SAP Cloud Connector : Bird’s-eye view from HCI side

Hello folks,

During recent assignments I came across this SAP tool i.e SAP Cloud Connector which can be used by many of you as well as a secure link between your HCP and on premise system. I read through many blogs and documents to understand the concept and how the connection is established. I thought it would be very helpful for some of you to go through the blog to have a high level information on various aspects of this.

About SAP Cloud Connector

SAP Cloud connector acts as a reverse proxy between the HCP and the on premise system.Secure tunnel for all the In Bound connections to your on premise system.

Internet DMZ

Easy to install and configure.
Also there are many advantages of SAP CC . Please refer to link mentioned at the end of this blog.

Connecting On Premise system from HCP using SAP Cloud connector.

Now the question comes that how do we connect to SAP Cloud connector from the HCI iflows. Do we mention the SAP CC url in the HCI iflow ? or something else? Let me explain it in a very simple terms.

We install SAP Cloud connector and add the HCP account to it using user credentials of HCP account. Once done just check if the SAP CC is connected/operational to HCP. (Please note that in one SAP CC you can add multiple HCP accounts but one HCP account can be added to only one SAP Cloud connector)

So to simplify : SAP CC –> HCP ( 1:N relation)

HCP –> SAP CC ( 1:1 relation)

As soon as the SAP CC is connected to HCP a local agent of SAP CC (as an identifier) starts running in the HCP network.
Now in the HCI iflows , under receiver section , whenever we mention the proxy type as On Premise we are telling it that an SAP Cloud connector is being used. With the help of the local agent (as described above) , the request is redirected to the connected SAP CC.
That’s how the connection is established between the HCP and SAP CC.
Now on the SAP CC , under Access Control you define all your virtual host ( to be used on the iflow ) and internal host ( actual url to be accessed from on premise back end system) and also the protocol and back end type.

As per this mapping the request is redirected to the on premise back end system.

Some Important points to be considered when configuring iflows:

The protocol type used should always be HTTP , even if you are using HTTPS in you backend . Please use the mapping in the SAP CC to redirect it to HTTPS.
Proxy type used should be On Premise.
The authentication type used should be Basic Authentication.