Besides having a client for productive use, other clients are frequently used in an SAP system landscape as well. These clients play different roles. There are three standard client roles (Development and Customizing, Quality Assurance, and Production) that must exist in any SAP system landscape, and there are additional client roles that may be used in addition, depending on the customer scenario.
Hint
To realize the full benefits of a multi-system landscape, every critical client should be located on a separate SAP system.
To learn more about the different clients and their role in an SAP landscape, watch the following video.
Note
The (logical) roles shown here are not identical to the (technical) client roles that can be chosen in transaction SCC4 (Client Maintenance). For example, the (logical) role Quality Assurance (QTST) correspondents to the (technical) role Test. The (technical) client roles that can be selected in transaction SCC4 are Customizing, Test, Production, Demo, Training/Education and SAP Reference.
In particular, when the development scope increases, customers may want to use a four-system landscape instead of a three-system landscape and include an additional pre-production system that contains the Pre-production client. The pre-production system is the environment for the final integration test once the scope of the release has been fixed (release test), for regression test, technical system test (including performance test and volume test), and user acceptance test. Furthermore, production support changes are tested here (particularly while the Quality Assurance client is being used for integration testing of a new development release).
All pre-production systems should be regularly refreshed from the production system, if possible. The overall setup of all pre-production systems should mimic the production as closely as possible, including hardware-architecture, to ensure that the testing performed is valid.
Note
For more information, see the section on Clients and Their Roles in the online documentation for SAP S/4HANA on SAP Help Portal.
Summary
You now can describe different client roles, including their use in SAP system landscapes.