Overview
In this three-part webblog series, we will setup our own server in the cloud and install and configure SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment CE 7.1 EHP 1 on it.
- Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 1 of 3) introduces you to Amazon Web Services and guides you through setting up your first server in the cloud.
- Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 2 of 3) guides you through the configuration of the server at operating system level.
- Part 3 (this part) is about installing SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment and about adding the final touches to get a usable system.
The Composition in the Cloud: Run your own SAP NetWeaver CE 7.1 EHP 1 in the cloud (Part 2 of 3) ended with a configuration of our Windows server instance at operating system level and the creation and association of a persistent hard drive in the cloud. We will now proceed with the actual installation of SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment.
Installing your CE trial
12. Download 7-Zip
Download and install 7-Zip from http://www.7-zip.org/download.html. It’s a free software you can use to extract RAR archives.
13. Download the CE 7.1 EHP 1 trial from SCN
Start Firefox. Before you download the CE trial from SCN, go to Tools > Options > Main and select “Always ask me where to save files”. We want to download the CE trial to drive E: and not to the default location.
Next, launch URL http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/downloads?rid=/library/uuid/00846edd-355b-2b10-f38c-df94ec96eb74 to download the CE trial version.
Select the file labeled “Composition Environment (contains Java EE) (1.8 GB)” and save it on drive E:.
14. Reboot the server
Now is a good time to reboot the server. Don’t use the AWS Management Console to do this – instead, click on Start > Shutdown > Restart. You have to type something into the “Comment” box to activate the “OK” button.
After a few minutes, we can reconnect to the server using the “Connect” function in the AWS Management Console. A nicer way is to use Windows Remote Desktop to connect to our new hostname “cloudce.dyndns.org” (or the hostname you have reserved).
Once you have logged on, please check that the changes you have made are still in effect: The hostname should not be overwritten and drive E: should still be mapped.
15. Extract the archives
In the Explorer, go to drive E:, right-click on file CE711SP1_SDN-Preview.rar, and select 7-Zip > Extract to “CE711SP1_SDN-Preview.rar”.
16. Download the JCE policy files
While the archive is extracting, go to http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp and download the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files 5.0. Store the ZIP archive named jce_policy-1_5_0.zip in the root directory of drive E:.
17. Start the installation
Display file E:CE711SP1_SDN-Previewstart.htm in the web browser to view the installation prerequisites and some helpful links.
Program E:CE711SP1_SDN-PreviewCompEnvCE_SDN711_COMP_WIN_I386_ADAsapinst.exe is the actual installer. Launch it to start the installation process.
- On the first screen, choose option “Install SAP NetWeaver CE Developer Edition”.
- On the second screen, choose parameter mode “Typical”.
- On the third screen, scroll down and agree the license.
- On the fourth screen (General SAP System Parameters), set the destination drive to E:. This is crucially important.
- On the fifth screen, navigate to file jce_policy-1_5_0.zip.
- On the sixth screen, set the master password to something you can easily remember, such as “cloud1pw”.
- On the seventh screen (Prerequisites Checker Results), you will see warnings about the Windows version, available RAM, and swap space. You can ignore them.
- The eighth screen (Parameter Summary) is extremely important. Check all the parameters and make sure that no drive letter other than E: shows up. Then click on “Show Detail” and check the newly appearing parameters. MaxDB Data Volumes needs to be checked for revision because the default locations are on drive D:. Click on “Revise” to modify the Data Volume Locations. Change them all to E:. After checking the parameters again, click on “Next”. This will cause the actual installation to begin.
- The installation should take about an hour. After it is completed, the CE server is started automatically.
18. Bundle the instance
Now is a good time to bundle the instance. If we terminate the instance now without bundling it first, all the changes we have made (except for what was written to the E: drive which is an independent volume) will be lost.
So go to your AWS Management Console and open the Instances screen.
Select your instance and choose “Bundle Windows AMI” from the “More Actions” menu. This will cause your instance to be bundled, which means that a persistent image is going to be store from which you can launch as many instances as you wish.
A popup appears which asks for a Bucket name and S3 Key name. The Bucket is the folder in the S3 data storage we created earlier – I named mine “thorstensterbucket”. Enter the name you used here. Make sure you enter the name of a Bucket located in the same region the instance we’re bundling is running in.
The S3 Story Key is like a file name, so you can now enter a name for the bundled AMI. I name mine “ce711.first.image”.
The full name of the AMI is composed of the bucket name, followed by a slash (“/”), followed by the S3 Store Key, followed by “.manifest.xml”. So the AMI I create with the above bucket Bucket and Storage key name will be called “thorstensterbucket/ce711.first.image.manifest.xml”.
Using S3Fox, we can locate and download a file with this name. Amazon EC2 uses this XML file to store the meta data of your machine: The name, configuration, ancestry, filenames of part files, and other metadata can be found in it.
Opening the “Bundling Tasks” screen, you can follow the progress of your bundling task.
First the instance is shut down. (Don’t do that yourself or you won’t be able to bundle your instance or restart the image.)
The bundling and storing will take about ten minutes.
When the bundling task is complete, click on “Register as an AMI” to make the bundle available as a reusable server image. This will allow you to launch new instances, each of them will be exactly in the state of your original instance at the time of the bundling.
19. Terminate the running instance
You can now terminate the running instance by clicking on “Terminate” on the Instances Screen. We don’t want two instances to compete for the same DynDNS hostname and we can attach our volume to one running instance at a time only.
20. Launch a new instance from your AMI
Go to the AMIs screen and select “Owned by me” from the Viewing listbox. Your newly created AMI should be the only entry in the list. Select it and click “Launch”.
In the following screen, enter the parameters for launch.
We want one instance to be launched. This time we want instance type “High-CPU Medium (c1.medium)” because the previous instance was a bit low on resources. We select our key pair name and both security groups. Finally, we expand the “advanced options” section and select our favourite availability zone. It must be the one in which we created our Volume, in my case “us-east-1a”.
The launch will take roughly ten minutes.
When the instance is running, go to the “Volumes” screen in the AWS Management Console and attach your volume to the instance.
21. Check your instance’s state
You should now check if the instance is complete and make any necessary repairs. In particular, you should check
- Does your instance still have your hostname or was it overwritten by a generated hostname during launch?
- Is your volume available as drive E:?
- Check under Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Services if the XServer and MaxDB: CE1 services can be started.
- Set the MaxDB: CE1 service to startup type “Automatic”.
- Did the DynDNS Update work? Is your hostname associated with the new IP address?
If anything seems to be wrong, correct the error and reboot (do not relaunch!) your virtual server.
When your instance is in the desired state, proceed with the next step.
22. Start the Composition Environment server
The installer has created an SAP Management Console icon on your virtual server’s desktop. Launch the SAP Management Console, expand the tree, right-click on “CE1”, and select “Start”. Enter your Windows Administator password if prompted.
The first start of the server should should take ten to fifteen minutes. Subsequent starts will be faster (five to ten minutes). The server start is completed when all the lights have turned from yellow to green and the Process List reports that all processes are running.
By the way, a good way to follow the startup procedure of your server is to select the AS Java Components node and follow the number of components with status “stopped” and expected status “running” (using the filter at the top of the table) as it plummets towards zero.
23. Configure your Composition Environment installation
Once the CE server is up and running, you should configure it before using its major components.
I put up a separate blog, Take Fifteen Minutes and Two Coffee Breaks to Configure Your Composition Environment 7.1 EHP 1 Trial... (Take Fifteen Minutes and Two Coffee Breaks to Configure Your Composition Environment 7.1 EHP 1 Trial...) to describe the installation process.
It includes:
- installing a license
- setting up the Service Registry
- setting up SLD
- setting up BPM
- setting up ADS
- installing and configuring ESR
- assigning ESR roles
- logging on to Enterprise Services Builder
All the configuration parameters, file paths, hostnames, usernames, and passwords in the CE configuration blog are completely consistent with this one so it should be very quick and easy to work through it.
Bundle your image
Having completed the configuration of your CE server, we can persist the results by bundling another AMI from our running instance. We will just overwrite the existing AMI image.
Launch your AWS Management Console (https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/home) and go to the Instances screen.
Mark your running instance and select More Actions > Bundle Windows AMI.
Insert your bucket and storage key name as you did when creating the first bundle.
When the bundle task is completed, register the AMI, detach your volume from the currently running instance, and terminate the instance.
Maintain Firewall Rules
In the AWS Management Console, go to the Security Groups screen, select one of your security groups, and add the port number you need to access your server from the internet.
The least you need to release is the server’s HTTP port 50000. The following screen shot show how to open port 50000 to all source IPs on the internet.
If you want to connect using other protocols such as from NetWeaver Developer Studio (to deploy) or if you want to call the system via RFC (from an ABAP system), you will have to release more ports.
In the SAP Management Console of your CE system, select node “Access Points” to see which ports are open on the machine.
Launch your complete Composition Environment in the cloud
To launch your complete Composition Environment in the cloud, follow these steps:
- Launch a new instance from the updated AMI (keep in mind the availability zone)
- Attach the volume and reboot (do not relaunch)
- Connect using RDP
- Start your CE application server using the SAP Management Console
Enjoy your Composition Environment in the cloud
You’re all set now:
- You have a complete and configured Composition Environment 7.1 EHP 1 that you can access from the internet under a stable hostname.
- You can copy your system and launch new instances from it within seconds. So if your colleagues want their own Composition Environment in the cloud, feel free to share – it only takes a few minutes.
- It doesn’t cost much compared to the (labour) cost of ordering a server and operating systems licenses in a standard corporate environment, let alone the price of the server.
Conclusion
I hope that sharing my experiences and the things I have learned about using Amazon Web Services in the past few days will help you get started quickly. Please let me know about your experiences.
I hope further that the future will bring interesting discussions of use cases for SAP systems in the cloud: training, development systems, sandboxes, non-critical production systems? Which possible usages do you see, and how can your company or you personally benefit from SAP systems in the cloud? Let’s discuss this further.
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