Well, with any operation, making sure your data is properly backed is pretty important. Since I love to learn things the hard way, I originally gave no thought at all this. So in my last post I explained about some of the pain it took to install a simple SAP system. Well, now envision that I spent the next 6 months beginning my development of my great idea (it would be Rapier, eventually). One day, I was in between projects, so I was sitting in the living room, catching up on episodes of Lost, coding my BSP masterpiece. I can’t really remember exactly how it happened, but my portable HDD suddenly started making a clicking sound, my system locked up, and suddenly, all of my work was gone. The last 6 months of installing SAP, and design of my product gone. I didn’t have another HDD, I didn’t have backups. In my naive mind, I didn’t think a HDD would fail (keep in mind, I used to build computers for myself in college, so I should know better). So… I went back to square one (happily, I did take some notes on the installation, so instead of months, it took me 2 weeks.) I redesigned a better BSP app, and learned a lot along the way. That’s how i learned the first time.
Now… how did I remedy my mistakes? I implemented a couple of things. First, I got myself a great big HDD and kept copies of my SAP systems and various other virtual systems, so I could quickly rebuild if I needed to (I still have those systems to this day, just in case). The other thing I started to do was to save my SAP transports. For those of you unfamiliar, as long as your STMS configuration is set up (and this can be a pain), every time you release a transport SAP saves 2 files. The Data & Cofile can then be backed up somewhere else (I use dropbox so I can quickly get to them, and it keeps them in the cloud). Then at anypoint, I can upload those transports into a clean system, giving me periodic code and configuration backups. It doesn’t help if I have to recreate master data, but I have a different method to help me with that.
As a side note, I recently had another HDD fail. This one less costly, but still painful because I realized I wasn’t backup up often enough, and I wasn’t saving the right things. So what did I do? I got myself another HDD, and I now backup my progress weekly (I also do this for all my files and pictures etc too). In addition, I think I might also get Carbonite to give me everything at a remote location. I need to figure out how I can have all of my SAP systems on Carbonite. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know…
In the meantime, learn from me, not with me… back your stuff up
Mike