In this tutorial you'll learn how-to setup a SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 Trial Edition on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL).
Requirements
You need to have an active Amazon Web Services (AWS) account for the Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) module!
Registering for a CAL account
- Navigate to https://cal.sap.com/ and login using your free SAP HANA Cloud Platform Developer Edition account.
- Create a CAL account by clicking on the
Create Accountlink in the top-right corner. - On the first wizard page (
Define General Properties) provide aNamefor your account (e.g. "SAP HCP Backend"). Click onNext. - Now, we need to select our
Cloud Provider. At the time of writing, the only available option isAmazon Web Services. Please also provide your AWSAccess KeyandSecret Key. Click onNext. - On the third wizard page (
Select Account Users) you can maintain (additional) users for this account. Your user should be registered by default. Click onNext. - The next (optional) step is to provide information for the
Cost Forecast. By default, the regionus-east-1is enabled by default. Click onNext.
Setting up a CAL-based solution
- Switch to the
Solutionstab and scroll down to the bottom of the list. Activate the entrySAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP MaxDB - Trial Editionby clicking on the correspondingActivatebutton. - Now, you can create an instance by clicking on
Create instancebutton of the selected solution and provision it to AWS EC2.
Creating an instance of a CAL-based solution
- On the first page of the
Create Instancewizard you are asked to define the general properties of the to-be created instance. Provide aNamefor your instance (e.g. "NW App Server 7.4 Public".) YourAccountinformation should be filled in already as well as the defaultRegionto be used. The most important setting is theAccess Fromvalue, which can either bePublicorCorporate Network(VPN). Within the scope of this tutorial we'll stick t the default (public) access level. Proceed by clickingNext. - On this wizard page you can configure the virtual machine settings. Leave the
Virtual Machine Sizeas is as well as the other settings. (We will go back to this page later on and make some required changes, but let's take it step-by-step). Click onNext. - On the thrid wizard page we have to define our master password. Maintain one and then proceed to setp 4 by clicking on
Next. - Here you can define the scheduling configuration. While it generally sounds like a good idea to setup a schedule to (re-)start and stop your instance, we opt for manual (de-)activation and proceed by clicking
Next. - We step through the remaining wizard pages without making any changes and finally confirming the creation process by clicking on
Finish. (When you do this for the first time it may take up to 35 min to setup the solution.) - You'll be prompted to store and/or download the generated license key (PEM file).
Note: Once you confirm the
Create instance wizard dialog the selected solution will be provisioned to your AWS EC2 account and from that moment on you are generating costs!
- Once the instance is up and running it will be listed in the
Instancestab. If you click on the link in theInstance Namecolumn you can open up a pop-up window to take a look at (and edit) the individual settings. One of the most important information being displayed is the IP address of your instance.
Note: In the following command line scripts we have used the IP address
192.168.0.1 as an example. You need to replace this with the real IP address of your AWS system! Similarly, we refer to the key certificate issued to connect to the system as NW AppServer 7.4.pem. If you have chosen a different name, please substitute it respectively in the command line scripts below.
Setup the SAP Cloud Connector via SSH
- Connect to your instance running on AWS via ssh:
ssh -i "NW AppServer 7.4.pem" root@192.168.0.1
Note: Eventually your command line/shell will complain about the PEM certificate statint that it may be too open. In such a case, open the attributes of the PEM file and make the file permissions more restrictive (e.g. setting it to 400).
- Download the (productive) Linux version of the SAP Cloud Connector from the tools page. Now we need to copy this file to our instance, then unzip and install it (via the
rpmpackage manager):
scp -i "NW AppServer 7.4.pem" sapcc-2.2.0-linux-x64.zip root@192.168.0.1:/root unzip sapcc-2.2.0-linux-x64.zip rpm -i com.sap.scc-ui-0.7.0-1.noarch.rpm
- Once the cloud connector is up and running it will start a lightweight web server listening to port
8443. However, this port is not yet exposed to the outside world, hence we need it as a 'custom port' to the virtual machine of our instance. - Navigate to the CAL console again and click on the name of your instance in the
Instance tab. This will open up a pop-up window. - Switch to the
VIRTUAL MACHINEtab and click on theEditbutton in the lower rigth corner. - Now add a custom
Access Pointmapped toService 'HTTP' andPort '8443'. Click onAdd. - Confirm the changes by clicking on
Save. The settings are instantly applied. - Connect to the cloud conenctor by opening the respective url:
http://192.168.0.1:8443. The default username/password combination isAdministrator/manage.
Note: Make sure to connect to the administration console of the cloud connector as soon as you have exposed the port to public and change the default password to a more secure one right away!
For further information about how-to configure the cloud connector for your respective scenario please consult the official documentation:
SAP HANA Cloud Platform - Initial Configuration of Cloud Connector
Connecting to our ABAP system via SAP Gui (for Java)
You may want to access your ABAP instance via SAP Gui. If not (or if you are already familiar with using the SAP Gui) then you can safely skip this last section.
Note: In the scope of this tutorial we'll explain how-to install SAP Gui for Java as it can be used on non-Windows operation systems as well. (Windows users may want to use the Windows native version).
The simplest way to get access to the SAP Gui is by copying it from the AWS instance:
scp -i "NW App Server 7.4 Public.pem" ↩ root@192.168.0.1://sapmnt/NPL/custom/SAP_GUI_FOR_JAVA_730.zip ↩ SAP_GUI_FOR_JAVA_730.zip
Simply extract the ZIP file and run the installation script as explained section 4.1.1 in the following guide: Getting Started with SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 SPS02 on SAP MaxDB - Trial
Once installed the last remaining set is to setup a corresponding connection configuration. On a MAC the respective configuration file is located in the following file: /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/SAP/connections.
The configuration file may look as follows:
############################################################ # # file : /Users/neo/Library/Preferences/SAP/connections # created : 11.04.2014 16:15:52 CEST # encoding: UTF-8 # ############################################################ NPL:conn=/H/192.168.0.1/S/3200 # Amazon
Notes
Although SAP offers trial editions for free your will still have to cover the costs for running these trial editions on AWS!
Next steps
SFlight sample application showing how to extend an on-premise ABAP system using JCo/RFC
Related Information
- [1]: SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 - Trial Edition
- [2]: Amazon Web Services
- [3]: SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL)
- [4]: Alternative AWS Deployment for SAP Trials provided as Virtual Appliance
- [5]: Virtual Private Cloud with VPN Access for SAP Trials provided as Virtual Appliance
- [6]: Getting Started with SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 SPS02 on SAP MaxDB - Trial