Managing Serviceguard Extension for SAP, December 2007

Planning the Storage Layout
SAP Instance Storage Considerations
Chapter 2 59
Several SAP ABAP components install a startup script called
startsap_<local_hostname>_<id> into the home directory of
<SID>adm. These scripts internally refer to a startup profile of the
instance. With a non-shared home directory it is possible to change this
reference to point to individual startup profiles for each host. This allows
individual instance configurations for nodes that have a different failover
hardware setup. Netweaver ABAP components allow calling a generic
startsap script and providing a parameter that specifies the local
hostname or even a virtual IP address. If you use a virtual IP address,
you can’t provide individual configuration files.
It is required to install local executables. Local executables help to
prevent several causes for package startup or package shutdown hangs
due to the unavailability of the centralized executable directory.
Availability of executables delivered with packaged SAP components is
mandatory for proper package operation. History has shown that it is a
good practice to create local copies for all files in the central executable
directory. This includes shared libraries delivered by SAP.
To automatically synchronize local copies of the executables, SAP
components deliver the sapcpe mechanism. With every startup of the
instance, sapcpe matches new executables stored centrally with those
stored locally.