SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management

OCC Blog
Nov 19
5 min read

Updated: Nov 20

Infographic illustrating SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management processes and data protection best practices. The image features servers representing system infrastructure, with visual elements showing tenant creation, operations, backup procedures, and secure data protection flows. Servers shown are used to represent technical infrastructure only. — SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management

Introduction

SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management is important for administrators and users alike. Whether you are new to the platform or have experience with SAP’s cloud ERP, having a good understanding of tenant management helps your organisation maintain reliable operations, comply with business rules, and get the most out of support services. This guide offers practical tips for SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management, supporting businesses and ByDesign clients with useful advice on how to manage tenants effectively.

1. Understanding SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management

A tenant is your organisation’s dedicated SAP system. Most businesses have more than one tenant, which is an important part of effective SAP Business ByDesign tenant management. The production tenant is used for business operations and holds your live data, and it typically comes with one test tenant for training, development, or trying out new features. Sometimes, you may need additional test tenants for specific purposes, such as user acceptance testing or specialised development projects; these can be arranged with SAP at an extra cost. Keeping these environments separate reduces the risk of mistakes and allows safe experimentation without disrupting daily business operations.

Tenant lifecycle events, such as refreshing a test tenant with production data or terminating a test environment, can be managed directly via the Service Control Center work center in your production tenant. This enables administrators to coordinate tenant refreshes, deletions, and other actions more efficiently, with less reliance on SAP support.

2. Setting Up a New Tenant (Initial Implementation)

When onboarding your organisation’s first SAP Business ByDesign tenant:

Select the appropriate region or data centre and language for your business. This decision is critical for regulatory compliance, onboarding efficiency, and ensuring alignment with UK and EU data protection requirements (e.g., GDPR).
Collaborate with your SAP System Integrator or Partner to configure the tenant according to your business-specific needs and operational workflows.
Define and assign user roles and permissions meticulously from the outset to safeguard sensitive business processes and control access.
Plan your data migration strategy carefully; map and validate all existing business data as it is imported into SAP ByDesign to ensure completeness and accuracy before go-live.

3. Refreshing a Test Tenant with Live Data

Refreshing a test tenant with production data is useful for realistic testing before going live.

Contact SAP support to request this refresh.
Coordinate with your team to ensure a suitable timing, as your production system may need to be offline. Downtime can vary depending on the data volume and SAP’s availability.
Coordinate closely with SAP support and your project team to pick suitable timing and minimise business disruption; consider critical business periods.
After the refresh, check company structures, integration links, and user accounts for accuracy.
Limit the number of refreshes to keep development and testing environments organised.
Tenant refresh activities can only be performed outside of the contractual maintenance period (CMP) window.

4. Requesting a New Test Tenant

You can also ask for an empty tenant without live data if that suits your project.
A new test tenant can only be requested after scheduling deletion of the current one, with both usable in parallel for up to three weeks.
Avoid requesting new tenants from two days before the test system upgrade until two weeks before the production upgrade.
Always check upcoming upgrade schedules and reference the SAP release calendar before submitting test tenant requests to avoid delays.

5. Data Protection and Backups in SAP ByDesign

With SAP Business ByDesign, backups and disaster recovery are handled by SAP. You do not need to make backups yourself, nor can you create or download system backup files as you might with on-premise solutions.

You can still regularly export important reports and business records for your own audits.
SAP automatically manages daily backups and several other backup types, such as full, differential, and log backups, for all tenants.
If there is a system failure, major error, or data loss, SAP can restore your system to any available backup within their retention period (normally ranging from 14 to 28 days, depending on tenant type and contract).
When you request a system restore, all changes made since the restore point will be lost. This means any transactions, updates, or configuration changes added after that backup will be removed and cannot be recovered.
SAP’s backup system provides security and business continuity. Your own responsibility is managing exports of reports, data, and critical business objects that you wish to keep locally.

6. Decommissioning, Protecting Development Work and Managing Costs

Unused tenants cost money, so keep track of your tenant count.

Before removing any tenants, ask your implementation partner to support the process, and always export essential business data and reports to meet legal, audit, or day-to-day requirements.
If your organisation has developed custom features, add-ons, reports, or integrations using the SAP Business ByDesign SDK or SAP Cloud Applications Studio, make sure all development work (such as scripts, code, bespoke configurations, and integration artefacts) is securely backed up outside the tenant before deletion.
Development artefacts left inside the tenant will be permanently unrecoverable once deleted, ensure all key work is exported.
Ask SAP or your implementation partner to remove tenants no longer needed.
Update all system integrations and connections so they do not reference any tenant that has been decommissioned or removed.

7. Troubleshooting Common Issues

Some frequent problems and solutions:

Tenant setup fails: Check for valid licences and submit clear requirements to SAP.
Integration breaks after refresh: Review integration settings and user details.
Access or login issues: Revisit user roles and permissions after system changes.
Unexpected charges: Maintain a list of active tenants and check all invoices carefully.
Missing users or login problems after a refresh may need a user reset or update.

8. Best Practice Summary

Review tenant setup, access rights, and backup procedures for development work regularly.
Stay up to date with SAP release notes and ‘What’s New’ documentation.
Use SAP support and ByDesign online communities for tricky issues.
Regularly schedule exports of important business data and reports.
Make sure your processes comply fully with UK regulations and GDPR.

Conclusion

Effective SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management helps your business stay efficient, secure, and cost-effective. Backups and disaster recovery are fully managed by SAP, allowing your team to focus on business outcomes rather than technical worries. If you need advice on tenant management or any aspect of SAP Business ByDesign cloud ERP, contact Optima Cloud Consulting for expert support.

This guide shares the main practical points for SAP Business ByDesign Tenant Management and data protection. For further detail or advice on specific situations, please refer to official SAP resources or contact Optima Cloud Consulting.