SAP Commerce Cloud: Go Live Checklist

Go Live Readiness for SAP Commerce Cloud CX

Being ready to take a site to live isn’t just about ensuring you can deploy your code into a production server. Although deploying the code introduces new changes to your business production environment, it is essential to address the team’s readiness to support all aspects in regards to production Go-Live readiness.

It is essential to consider the below factors for your SAP Commerce Cloud Go-Live Readiness checklist;

Deployment Process:

Deployment is an important operational capability. You will need to perform configuration, customization and testing iteratively to improve performance, deploying your code from the initial stages throughout the application lifecycle, post-launch, maintenance and optimization phases.

Essential considerations of deployment process:

1. The solution delivery team should define deployment processes or utilize the SAP Commerce Cloud OOTB template to enhance deployment processes.
2. The deployment processes in the lower environment (stage) should mirror the production environment. Once the deployment is executed in the stage environment, the solution delivery team should run as many tests as possible (automated and manual).

In addition to the deployment process, the solution delivery team should consider a robust branching strategy;

• Design an acceptable release plan and branching strategies
• Determine the build and deployment workflow.
• Builds should be promoted from one environment to the next only after the unit, integration, and automated functional tests have passed.
• For minor bug fixes, changes that do not affect the data model, and do not require system updates, consider implementing a rolling deployment for production. There should be no downtime; deploy one server at a time and restart.
• Significant release processes, such as implementing major functionality or upgrading the SAP Commerce platform, should have more structure than automated tests in development and manual functional tests. Consider also performing load tests in your staging environment. Refresh your staging environment with data from production before completing these load testing types to ensure the test is accurate as possible.
• It would be better if you had a third-party system to run a security and penetration test against your site to ensure any customization you have done hasn’t exposed your site to security vulnerabilities.
• During Release deployment, the maintenance windows and maintenance pages should be configured and enabled.
• The development team should prepare and review the deployment procedure.
• This is where they specify what additional tasks are needed for deployment.
•  A careful Rollback strategy should be defined and tested.
• Ensure you have taken a snapshot of your production system before deployment.
• For code-only changes, these can be done via the current code deployment process – symbolic link (present v/s release folders), build and deploy.
• Type system rollbacks are more difficult unless you can return to the original type system. Type system changes should be carefully vetted out in lower environments (QA). Load testing can be used to mitigate finding new issues.

Go-live check List:

Like the pilot, have a flight check to ensure everything is set before the plane takes off. It would be best to have a checklist to ensure you are ready for go-live, whether you are using SAP Commerce Cloud or an on-prem version of SAP Commerce. SAP Commerce cloud provided a predefined checklist that can be enhanced as per the project and should outline all recommended checks required before production launch.

Multiple teams verify all recommended verifications and checks; 

#1. Network Engineers team: 

Ensures VPN connectivity, Verifies DNS TTL of the existing site is 5 minutes, SEO redirects set up, Ensure compliance with export requirements, Document and check DNS failover procedures as well as disaster recovery scenarios

#2. Dev-Ops Engineers team:

Ensure your endpoints are defined correctly, review your storefront configurations, determine maintenance pages and ensure they are uploaded in Commerce Cloud as well as your CDN (if you have one)

• Make sure the java user. time zone matches the database time zone, and all nodes set to use the same time zone settings
• Review your language pack configurations to ensure you’re only deploying the languages required.
• Test your snapshot and restore strategy against the ability to meet the SLA’s defined.
• Review your centralized logging endpoint to ensure it has all the reporting you need.
• Ensure a well-documented, tested, and repeatable deployment process is in place.
• Verify the SSL Certificate isn’t expired, ensure that production SSL certificates have been installed, and have the proper domain.
• Adjust the session timeout.
• Ensure that SAP Commerce (Hybris) cache size tuning has been performed.

Change the Default Master Password:

• Make sure the master password is changed before you have users in the system, and other types with encrypted attributes are added, and the encryption key for Transparent Attribute Encryption.

#1. Security Engineer Team ensures

• Confirm your VPN connectivity
• Password encoding should be sha256 or higher, change the default salt value (note; this should be done before you have any users in the system)
• Verify password encoding for users and customers

#2. Development Team

• A favicon.ico needs to be defined.
• Define and upload static files such as; 404, 403 and 500 branded error pages in the storefront application. If you also have CDN tier 502, 503 and 504 branded pages for situations where application servers are not available.
• Ensure mechanisms are in place to be able to change the log level at runtime for some classes
• Default log levels should be set-up to warn or higher.
• Remove any unused extensions and adjust the session timeout.
• Review database pool settings and Tune catalogue sync process
• Check that price accuracy is adjusted to project-specific needs.
• Ensure that SAP Commerce (Hybris) cache size tuning has been performed.
• Adjust and save the history of changes made to items
• Be sure to thoroughly test the impact that deployments/syncs have on the system, especially while the customer-facing site is under heavy load.
• If migrating data from an existing site, ensure you have tested the data migration process and confirmed the data is compatible with your SAP Commerce Cloud solution.

#3. Business Team

• Notify any 3rd party vendors of your launch date and ensure you have all their contact details
• Ensure compliance with Export requirements (GEO Blocking) according to ECC, ECCN and ERA
• If migrating from an existing site, ensure your SEO Redirects are set- up.

If you’d like to learn more about how to we can take your SAP Commerce CX to the next level, please visit our website www.cxportal.com, where you’ll find lots of useful information. Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to a member of our team, call us now on +442034416513 and we’ll do everything we can to help.