Thursday 6 February 2014

ICNV Table conversion During Upgrades

ICNV Table conversion During Upgrades


ICNV is a configurable process that can be can be stopped and restarted. It allows for the conversion of large tables during system uptime. It is recommended that you execute ICNV as early as possible. This requires more careful planning. ICNV is only available if you are using the downtime-minimized upgrade strategy (High resource use).

SAP upgrades invariably lead to changes in the structure of database tables. Sometimes, this means that a complete restructure is necessary, with the conversion of each row in the table. In previous SAP Releases, this conversion occurred during upgrade downtime, so increasing that downtime. Incremental table conversion with transaction ICNV now lets you perform conversions before the upgrade, that is, during production operation.

The benefits of incremental table conversion are:
·        Reduced downtime during upgrade
·        Simpler conversion back to SAP standard for modified tables
·        Conversion of large tables during production operation

Execution
If you have tables that might benefit from incremental conversion, then the system asks you in phase ICNVREQ to start transaction ICNV, leading to the following:
The system asks you:
1.     Which modified tables you want to incrementally convert back to the standard SAP table definition    
2.     Which non-modified tables you want to incrementally convert

SAP recommends that you:
·         Do not archive tables that are being incrementally converted. Instead, archive before the conversion.
·         Do not attempt to modify tables that are being incrementally converted. These tables are locked until the end of the upgrade, so updates (including transaction SE11) are not possible.
·         Observe the resource usage of the database so that you can spot bottlenecks early on. You might have problems because:
–         Extra space is required, as each converted table has to be replicated before conversion
–         Extra transactions are produced, leading to increased logging activity
·         Make sure that enough batch work processes are available, preferably one batch work process for each table to be converted. If you are converting a large number of tables, transactionICNV distributes the tables to the available batch work processes.
·         Only start the upgrade when at least 95% of tables have been converted. This means that you have the greatest possible advantage in reducing downtime. You can easily observe the progress of the conversion using transaction ICNV.

 Steps 
SAPup will prompt you to start ICNV during the Upgrade process 


Start the incremental conversion (Login with TCODE ICNV – Source environment) 




Monitor the progress



Monitor the ICNV process & the DB growth closely. ICNV requires additional resource usage of the database, as well as a sufficient number of background work processes. It is also recommended that you execute ICNV as early as possible. This requires more careful planning.

The system estimates the time taken for the conversion, so helping you to plan the start of the upgrade. Large tables are converted during uptime but the switch to the new structure is made only during downtime(PARCONV_UPG).

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