Stop managing SAP infrastructure by hand. Automate it.

How SUSE helps organizations deploy SAP environments faster, more consistently and with less operational risk.

Key Takeaways:

• Manual SAP deployments create configuration drift, slow down migrations and lock up specialized IT talent in repetitive operational tasks.
• SLES for SAP Applications delivers end-to-end automation from operating system tuning up through SAP workload deployment across hybrid and multicloud environments.
• Automating SAP infrastructure standardizes governance, lowers operational risk and builds a scalable platform for digital transformation.

For most enterprises, SAP is one of the most business-critical parts of the IT landscape. Yet deploying and maintaining SAP infrastructure often still involves a significant amount of manual work.

Every new S/4HANA environment requires infrastructure to be provisioned, operating systems to be configured, SAP-specific settings to be applied, high availability to be established and applications and databases to be installed. Multiply this across development, test, quality assurance, production, multiple locations and potentially several cloud providers, and the operational effort quickly becomes substantial.

The result is familiar to many IT organizations: long deployment cycles, scarce specialist resources tied up in repetitive work, configuration differences between environments and increased operational risk.

Automation changes that equation.

“Deploy SAP environments faster, reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and free highly skilled teams to focus on higher-value activities.”

With SLES for SAP Applications 16, SUSE is expanding its SAP automation capabilities to help organizations standardize and automate the deployment and operation of SAP infrastructure from the underlying platform through to the SAP workload.

For CIOs and IT leaders, the objective is simple: deploy SAP environments faster, reduce manual effort, improve consistency and free highly skilled teams to focus on higher-value activities.

From manual projects to repeatable processes

SAP deployments have traditionally required close coordination between infrastructure, Linux, SAP Basis, database, storage and networking teams.

Even where organizations have already automated parts of their infrastructure, significant manual work can remain between provisioning a server and having a fully configured, highly available SAP system ready for use.

SUSE provides automation designed specifically for SAP infrastructure optimization. It can cover activities including:

• Infrastructure provisioning: Prepare the required infrastructure for SAP landscapes across supported platforms.
• System configuration: Apply operating system settings, SAP tuning, storage configuration and other required preparation consistently.
• SAP deployment: Automate SAP HANA and application installation, including high-availability configuration.
• Day-to-day operations: Automate recurring tasks such as patching, health checks and routine maintenance.

More than 30 predefined automation scenarios are available for common SAP environments including S/4HANA, BW/4HANA, ECC and SAP Solution Manager.

Instead of treating every new SAP environment as an individual infrastructure project, organizations can turn deployments into standardized and repeatable processes.

Why this matters to the business

The primary benefit is not simply that an automated deployment is faster. The larger opportunity is to improve the operating model for SAP.

• Faster time to value: New SAP environments can be provisioned and configured using predefined automation rather than being assembled manually step by step. This can accelerate S/4HANA migrations, cloud moves, system copies, testing environments and expansion into new regions.
• Better use of scarce skills: Experienced SAP Basis and infrastructure specialists are difficult to hire and expensive to retain. Automation allows organizations to capture expert knowledge once and reuse it consistently, leaving specialists more time for architecture, optimization, availability, security and transformation work.
• Lower operational risk: Manual configuration introduces variation. Automation makes infrastructure configuration repeatable across development, QA and production environments, helping reduce human error and configuration drift.
• Improved governance and auditability: Standardized automation provides a clearer record of how systems were built and configured. Operational processes become easier to understand, reproduce, review and audit.

Consistency across hybrid and multicloud environments

Most large SAP customers no longer operate in a single infrastructure environment. SAP landscapes may span on-premises infrastructure, private cloud and hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

This makes standardization increasingly important. SUSE’s SAP automation approach allows organizations to use common automation patterns across different infrastructure environments. Platform-specific details can change while the overall deployment process remains consistent.

For IT leaders, this provides an important architectural benefit: the operating model does not have to change every time the infrastructure platform changes.

That can simplify hybrid cloud management strategies and reduce dependency on platform-specific operational processes.

Build on existing investments

Automation does not require organizations to replace tools that already work.

If infrastructure teams use technologies such as Terraform for provisioning, they can continue doing so while using SUSE automation for operating system configuration and SAP deployment. Organizations using SUSE Multi-Linux Manager can also continue using their existing automation capabilities.

The goal is not to impose a single automation technology. It is to provide SAP-specific automation that can fit into an organization’s existing operating model. That flexibility is particularly important for large enterprises, where infrastructure standards and tooling have often evolved over many years.

Enterprise automation without giving up openness

SUSE’s SAP automation capabilities build on open source technologies and the SAP Linux Lab initiative, a collaboration involving SAP, SUSE, Red Hat and IBM.

At the same time, the automation components are delivered through official SUSE channels and supported as part of the enterprise platform. Organizations gain the transparency and flexibility of open source automation while retaining enterprise support and lifecycle management.

The automation can also be adapted to company-specific requirements, for example security hardening, monitoring integration, backup configuration or internal infrastructure standards. This allows enterprises to standardize without turning their SAP environment into a proprietary black box.

Modernize without rebuilding everything at once

Large SAP landscapes cannot be modernized overnight. SUSE therefore supports an evolutionary approach.

Organizations can introduce automation for new deployments while continuing to manage existing SLES for SAP Applications environments. This makes it possible to modernize processes gradually rather than requiring a disruptive platform migration.

For CIOs, this reduces transformation risk: automation can be introduced where it generates the greatest value first and expanded over time.

The strategic value: A more scalable SAP operating model

The most important outcome is not a faster installation. It is a more scalable way of operating SAP.

When deployments become standardized and repeatable, IT organizations can move from manually managing individual systems toward managing SAP infrastructure as a reusable platform.

That provides several strategic advantages:

• Speed: Faster delivery of SAP environments and less infrastructure-related delay in business transformation programs.
• Efficiency: More productive use of scarce SAP and infrastructure expertise.
• Consistency: A common approach across environments, locations and infrastructure platforms.
• Risk reduction: Less manual configuration and fewer opportunities for human error or configuration drift.
• Governance: More repeatable, transparent and auditable operational processes.
• Flexibility: Greater freedom to operate across on-premises and cloud platforms without reinventing the SAP deployment process.

As SAP customers move toward S/4HANA, hybrid cloud and increasingly complex infrastructure landscapes, this operating model becomes increasingly valuable.

The question for IT leaders is therefore no longer simply “How do we automate an SAP installation?” It is:

“How much of our SAP operating model can we standardize and automate so that our people can focus on the work that differentiates the business?”

With SLES for SAP Applications 16, SUSE provides the SAP-specific automation foundation to help organizations make that transition.

Getting started

Organizations already using SLES for SAP Applications can introduce the automation capabilities into their existing environments and start with selected deployment or operational scenarios.

For organizations evaluating infrastructure platforms for an upcoming S/4HANA deployment, cloud migration, system copy or SAP modernization initiative, automation should be considered as part of the platform decision, not as an operational improvement to be added later.

Because ultimately, the value of automation is not the command that runs the deployment. It is the time, consistency, predictability and expert capacity that IT gets back.

Learn more: Explore the SAP Linux Lab project to optimize your SAP infrastructure.