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Author's profile photo Matthias Steiner
Matthias Steiner
April 14, 2014 5 minute read

How-to setup an ABAP based backend system using Amazon Web Services and the SAP Cloud Appliance Library

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.

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 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!
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  • 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

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      5 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi and thanks for the guide. I have a connection problem that I wonder if you could help with. It is a bit confusing with all this concepts swirling around everywhere.

      I have created an SAP HANA instance on AWS and connected successfully with HANA Studio.

      Now I have installed Eclipse-Kepler with ABAP add-ons and when in Eclipse navigating File->New->ABAP Project  I get the option to connect by 'Selecting from SAP Logon Pad' or 'Define Manually'

      I would like to add the HANA system to the Logon Pad but dont know what data to enter.

      Questions:

      What is entered as:

      - Application server: either IP address or synonym in hosts-file right?

      - Instance number: Where can I see that in AWS?

      - System Id: Where can I see that in AWS?

      - SAP router string: Where can I see that in AWS?

      Does the SAP GUI have to be a 'Java' GUI? If so how do I know which I got. All I see under 'Info' is:

      SAP GUI installed: 7300.2.4.1085

      Build 1419460

      Patch 4

      Fix 2

      Thanx in advance.

      Author's profile photo Paul Hardy
      Paul Hardy

      I can get to the HANA Enterprise Cloud / Cloud Appliance Library page, and it knows who I am, as my name is at the top. I presume it is reading my SCN details.

      Anyway on the "solutions" tab I can see a bunch of free ones including SAP Application Server 7.4 SP5 saying that it is free. So far so god. On the right is a button saying "try now" which does not do anything when you press it, but claims you can "test this free trial solution" by using your AWS credentials.

      On the left is what looks like a checkbox / radio button under the "status" column, but it not as you cannot click on that either it must be just an indicator. Confusing user interface, really slow performance, buttons that don't work when you press them .. and this is supposed to be showcasing how good SAP software is?

      I cannot create an account (first step in the above blog) as it says I have not subscribed to any solution, and nowhere on the site is there an obvious way to subscribe to the solution.

      I think maybe it is because I am on IE9, I will change the settings and see if that helps. The irony is, in the introductory guff it says that IE9 is a minimum requirement.....

      Author's profile photo Paul Hardy
      Paul Hardy

      I changed my settings to IE8 mode, and then the button started working, and gave me the terms and conditions pop-up.

      I accpetd and then the website spat the dummy, telling em I was not on IE9.

      I changed back to IE9 mode, pressed the button again, now it works, terms and conditions again, the checkbox has gone a nice green circle colour.

      After all this time with SAP I know how to get round it, just keep trying illogical things until something works.

      If SAP made things easy, then where would be the need for consultants?

      Author's profile photo Suneet Agera
      Suneet Agera

      Hello Matthias,

      Thank you for this detailed post.

      Just as you have shown how to open 8443 port to access via HTTP the SAP Server provisioned from CAL, is there a way to make the Gateway services on the SAP Server provisioned from CAL available to be called in HCI OData Provisioning scenario? Right now, my HCP trial account OData Provisioning does not seem to recognize the gateway URL on my CAL instance.

      Any suggestion here?

      Author's profile photo Gabriel Schroedter
      Gabriel Schroedter

      is there an update to this guide? Some of these options are missing.