Your S/4HANA environment – Part 1 – Maintenance Planner, System Installation and Update
Overview
S/4HANA introduces a lot of new functionality for customers. SAP gives the choice to deploy and use software as an on-premise installation or cloud service.
Over the few next days, I would like to present to you, how to deploy the whole S/4HANA environment:
1) How to install the S/4HANA system using Maintenance Planner and update it with SUM
2) How to perform initial configuration of SAP Gateway for S/4HANA
3) How to activate S/4HANA Best Practices
Today I will show you the first part – Installation and initial configuration of S/4HANA.
Prerequisites
If you would like to follow my guide, you need to have:
1) Access to SAP Service Marketplace
2) Operating system installed and configured according to SAP requirements
I’m using SLES 12, but you can use also SLES 11 or Red Hat.
3) SAP HANA database already installed
You can convert it to MDC with this blog: Convert to a multi tenant HANA database.
In case you have an older release, update it with Frank: How to update your sandbox HANA system to SPS 12
4) A bit of time 🙂
Although I will try to show you the complete installation scenario, I’m expecting you have some understanding of SAP Netweaver and you have already performed a Netweaver installation before.
I highly recommend that you also read all available documentation (like Installation Guide, SAP Notes) before installation.
Let’s start!
USE MAINTENANCE PLANNER TO PLAN A NEW SYSTEM
Maintenance planner is a place where our journey starts. It enables to us to plan a new installation and calculate the update path.
Link: Maintenance Planner
Just a few days ago, SAP released an update to Maintenance Planner and now you can find an additional tile just for S/4HANA.
During the next step we need to define our change scope:
- Installation of the new SAP S/4HANA system
- System conversion
Our task for this guide is to install a brand new system, so we choose the first option.
I found it very convenient that SAP already includes a link to the Installation Guide.
The ‘Select Backend System’ step allows us to define the exact system version we want to install. I chose the newest possible:
Target Version: SAP S/4HANA On-Premise 1511
Target Stack: FPS 02
Our goal is to have full environment consisting of two systems:
a) S/4HANA – back-end server
b) SAP Gateway – front-end server in Central Hub Deployment scenario
During this part we can choose which UI components we want to install along with Gateway:
Finally, we get confirmation that our preparation is complete. But that’s not the end. Now we need to confirm the files we want to download.
We are getting to the end of Maintenance Planner. On the last screen you can see the summary of selected files and the download stack file, that we will use in few moments to run Software Provisioning Manager.
After pushing files to Download Basket we can run Download Manager. Unfortunately, Maintenance Planner doesn’t show you the initial installation files. To get them, you need to follow the “old fashioned” way, by using SAP Marketplace and selecting the appropriate media.
During the download we can have a moment to install and prepare the SAP HANA database. I already have one working – the only thing I want to do is to create the tenant database that I will use for S/4HANA. It can easily be done executing SQL command:
It took around 2 minutes to have the database ready.
When the download is complete we can unpack archives and run SWPM. This time I decided to start it together with the stack file generated by Maintenance Planner.
SYSTEM INSTALLATION WITH SOFTWARE PROVISIONING MANAGER
The SWPM part is pretty straightforward, so I will focus on the most important and interesting parts.
The first screen let us choose what we want to install. But as we are using a stack file, we don’t have a big choice – list of available systems is limited to our previous choice from Maintenance Planner:
After typing our system SID, FQDN and master password, we need to point to our HANA database. Look that we need to give not only a password for the tenant database, but also for the system database.
On Software Package Browser we can point to SAR archives with SAP kernel – the easiest way is to type directory with our Download Folder. SWPM finds the files automatically.
Another nice idea is to configure STMS along with system installation, import newest SPAM package and import ABAP transports.
One of the last steps is to configure SUM. It will start directly after SWPM and enables us to import support packages.
The very last screen is confirmation of our parameters. After clicking Next, the installation starts:
The installation in my case took around 4 hours. As usual the longest part was Import ABAP.
To install the SAP system, we used a stack file, so the last task during the installation is to start Software Update Manager to import corrections.
To login to SUM we need to provide <sid>adm user and password. Execution of SUM is again pretty straightforward, so I will focus mainly on the important bits. SAP recently released new installation media with S/4HANA SR1, so SUM will update only minor components – all core components are already on the highest release.
SYSTEM UPDATE USING SOFTWARE UPDATE MANAGER
First thing after log in to SUM you need to provide stack file. It’s exactly the same file that was previously generated by Maintenance Planner and was used as the input for SWPM.
As usual during an update process we can choose configuration. To make the update quickest I chose Single System without creating shadow instance.
We can now check what components will be updated. In our case there are not too many changes, but when a new release comes, the following screens will contain more information.
During the update you will be prompted to perform a system backup – this is of course highly recommended.
Finally, when SUM execution is finished, we receive the relevant message:
Now we can finally enter the system.
When we go to menu System -> Status we can see the exact S/4HANA version.
That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed this course. In a few days I will publish the next episode where I focus mainly on front-end server configuration and connection to S/4HANA back-end.
Thanks for the document, very useful for those who are planning to implement S/4HANA is a great guide.
Thank you! 🙂
Bartosz
Hello again,
I'm myself trying to reproduce your steps since we are going to install S/4HANA OP1511 FPS02.
However, on the front-end server selection in Maintenace Planner, under "Select underlying sap netweaver" you get two choices:
1. AS ABAP 7.5 FOR S4HANA OP 1511
2. SAP Netweaver 7.5
I have found that if I proceed with selection 1 I get the following error later on:
If I select option 2 I can proceed further with the transaction.
Do you know what would be the difference between the two different choices for the underlying sap netweaver? I couldn't find any note or reference for that. On sapinst option 1 falls under "SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511" and option 2 under "SAP NetWeaver 7.5"
We will open a ticket to SAP for the error since it seems occuring whenever we are selecting "AS ABAP 7.5 FOR S4HANA OP 1511".
Regards,
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
I have opened a Call at SAP concerning the error.
As far as I can see there seems no difference. It says (the Read Me before you get to the Downloadlink) that if you have a plain Netweaver 7.5, that you will be able to use that system as a base for the Frontend components. The install exports are pretty much of the same size as well. And the Guides only speak of "Netweaver 7.5" as a base. There is no mention of the "AS ABAP 7.5 FOR S4HANA OP 1511" flavour.
Sven
The SWPM acts differently based on your decision to install "S/4 Frontend" or "Netweaver 7.5".
In the procedure for S4 you are asked to point to the location of EXP3 folder. This does not happen in the procedure for NW75.
Best bet in the moment is to create a new system in MP, by choosing NW75 and Fiori 2 as addon.
Sven
Hello,
Just to confirm that maintenence planner seems to be working correctly with both options now.
I could successful create a transaction for S/4 front-end
Regards,
Daniel
Hello Daniel,
I also couldn't find any notes about the difference between SAP NW 7.5 and SAP NW 7.5 for S/4HANA. Anyway I have installed Front-End server on both of them without any issue, so I think they can be used interchangeably. The Installation Export size is pretty much the same - around 10 MB difference.
Issue with Maintenance Planner started around 1 - 1,5 week ago. I didn't contact SAP because there is workaround with installing standard NW 7.5, but if you open a ticket please share results. I think it's good reference for other experiencing same issue.
Best regards
Bartosz
Hello Bartosz,
I'm new on s4hana installation, so I have a few questions regarding your guides.
I want to install a test system so, I have followed the part1 of the installation (SAP S/4HANA On-Premise 1511) and installed it on a new hana database without converting it in MDC (it is mandatory to transform it ?!).
Then the AS ABAP for S/4HANA I have installed it on the same database. Now I am on the update step for AS ABAP for S/4HANA and I have an warning and I don't know how to treat it.
Please give me an idea how to proceed further.
Can I go to the next step or should I convert it first?
Thank you in advance!
Kind regards,
Peter
Hello Peter,
MDC is useful, when you want to have multiple instances on the same database, but it's not required.
In your case each instance has separate database schema. You firstly installed S/4HANA which has schema name SAPABAP1 and then NW which has schema name SAPABAP2.
Currently you are in process of updating NW instance, so the provided screen looks OK for me. I think you can click Next 🙂
Best regards
Bartosz
Thank you so much!!!
One more question regarding schemas. It is possible tu use the same schema on both installation? I mean, to use sapabap1 in s4hana and nw installation? is this possible or they should have different schema?
Thank you once more!
No, it's not possible to have two instances installed with the same schema name on one database. You can achieve that converting your database to MDC, but then your tenant database have different SID.
Best regards
Bartosz
Thank you!
That's all for now! 🙂
Have a great day!
Hi Bartosz,
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Do you have something regarding the infrastructure  to run S/4Hana?
My company is going to implement S/4 on premise and I’d like to see the possibilities.
Our IT infrastructure today is Hyper-V and as far as I know s/4 doesn’t run in Hyper-V, only VMware and also certified hardware.
What I picture is:
Host 1 / Host 2 / Storage
SAP PRD, QAD, DEV and etc as VM's
Hope you can help.
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Thanks,
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Hello,
you asked a super difficult question and there is no single correct answer. There is many factors that could influence the deployment scenario. Just from the top of my head you need to think about:
a) Sizing information - how much data are you going to store in the database
b) SAP Gateway - will you use separate Front-End Server for Fiori Apps (recommended)? You may want to check the part two of my blog
c) Infrastructure - what is cheaper / better in your case - use physical server (appliance) or rather TDI infrastructure. Or maybe cloud solutions like Azure?
d) High Availability - does your company require servers to be running 24/7?
Those are examples from top of my head. There is way more other topics you need to plan when thinking about S/4 deployment. But definitely you can use google to check above keywords to get a bigger picture.
Good luck!
Best regards
Bartosz