Automating SAP Deployments Using SUSE Best Practices

We know that deploying SAP applications can be complex, one reason why we are active participants of the SAP partner ecosystem. We’ve been participating in SAP’s LinuxLab – the technology hub where SAP, Linux distributors, hardware, virtualization and cloud partners work together to ensure that our technology works with all the components needed to build a complete solution – for more than two decades.

Our partnerships have allowed us to co-develop a set of best practices for deploying SAP applications to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and other cloud and on-premises environments that support Libvirt virtualization.

To make it convenient for these best practices to be adopted, we have crystallized them as infrastructure-as-code blocks that can be adopted and used by partners providing vital services around each SAP implementation.

Faster Implementations & Less Drift

It makes sense that if you’re going to invest in SAP, that you want it up and running for your organization as quickly as possible. This is where these best practices come into play. Using these mean that your SAP applications can be deployed with fewer incidents, which speeds up implementation.

Further down the line, these best practices will mitigate configuration drift which not only means more secure systems but also less time and resources will be needed to maintain your applications.

One of our partners who was working with a large enterprise customer told us about the ambitious target they had set for the deployment of their SAP S/4 HANA and business warehouse environment. By using the best practices infrastructure-as-code blocks provided by SUSE, this partner was able to quickly deploy the SAP workloads, enabling them to prevent errors and meet the deadlines set.

What’s in it for partners?

SUSE partners who specialize in services have adopted these infrastructure-as-code blocks within their existing processes to strengthen their services offerings – knowing that this will help them to improve customer satisfaction.

Then I have partners who might not be in the position to provide all the services needed. This is where SUSE Services can help. Our services consultants have decades of experience and expertise in implementing SAP applications. In addition, we are now able to compensate partners for your part in introducing SUSE Services to your customer.

Infrastructure-as-code Blocks Are Available Now

You’ll be able to access the customizable, modular automation blocks (Infrastructure-as-Code) that simplify SAP deployment so you can deploy the following SAP components:

• SAP HANA environment: The HANA deployment is configurable as a single HANA database, a dual configuration with system replication, and a high-availability cluster.
• Fencing: A SBD fencing mechanism can be deployed if a platform-native fencing mechanism is not available or performant.
• Monitoring services: The monitoring solution is based on Prometheus and Grafana, and it provides informative and customizable dashboards to the users and administrators.
• HA NFS: Deploy a HA NFS server to provide resilient shared storage, useful for environments without a native fencing option.
• SAP NETWEAVER: SAP NETWEAVER with ASCS, ERS, PAS, and AAS instances, using HANA database as storage.

There are options for deploying to:

• Microsoft Azure
• Amazon Web Services
• Google Cloud Platform
• Other cloud and on-premises environments that support Libvirt virtualization.

Take the next step

Do take a look at the code in Github, and talk to your implementation partner about using these best practices. Our partner community can find out more about these on the SUSE Partner Portal (partner login required), by talking to your SUSE partner executive or by emailing us.

This is a truly modern approach to deployment and infrastructure management that can help SAP deployments.