Understanding the SAP ILM Store: A comprehensive guide

A quick look at SAP Information Lifecycle Management

Information Lifecycle Management is a systematic approach to automating data management. This extensive approach provides the creation and storage to decommission and delete data with the help of rules to strategically handle it during its lifecycle. Moreover, SAP ILM helps organisations to efficiently operate growing amounts of data and looks after the complex system landscape while ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory standards, such as the GDPR.

The General Data Protection Regulation is one of the strictest data privacy laws created by the European Union (EU). With this comprehensive law, Europe emphasises its stance on stringent data protection measures. It imposes obligations on businesses if they collect or handle data related to the people in the EU. To comply with such regulations, you need enhanced data governance and data protection methods. This is exactly where SAP Information Lifecycle Management comes into the picture.

Now, let's take a look at three key functionalities of SAP ILM:

Data archiving: Archiving helps you move the infrequently used data from the main database to another storage location with limited access. This process allows you to free up valuable space from the production database, which ultimately improves the system performance.

Retention management: It helps define and enforce data retention rules and policies. With retention management, you can ensure that data is kept for the required time and deleted when it is no longer needed.

Retention Warehouse: The third functionality involves various tools for legacy system decommissioning. With this, you can effectively retrieve the archived data whenever you need it, such as for audits or reporting purposes, even when the original system has been shut down. When the old system is no longer in use, SAP Information Lifecycle Management can archive the data and shut down the system while maintaining access to the historical data if needed.

A deep dive into SAP data archiving

Data archiving is a key element of SAP ILM, which focuses on data volume management. It is the process of moving your less frequently used data that is no longer needed for daily business operations from a live database to a separate storage location. Archiving is a definitive approach recommended by SAP to clean the SAP standard tables; with this process, you can seamlessly enhance system performance, improve the system's availability, and reduce costs associated with system maintenance.

Advantages of data archiving

• Data archiving is critical for organisations that regularly create new data but must retain existing or old data for audits. 

• The recent trends in government mandates, laws, and corporate policies favour more data, which is retained for longer periods and can be retrieved faster.

• Data archiving efficiently helps businesses stay on par with these trends with a cost-effective solution.

• Organisations must create policies to help them characterise the data that needs to be archived. And, archiving is one of the most efficient ways to help users automate data identification and its procedures. 

Now that you've explored Information Lifecycle Management and its critical components, let's understand everything about the SAP ILM Store in the next section.

SAP ILM Store: A detailed analysis 

To put it simply, the ILM Store unlocks numerous benefits by using SAP's store for the data retention process, from archiving to storing archived files. The ILM Store is a major element of Information Lifecycle Management, which helps fulfil the requirements of BC-ILM 3.1 for its compliant storage systems. With the help of this store, users can store archived files and index them in a database using WebDAV interface standards.

Aside from this, to keep your data within the SAP S/4HANA environment, you can also leverage Retention Management for SAP ILM to store files directly in SAP databases, such as SAP IQ or SAP HANA. In fact, this allows you to optimise IT infrastructure while reducing maintenance costs of external WebDAV interfaces and storage media. Furthermore, the SAP ILM Store can also control the complete lifecycle of the data, which supports the process within the SAP environment without the help of any external interfaces. 

With SAP ILM, you can opt for ILM Store as a more streamlined and secure alternative to the existing third-party WebDAV stores. Moreover, you can connect various application servers to the ILM Store as WebDAV servers. With that said, ILM Store is a great asset for system decommissioning.

Requirements for using the ILM Store

With every new technology or system comes the prerequisites that users must fulfil, which is also the same for the SAP ILM Store. Here are a few essential requirements that users must accomplish to use ILM Store:

1. The first requirement is to select the database that you wish to use. There are various databases that users can pick, such as – 

• SAP HANA database

• Azure Blog Storage

• Database for the enterprise edition of SAP IQ

• Hadoop File System (HDFS)

2. Once the database is picked, users can switch on the ILM Store (ILM_STO) business function. To switch on this business function, choose the required release and then Application Help > Business Function > Business Function in SAP NetWeaver > ILM Database Store.

3. As a third prerequisite, it's important to configure the settings required for the ILM Store and set the database connection. To complete this, select Media Library > Installation and Configuration Guide for ILM Store.

4. Finally, you must use the SAP ILM's Retention Management. For this, you can select the required release and then go to Application Help > Cross-Application Components > Cross-Application Functions > SAP Information Lifecycle Management.

Conclusion 

Previously, the ILM Store was known as the SAP ILM Database Store. But even then, it was an underestimated player in the SAP universe because many businesses were totally unaware of its use. However, to leverage the full potential of ILM Store, organisations must understand the concept of SAP ILM. One such ideal way to do so is to connect with a trusted SAP ILM partner. The right partner can help you understand the entire context and can help you with the following points – 

• Delete obsolete data in your SAP system.

• Leverage global data privacy laws such as GDPR to review the data management processes.

• Help you close processes that have been open for a long time.

• Enables you to stay compliant with data protection regulations and avoid hefty penalties.

Aside from this, an expert with relevant years of experience in SAP data archiving can help you control the overall growth of your database, allowing you to optimise data growth and system performance. So, without any further ado, connect with an efficient SAP Information Lifecycle Management partner today.