Transport Management System

You use the Transport Management System (TMS) to model and manage your system landscape. It provides tools for configuring your system landscape, as well as for organizing, carrying out and monitoring transports.

Configuration of a System Landscape

All SAP Systems that are subject to the administration of the TMS form a transport domain. This is usually all SAP Systems in the system landscape. Certain system settings are the same for all systems within a transport domain, such as the transport routes. To achieve this, one SAP System in the transport domain has the reference configuration, with all other SAP Systems in the transport domain taking copies of this reference configuration.


 The system with the reference configuration is known as the Transport Domain Controller; only in this system can you make changes to the reference configuration. Each time you change the reference configuration, you must distribute the new configuration to all systems. The TMS automatically generates RFC connections between the systems in a domain so that they can communicate.

When you install an SAP system, a transport directory is set up for it, or an assignment to an existing transport directory is created. The CTS uses the transport directory to store transport data. All application server instances of an SAP system must be assigned to the same transport directory. Multiple SAP systems can use the same transport directory. However, you can also create a separate transport directory for each SAP system.

The way in which you configure the transport directories in your system landscape depends on the following factors, among others:

• Roles of the systems (development system, quality assurance system, or production system) and the security requirements of the systems that use the transport directory. Systems with lower security requirements (such as development systems and quality assurance systems) can share a transport directory. However, they should not access the same transport directory as systems with high security requirements (such as production systems).

• Network speed for accessing a shared transport directory

TMS supports multiple transport directories within a transport domain. The systems that share a common transport directory form a transport group. Data is exchanged between the systems using the RFC connections of the TMS.

Transport domain A: This transport domain has one transport group. This means that all the systems access a common transport directory.

Transport domain B: This transport domain has several transport groups, each of which shares a transport directory.

When you configure an SAP system landscape, it is usually the case that not all SAP Systems are available right from the beginning. The TMS allows you to define placeholders, or virtual systems. These take the place of systems that you want to include in the landscape at a later date. In this way, you can model the complete system landscape and make the settings for the CTS as soon as you have configured the TMS in one system. The virtual system is replaced when you install the real system.

If you administrate your SAP Systems locally in different locations, for example at head office and in different branches, it may be a good idea to configure several different domains. If you want to make transports between systems in different domains, you can use domain links to link the two domains. Systems that are linked with domain links must not have a shared transport directory. The data is transported between the domains using the RFC connections of the TMS, in the same way as transports are made between different transport groups.

If there is no permanent network connection between systems in different domains, you can use external systemsin the TMS to make the transports instead. The transport data is exchanged using a transport directory that can be accessed by both domains, or by using a data volume. External systems offer fewer functions than domain links; for example, transport logs in a different domain can only be displayed using domain links.

When you configure your system landscape, you first have to configure the transport domain. Only then can you configure the transport routes. More information is available under Configuring the TMS