports to the IP address of your SAP server: 3200, 3300, 3600, 5403, 5404

Now you must make sure that your firewall does not stop the ports from being reached on your SAP server. My SAP installation is installed on Windows Vista Ultimate:

1. Open the control panel
2. Go to Windows Firewall
3. Click on the “Change Settings” link
4. Go to the Exception tab
5. Click the Add Port button
6. Enter SAP 3200 as the description, and 3200 as the port number
7. Do the same for port 3300, 3600, 5403 and 5404
8. Apply and save settings

Now you need to configure your SAPGui connection on your laptop or work PC. All you have to do is add a new connection, set the application server to your new URL (e.i. mysapserver.dyndns.org), set the system number to 00, system ID to NSP, and save – You should now be able to connect and see the SAP login screen!

If you have any problems connecting from outside the network that your SAP server is on, make sure that nothing is blocking incoming or outgoing connections on the port numbers that I mentioned above. After initially setting mine up, the connection worked, but then suddenly stopped – It was completely random, and I eventually figured out that my windows firewall on the SAP server was blocking me, but only when it felt like it – Good work Microsoft.

I’m really not a network guru, so please feel free to add to what I have said, correct my mistakes or give better advice on security issues etc.

This is part of a series: Netweaver 7.01 ABAP Trial Tips (Series)

]]> http://www.k5erp.com/sap-netweaver-trial-remote-access/feed/ 0 http://www.k5erp.com/netweaver-701-abap-trial-tips/ http://www.k5erp.com/netweaver-701-abap-trial-tips/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:45:08 +0000 David Bann http://blog.k5erp.com/?p=6 For those of you who have chosen to advance your SAP skills by having your own personal SAP server on your home PC or laptop, here are a couple of tips that might make the ride a little smoother for you…

I am going to focus on Netweaver 7.01 ABAP Trial installed on Windows Vista Ultimate – My PC has a dual core 3Ghz processor with 2Gb RAM.

Virtual Memory

The first thing I did was increase my virtual memory allocation to between 3 and 4Gb – This will make sure that if you happen to run out of physical memory, the OS will overflow to the page file and use your hard drive as a virtual source for memory. If this happens, it will drastically reduce the performance of your system, but at least it doesn’t have to stop working.

1. Click the Windows or “Start” button
2. Right click on “Computer”
3. Click on Properties
4. Click on “Advanced System Settings” on the left
5. Click on the “Advanced” tab
6. Under the “Performance” section, click the “Settings…” button
7. Click the “Advanced” tab
8. Under the “Virtual Memory” section click the “Change…” button
9. Make sure to deselect “Aromatically manage paging file size for all drives”
10. Select the volume that SAP is or will be installed on
11. Select the “Custom Size” option
12. Set the “Initial Size” as 3000Mb or bigger
13. Set the “Maximum Size” to at least 4000Mb
14. Save your changes and restart your machine for the changes to take affect.

Profile Parameters

Profile parameters are technical settings to do with how the SAP system runs. By default you cannot change these profile parameters from within SAP – You actually have to use a text editor to edit the profile parameter files directly. This can get a bit tedious, especially when you are playing around with the parameter values.

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Click on Utilities->Import Profiles->Of Active Users
3. You will see a lot of red – Don’t worry about this. Even though this is a Netweaver Trial, the parameter checks are for large scale enterprise servers, so we can just ignore most of these errors.
4. Click back button.
5. Click the save button
6. If asked to activate the profile, say yes.

Increase Number of Dialog & Background Processes

By default, the trial is set up to allow only 2 dialog work processes, and 1 background process. If you have more than one person logging into the system at once, you may want to increase these values. Just remember that with each new work process, comes increased resource requirements.

Please never change the number of dialog processes to only 1 – If you do this, and then try to use something like F4 field input help, the system will hang because it requires at least 2 dialog processes.

It is also useful to increase the background processed to about 2 or 3, so that when you are running batch jobs you don’t constantly have to wait for other jobs to complete first.

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Select your instance profile – Eg NSP_DVEBMGS00_<servername>
3. Select “Extended Maintenance”
4. Click the change button
5. Change the value of rdisp/wp_no_dia to set the desired number of dialog processes. (Make this 4/5)
6. Change the value of rdisp/wp_no_btc to set the desired number of background processes. (Make this 2/3)
7. Click the back button
8. Say yes when asked to save changes
9. I know this seems repetitive, but now you need to click the save button
10. Say no when it tells you that incorrect parameter values were detected
11. Say yes when it asks to activate the profile
12. For these changes to take affect, you will need to restart the application server

Compile Programs

Every program in SAP needs to be compiled before it can be run for the first time – After first installing Netweaver, it can become quite a headache watching every transaction you go into compile first. As pointed out by Mike, it would be a great idea to have these programs all compiled for you in a batch job which is run while you are sleeping one night… Remember that when executing a mass compile action, you ill need sufficient disk space for the operation – Do not do this if you are already short on disk space!

1. Go to transaction SGEN
2. Select the option to “Generate All Objects of Selected Software Components”
3. Select the continue button
4. Now select the software components that you want to generate – If you have enough disk space, I would suggest selecting them all
5. Click the continue button
6. Now there is the option for parallel processing, but you will only have one application server, so just click Continue
7. After a while you will be shown options to schedule a background job to do all the work – Either start immediately, or schedule for a convenient time
8. In my system, there were 62340 objects that needed to be generated. Note that the background job seems to use multiple dialog processes to carry out the work – Because of this, it would be a good idea to increase the number of dialog work processes before starting this.

If anything goes wrong, you have the option to regenerate the previous loads in transaction SGEN. Remember that this will take some time, so let it run overnight while you don’t need the machine… [Edit - My system is set up with 2 background processes and 4 dialog processes. I ran SGEN for all software components and it took a total of 2 days 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete, and used about 5.2Gb of hard disk space]

Create a New Client

I like to create my own new client for development – some people may want to have multiple clients. For example, you may want client 100 for development and client 200 for customizing.

When you create a new client is SAP, there are obviously no user accounts set up in that client. The only way to log into the client for the first time is to use the SAP* username. By default in version 7.01 of the Netweaver Trial, this option is disabled, so this will not work. You have to edit the profile parameters to enable this – Without making this change you will not be able to create a new client.

You need to first create a new client, then do a client copy so that the client becomes usable. Finally you will either copy user accounts into the client, or create new user accounts.

SAP* Login

1. Go to transaction RZ10
2. Select the instance profile, named something like NSP_DVEBMGS00_<servername>
3. Select the “Extended Maintenance” option
4. Click on the “Change” button
5. Click on the “New Parameter” button, or press F5
6. Parameter name is “login/no_automatic_user_sapstar” (without the quotation marks)
7. Parameter value is “0″ (zero)
8. Click the back button – Say yes to save.
9. Click back button again – Click yes to save.
10. Click the save button – Say no when it tells you there are errors.
11. Click yes to activate when it prompts you.
12. Restart the server using MMC.

Now you can log into ANY client with the username SAP*, and password PASS (uppercase). Make sure to set this profile parameter value to 1 when this is no longer needed! Otherwise anyone can have SAP_ALL access if they try this login!!

Logical System

Make sure that you have created a logical system for each client in transaction BD54 – You will need this before you create a new client.

1. Go to transaction BD54
2. Information popup appears telling you that this is a cross client table. Click the tick.
3. Add a new entry for each client that you will use. Create one for client 001, and one for the new client you want to create.
4. I suggest that you name the logical system in the format of <System ID><SystemNumber><Client>, so for the preview installation, this would be NSP00001for client 001, and NSP00100 for client 100 etc.
5. Give the logical system a description – Like “Development Client”, or “Test Client” or “Configuration Client”

Create Client

Now we need to create a new client. You can log in as BCUSER or DDIC on client 001.

1. Go to transaction SCC4
2. Click the ‘Change” icon
3. Information popup appears telling you that this is a cross client table. Click the tick.
4. Click the New Entries button
5. Enter a client number and description
6. Enter the city
7. Select the logical system
8. Choose your currency
9. Select the client role – This would only really need to be “test” or “Customizing”
10. Make sure to choose “Automatic Recording of Changes” if you want to use the transport system
11. Select “Changes to repository and cross client Customizing Allowed”
12. Select “Protection level 0:No restriction”
13. Save your changes.

Client Copy

Now that you have created a new client, we need to do a client copy from client 000 – This will copy all basic data that is required to use the client.

1. Log into the new client with username SAP* and password PASS
2. Go to transaction SCCL
3. You will notice that the target client is set to the client that you are logged into – You can’t change this.
4. It is recommended by SAP to use the SAP_CUST profile. You should not use other profiles like SAP_ALL, since there is a lot of default config in client 000 which is only accessed if it does not already exist in the client that you are in. What this means, is that if you have not set up configuration for something important int the client that you are in, SAP will fetch default values from client 000. You can then override the default values by simply maintaining in the said client. If you copy all the default stuff to your new client, you will prevent yourself from benefiting from any change in default config in the future which is introduced by an upgrade or support pack.
5. Select source client 000
6. You may want to run a test first to see that it will work – This should only take a few minutes.
7. Once ready, run without test mode selected, and make sure to “Schedule as Background Job”
8. Select the “immediately” option and then select Schedule Job
9. You can then view the status and result logs of the client copy by going into transaction SCC3.
10. Once the copy is complete, you may want to copy user profiles from client 001 by starting a new client copy, but with profile SAP_USER, source client 001.

Disable FQDN Check

(This was taken from entmike.com)

This disables the system from caring what domain name your web applications were accessed from.  In other words, since the trial version installs on localhost, trying to share a link to a web app to your friend using your internet IP address does not necessarily fly.  If you have your own domain name mapped to your IP address, then maybe this is not necessary, but let’s just remove the check altogether.  (Do not do this in an actual workplace environment!)

1. Go to transaction SE24 and enter CX_FQDN for Object type and click Display.
2. Double-click on the CHECK method under the Methods tab.
3. Click Method -> Enhance.
4. Click Edit -> Enhancement Operations -> Show Implicit Enhancement Options
5. Position your cursor on line 2 which should have a long line of ” marks.
6. Click Edit -> Enhancement Operations -> Create Enhancement
7. Click the Code button in the ‘Choose Enhancement Mode’ dialog box.
8. You will be prompted to ‘Select or Create Enhancement Implementation’.  Click the Create Implementation button at the bottom.
9. Enter Z_CHANGE_CX_FQDN as the name of the Enhancement Implementation.  (You can name it whatever you want, but it has to start with the letter ‘Z’).
10. Give a meaningful name for this enhancement (e.g. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’, etc)
11. For the ‘Composite Enhancement Implementation’, enter Z_CEI (or anything else you want that starts with a ‘Z’).  Then click the Checkmark.
12. You will be prompted to ‘Create Object Directory Entry’.  Just click ‘Local Object’.
13. Highlight your new Enhancement Implementation you just made in the dialog window and click the checkmark.
14. You will notice in your editor window a section similar to below:

    METHOD check.
    """"""""""""""$"$SE:(1) Class CX_FQDN, Method CHECK, Start       A
    *$*$-Start:   9999-------------------$*$*
     
    ENHANCEMENT 1 ZMIKE_ENHANCE.    "inactive version
    *
    ENDENHANCEMENT.
    *$*$-End:   9999-------------------$*$*
    ...

15. We will be adding one line of code (line 5).  Delete the * and type the word EXIT.  (Include the period).
16. Click the activate button.  (7th button on the toolbar, looks like a flashlight/matchstick).
17. Click the checkmark in the dialog pop-up you get.

This is part of a series: Netweaver 7.01 ABAP Trial Tips (Series)

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