Transaction OS01 (LAN Check by Ping) can be used to find out if a particular computer is reachable on the network. Transactions ST06, ST04, AL11 and others help us carry out some activities that are outside the SAP application, but sometimes we need more than that. Sometimes we need to check if external services are running, start or stop local or external services, run external programs, etc.
Transaction SM69 is used to create and maintain external operating system commands. SM49 is used to execute them.
"CMD /C" – The window to the outside world
Often we create external OS commands to do specific tasks. In fact, that is how they should be used, because security must always be taken into account.
On the other hand we, as administrators, might need to have exclusive access to the outside world -- for example, if we are troubleshooting something at 3 AM when no IT people are available at the remote site.
"CMD /C" starts a Windows command interpreter instance and then it terminates. Defining a new external OS command [via SM69] that runs "CMD /C" with any optional parameters is indeed our access window to the outside world.
Example:
To execute the command created above (ZADMIN) we run transaction SM49.
This will provide us with the opportunity to specify additional parameters that can be passed to "CMD /C".
In the example below, the command "NET VIEW" is executed.
As mentioned earlier, however, you can check for services and do many other things that we would normally have to do at a command prompt session or by executing a program outside the SAP application. Among them is the ability to reboot a server, start a specific service, run a batch file, etc.
You can get server information on a remote machine by running a utility such as "SRVINFO.exe" within an external command in SAP. Example: the command "srvinfo sapqas" retrieves server information from machine "sapqas". Using this we can tell how long the machine has been running, for example.
Overcoming Basis challenges inside and outside the box
Home: Introduction
Basis challenge #1: Triggering jobs inside and outside SAP
Basis challenge #2: Reaching outside the application
Basis challenge #3: Obtaining the SAPGUI version of all computers
Review: Conclusion and more resources
