How to upgrade BI 7.0 to EhP1 on IBM iSeries

his guide provides an overview of release 701 upgrade procedure on AS/400 platform, to help simply upgrade with more detailed information for targeted readers in his/her own case.
The purpose of this upgrade, is to take advantage of BI export library 2.0 which is provided particularly in Netweaver 7.01 release for BEx broadcaster printing since ADS is not supported on AS/400.

Source system SPs and kernel patch 

Source system database is 100GB, locates in a LPAR which has 0.8 physical CPU allocated. The entire upgrade process took about 8 hours, detailed phases below:

Preliminary tasks (load new kernel, prepare upgrade directory): 1hour;

Preprocessing: 5hours, in this case it might have some lock wait situation and

performance conflict with backup process;

Downtime upgrade: 1.5hours

Post processing: 20mins, not include another 2-4hours system compiling.

Afterwards, data growth is less than 5GB. 

Upgrade steps:
1.    Turn off MIMIX IFS replication, clear library MIMIX_A (if applicable)

2.    Download EHPi from SWDC: Support Packages and Patches - Entry by Application
Group Additional Components Upgrade Tools SAP EHP INSTALLER SAP EHP INSTALLER 7.00 Patch level 17

Note: version 17 requires TP version 372.04.81 or higher, make sure you have it ready before preprocessing. Additionally, 701 kernel is compatible for 700 instances but for upgrade process only (refer to note 1284805), so it's safe and convenient to
apply latest 701 kernel library before starting the actual upgrade.

3.    Extract SAR file to get EHPI directory

4.    Make sure the following notes are applied or at least loaded in the target system by SNOTE:
1329326, 1386538, 1431172, 1369401, 1390993, 1399760, 1158660, 1256384, 1321756, 1113868, 1263115, 1247451, 1120511

5.    Fill download directory with 4 EHP upgrade files, support packages and stack
file generated by Solution manager.

6.    Maintain table BCOS_CUST in SM30 and enter the following data:
Column 1: Application: OSS_MSG
Column 2: +: W
Column 3: RFC Destination: RFC Destination in the SAP Solution Manager system
Column 4: +: CUST620
Column 5: +: 1.0

7.    To load installation tools as QSECOFR: QSH CMD('/<installation
directory>/loadepilib <SID>')

8.    To start installgui as <SID>OFR:
ADDLIBLE SAPEPI
ADDLIBLE SAP_TOOLS

STARTEHPI SID(<SID>) TYPE(*ABAP) EPIPATH('/<installation directory>/ehpi')
SAPEPILIB(SAPEPI) SAPEPISRV(SAPEPISRV)
OPTIONS('jce_policy_zip=/<directory>/ehpi/SAPJCE.ZIP' '-srvarg=/RoleService/off')

9.    Call SDTgui: http://<host>:4239 

10.  Click next, EhpI recognizes this is an ABAP-only instance by loading its start
profile. If this is a dual stack instance, then you'll see another Java tag shows up. 

Note: For Java-only instance, using JSPM to patch directly to 701 support packages is a more effcient solution. 

11.  Input keyword and download directory 

12.  Extraction step started, takes 30-45 mins.

13.  At the beginning of step, configuration, you need to define resource mode of
this upgrade, apply the best in your case. 

14.  I recommend that not to choose system compiling here, because if enabled it'll
start SGEN as the first action in postprocessing phase. 

Other features like memory optimized activator, TP parallel processing, there's no
negative impact to enable them as default.

15.  EhpI checks stack file for the target support package level, and other
components installed in this instance as well.

16.  Define instance number for shadow instance, profiles as well if you want it be
different from source instance. Phase configuration ends here.

17.  Phase check and preprocessing doesn't require manual input, at last asks you
whether to lock development.

Note: one error of failed to start shadow instance could occur here:

Check note 1291388:
Check the entry in the file: /usr/sap/BR2/EHPI/abap/BR2/SYS/global/ms_acl_info and
correct the entry. If required, enter HOST=*

18.  Preprocessing finished, now has reached downtime  phase, backup all journal
receivers and delete them 

19.  In phase postprocessing, it reminds you to re-enable scheduled batch jobs which
are suspended by upgrade process by report  BTCTRNS2.

20.  Bravo! 

Target system SPs and kernel patch