SUSE Console for SAP applications – Private preview released 

SUSE has just published the first Beta version via the Azure marketplace – and we invite customers and partners to try it out!

The “SUSE Console for SAP applications” is a new initiative that is bundling key features and functions around operating SAP workloads on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications. The initiative can also be seen as the next steps around SAP deployment automation and monitoring.

The current beta is available to clients on Microsoft Azure and basically takes a few of the existing features and bundles them into a simple to use web-interface that does not require an admin to have the full command line knowledge but can simply setup and monitor new environments.

The beta at this point contains the following capabilities:

– deployment automation of SAP HANA   (with optional full HA setup and configuration)

– monitoring of the HANA instances

– compliance for SAP notes

Instantiation of the Console

The SUSE Console is available as a marketplace image. The admin can create a new VM based on the image and then access it via a web browser.

Deployment automation of SAP HANA

The SUSE Console for SAP applications provides an easy to use  frontend to deploy SAP HANA systems – single node and in a High Available setup. When the admin wants to deploy a new HANA system, they can choose based on the well-known concept of T-Shirt sizes which are automatically mapped to the respective Microsoft Azure instances needed for SAP HANA. The Admin then can conveniently work through all required info for the setup, review it and then have the console set it up automatically. I would like to explicitly point out the fully automated setup and configuration of the High Availability setup based on SUSE Pacemaker for SAP HANA and the SUSE best practices for Azure.

Technically the deployment automation uses the already published automation from SLES for SAP 15 SP2, based on Terraform and Salt, as well as the available SUSE images on Azure.

SAP HANA Monitoring

The SUSE Console for SAP applications also brings the monitoring project as part of the image.  This will deploy and configure several Prometheus exporters on each of the HANA nodes, as well as the Prometheus and Grafana server that collects and renders all the data in a single user interface, conveniently integrated into the overall console user interface.

It provides a dedicated way to keep track of the servers within your azure instance, featuring the some of the same SUSE provided exporters that Microsoft is also relies on for the Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions.

Compliance of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with SAP recommendations

SAP admins are used to apply SAP notes to their system, implementing several tuning recommendations by SAP, SUSE and Hardware or Cloud provider.

SUSE is providing since a long time saptune as part of SLES for SAP applications, that simplifies and automates not only the deployment of SAP notes, but also the validation of systems against those recommendations in the current version of the tool.

The SUSE Console for SAP applications now also introduces a simple User Interface to check the system in a simple, web-based way for its compliance against those key SAP notes.

The preview of the SUSE console for SAP applications is a key initiative for SUSE for the future. We will continue to enhance it in the next few month with new features and capabilities.

This version is currently in a private preview mode, to get access to it please reach out to the team at trento-project@suse.com to be assigned to your azure tenant. The team is currently evaluating to make this available on AWS and GCP, pls also reach out if you have questions for these and other cloud provider. The general deployment automation also continues to be available, as well as the monitoring features as part of SLES for SAP 15 SP2.