HANA and PowerBuilder: Setting Up Your SAP HANA Cloud Server

[Former Member]

Part 02 of a 5 part series

In this document and its accompanying video I’ll describe, define and illustrate how to set up a HANA Cloud server on AWS.  This document is mostly a confirmation of steps and procedures that are already well documented here and here as well as in many other places. In fact, Most of the steps I enumerate contain links to the resources I relied on.  In general, HANA Academy is a great source of How-To videos. There is nothing PowerBuilder specific in setting up a server.  I added a few screen shots and clarifications of things that I found unclear as I set up my server. 

One caution when searching for online resources (and there are many).  HANA is a rapidly developing technology. Lots of video tutorials are outdated.  The release current to this document’s publication in June 2013 is SPS5 version (Rev 52). While writing this, I got word that SPS6 is on its way.  Chances are high that videos and tutorials illustrating prior versions will be somewhat outdated.  In general, a nice thing I discovered is that in addition to technical enhancements, successive recent releases have improved GUI functionality and usability.

Pre-Installation Steps

Prepare these two assets before starting: 

1. An Amazon.com account
2. An Amazon.com AWS account at aws.amazon.com

Here's mine:

Once your account is established you’ll need to view your Access Credentials.  Get to them using the link on the left side navigation panel. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key You’ll need them to configure your HANA server.

Next prepare three strong passwords. Record them for safe keeping and have them handy.

1. SAP Hana Linux hdbadm User:
2. SAP One Hana Management Console:
3. SAP Hana database SYSTEM user:

Another important asset to acquire is an Elastic IP address. Note: There is a fee for owning an Elastic IP. You'll want to associate it with your server instance every time you start it up.  Why? The server is given a new IP address every time it is started.  Associating your elastic IP address provides you with a fixed IP address that you can embed in all your clients.   Every time you start your server you’ll need to re-assign the elastic IP.  Follow this link to learn more about elastic IP addresses.

This image shows the steps to allocate an elastic IP:

Starting your server instance

As shown here, use the link in the left side Navigation Bar, navigate to your Instances page

(You can use a context menu to name your instance, if you wish.)

Right click on the instance and choose Start

This will load the server image on Amazon’s system.  It does NOT start HANA!

Once the instance is in ‘Running’ mode, associate your elastic IP address with it (you will have to do this every time you start your server)

Give the internet a few minutes after the elasticIP association for the elasticIP address to be accessible. What is most likely happening is that Amazon is using Network Address Translation (NAT) within their own network to associate the external ("elastic") IP they gave you to the instance of a VM on a server in their server farm that they fired up for you.  Before it’s registered you’ll get 404 errors in your browser.

Next log in to your server administration console using the SAP One Hana Management Administrator password you configured when you created your image.   The URL you navigate to will be in the form: <<your elastic ip address >>/login.html  For example (sometimes) my test server is 54.227.252.172/login.html

Once the login page displays, enter your SAP One Hana Management Console password to access the console. Navigate to the Administration page. You’ll need to enter your Access Key ID and Secret access key as noted above to begin to configure your server.  You can copy and paste these credentials from your AWS account.

Next you’ll need to enter and confirm the Management Console and SYSTEM user passwords you selected above.  You will then be able to click Configure HANA.

After configuration, you'll be able to Start your server.

Once your HANA server is up and running, navigate in the console to the downloads page.  Download, install and configure the SAP HANA Studio application as illustrated and described in same document located here   . I’ll not repeat the details. 

One important point the article takes for granted.  You’ll need administration rights to alter the Hosts file located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Run NotePad as administrator and you’ll be able to make the required entry.

Don’t forget to stop HANA and your AWS instance when you’re done.

Here’s a  video showing me starting and stopping my instance and server as well as logging in as SYSTEM to HANA Studio

In my next article I’ll illustrate how to download and install client drivers, use the PowerBuilder IDE to configure an ODBC and JDBC connection to your HANA Cloud server as well as sharing a few tips and tricks I figured out along the way.

ToDo Checklist

1. Follow the steps in this document and its referenced documents to configure a HANA Cloud server on AWS
2. Start your instance & Start your HANA database
3. Access your database from HANA Studio and examine data in the demo schema
4. Stop your database and stop your instance