KB 241 - PowerConnect System Landscape Management (SLM)

KB 241 (ABAP): PowerConnect System Landscape Management (SLM)

1. Introduction

System Landscape Management (SLM) is the PowerConnect component that lets you manage a landscape of PowerConnect installations from one place. You designate one SAP system as the central (managing) system; every other SAP system running PowerConnect is registered in the central system as a managed system, connected through an RFC destination.

From the central system, SLM lets you:

• Organize managed systems into system groups and monitor them at a glance (RFC connectivity plus the status of the PowerConnect Check, Collector, and Uploader jobs on each system).

• Synchronize PowerConnect configuration from the central system to managed systems, either on a schedule or on demand. Only PowerConnect's own configuration tables are distributed — no SAP business data is touched.

• Send remote commands to managed systems: start or stop the PowerConnect jobs, or change the application log level.

• Track every activity in the SLM Action Log.

1.1 Key concepts

2. Accessing SLM

SLM is part of the PowerConnect cockpit. There is no separate transaction code.

1. Start transaction /BNWVS/MAIN (use /n/BNWVS/MAIN from another screen).

2. Open the Landscape Management menu. It contains:

   • SLM Control Panel – opens the SLM Systems Cockpit (the main landscape screen).

   • SLM Global Config – opens the SLM Global Parameters dialog.

   • SLM Sync Logs (client) – displays synchronization logs on a system that receives configuration (client side).

📷 Screenshot placeholder: /BNWVS/MAIN with the Landscape Management menu expanded.

Editing lock. The cockpit allows only one editor at a time. When you open it while another user holds the edit lock, it opens in display mode: the tree toolbar is reduced to Display, checkboxes are not editable, and all settings dialogs open read-only.

Authorizations. See section 8 for the authorization objects required on the central and the managed systems.

3. The SLM Systems Cockpit

Title: PowerConnect Landscape Management. The screen is split into two panes.

3.1 Landscape tree (left pane)

The tree, headed System management, shows the landscape hierarchy:

PowerConnect Landscape          (root)

├── <ungrouped systems>

└── System group

└── System

└── Services

└── Service (e.g. CONFIG_SYNC)

Columns displayed for each row:

Status icons: green light = OK / job running, red light = error / job not running, light out = not checked. The job columns are only evaluated when the ping succeeds, and only for systems whose system and group are both active.

By default the cockpit pings every active system while the screen loads (global parameter slm.ui.ping_on_startup, delivered as active). In large landscapes you can switch this off to speed up screen startup — see section 7.1.

Other tree behavior:

• Double-click a group, system, or service to open its settings dialog.

• Drag & drop a system onto a group (or onto the root) to reassign it. The change is saved with Save.

3.2 Action summary (right pane)

A read-only list summarizing completed and failed actions per system and action type, newest first.

Use Refresh Summary in the toolbar to re-read it.

3.3 Toolbar and menu functions

Tree toolbar (edit mode):

In display mode the toolbar offers Display only.

Application toolbar / menu:

3.4 Context menu (right-click on a group or system)

📷 Screenshot placeholder: Context menu on a system node showing Commands submenu and Run Synchronization.

4. Setting up the landscape

4.1 Prerequisites for a managed system

Before registering a system, make sure that:

• PowerConnect is installed on it at the same release as the central system. Synchronization refuses to run on a version mismatch.

• An RFC destination of type 3 (ABAP connection) to the system exists (transaction SM59) on the central system. Only type-3 destinations are accepted.

• The RFC user in that destination has the SLM authorizations on the target system (section 8).

• If the system should receive configuration synchronization: the global parameter slm.services.sync.has_client_role is set to X on the managed system (see section 7.1). Without it, the system rejects sync sessions with "System has not been switched to client mode".

4.2 Creating a system group

1. In the cockpit (edit mode), choose Create Group.

2. Enter the group name and set the Active checkbox as needed. Group names must be unique and must not contain the wildcard characters * or +.

3. Confirm with OK, then Save.

4.3 Registering a managed system

1. Select the target group in the tree and choose Create System.

2. In the System settings dialog, enter:

   • System ID – the SID of the managed system (letters A–Z and digits only, must be unique). The system ID cannot be changed after creation.

   • RFC destination – must exist in SM59 as an ABAP (type 3) connection and must not already be assigned to another SLM system.

   • Active – whether the system participates in SLM processing.

3. Choose Check to test the connection. The check pings the destination, verifies that the remote system's SID matches the System ID you entered, and warns if the remote PowerConnect version differs from the local one.

4. Confirm with OK. A Services folder containing all defined SLM services (initially inactive) is added beneath the new system.

5. Choose Save.

Removing a system. Remove marks the system as deleted (it disappears from the landscape) and removes its service subscriptions and parameters. Groups are deleted outright, together with the systems they contain — a confirmation prompt is shown in both cases.

4.4 Subscribing a system to a service

1. Expand the system's Services folder.

2. Tick the Active checkbox on the service row (for example CONFIG_SYNC).

3. For CONFIG_SYNC, double-click the service row to open Sync service settings and pick the Sync Profile the system should use (F4 help lists all profiles). The chosen profile is stored in the service's PROFILE_ID parameter; if none is assigned, the default profile is used.

4. Choose Save.

For any other (custom) service, double-clicking the service row opens a generic Service settings dialog listing the service's parameters (parameter ID and editable value). Parameters flagged as constant by the service definition are read-only.

5. Synchronization

5.1 What is synchronized

CONFIG_SYNC distributes PowerConnect configuration tables only — global settings, license keys, upload/metric configuration, connection targets, field filters and rules, extension schedules, and the per-extractor filter tables (roughly 70 /BNWVS/* customizing tables). Which of these areas are included for a given system is controlled by the sync profile assigned to its subscription. No SAP business or master data is transferred.

5.2 How it works

Synchronization is a push from the central system to the managed system.

5.3 Scheduled synchronization

The service scheduler works as follows:

• The PowerConnect Check job on the central system starts the job /BNWVS/BC_SLM_SERVICES whenever at least one SLM service is due and the landscape contains active systems.

• When the service runs, it processes every active system with an active CONFIG_SYNC subscription (systems in inactive groups are skipped). Each system is one action; a failure on one system is logged and does not stop the others.

To manage services, choose SLM Services in the cockpit. The SLM Service Management dialog lists every service with:

Changes in this dialog are saved immediately when you confirm — they are global for the whole landscape.

5.4 Manual synchronization

To trigger a sync for a single system:

• From the cockpit: right-click the system → Run Synchronization. You are asked for a batch user; SLM then releases a background job named /BNWVS/SLM_SYNC_MANUAL_<SID> and confirms with "Sync job … released – track progress in Action Logs". If a sync job for that system is already running, the request is refused. Unsaved cockpit changes must be saved first.

Manual runs are recorded in the action log with an empty service name, which distinguishes them from scheduled runs; they do not affect the service's schedule.

5.5 Monitoring: SLM Action Logs

Open with Display Action Log in the cockpit. Selection: date range (defaults to today) and system ID. The list shows one row per action:

The only interactive function is Refresh; there is no drill-down to detail messages in this release. Failed synchronizations are not retried automatically — fix the cause and wait for the next scheduled run.

Action log entries are purged automatically after the number of days set in slm.actions.log_retain_days (delivered: 7). Sync logs are purged per slm.services.sync.log_retain_days (delivered: 7).

Additional log views: Sync Logs (server) in the cockpit shows the server-side synchronization details; SLM Sync Logs (client) in the /BNWVS/MAIN menu shows what a receiving system applied.

5.6 Remote commands

The Commands context menu executes an operation on the managed system over RFC:

The result of every command (success or error message from the remote system) is displayed immediately and requires change authorization on both sides.

6. Configuration

6.1 SLM Global Parameters

Open with SLM Global Config (from the cockpit or the /BNWVS/MAIN menu). The dialog shows a two-column grid — parameter ID and value. You can change values of existing parameters but not add or delete rows. Changes are written to the customer configuration table and recorded in the PowerConnect audit log with old and new value.

Delivered parameters:

6.2 Background jobs used by SLM

7. Authorizations

SLM uses the PowerConnect authorization objects (object class ZBNW):

Practical minimum for the RFC user on each managed system: /BNWVS/SLM with ACTVT 33 (status queries), plus /BNWVS/SLM ACTVT 34 and /BNWVS/SYN ACTVT 34 if the system should accept remote commands and configuration synchronization.

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