How-to setup an ABAP based backend system using Am...

matt_steiner · ‎04-14-2014

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 Account link in the top-right corner.
On the first wizard page (Define General Properties) provide a Name for your account (e.g. "SAP HCP Backend"). Click on Next.
Now, we need to select our Cloud Provider. At the time of writing, the only available option is Amazon Web Services. Please also provide your AWS Access Key and Secret Key. Click on Next.
On the third wizard page (Select Account Users) you can maintain (additional) users for this account. Your user should be registered by default. Click on Next.
The next (optional) step is to provide information for the Cost Forecast. By default, the region us-east-1 is enabled by default. Click on Next.

Setting up a CAL-based solution

Switch to the Solutions tab and scroll down to the bottom of the list. Activate the entry SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP MaxDB - Trial Edition by clicking on the corresponding Activatebutton.
Now, you can create an instance by clicking on Create instance button 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 Instance wizard you are asked to define the general properties of the to-be created instance. Provide a Name for your instance (e.g. "NW App Server 7.4 Public".) Your Account information should be filled in already as well as the default Region to be used. The most important setting is the Access From value, which can either be Public or Corporate Network (VPN). Within the scope of this tutorial we'll stick t the default (public) access level. Proceed by clicking Next.
On this wizard page you can configure the virtual machine settings. Leave the Virtual Machine Size as 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 on Next.
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 Instances tab. If you click on the link in the Instance Name column 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 rpm package 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 MACHINE tab and click on the Edit button in the lower rigth corner.
Now add a custom Access Point mapped to Service 'HTTP' and Port '8443'. Click on Add.
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 is Administrator/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