Santa is early this year: HXE on Ubuntu is back!!

And looks like we’ve behaved very well!

A little background: After the release of SAP HANA 2.0, SPS02 the Ubuntu installation stopped working. A library needed during installation was not supported by Ubuntu.

The engineering team figured out a workaround and went the extra mile. They did not just solve it, they embedded the solution in the setup script, together with the installation of dependencies we used to do manually (including the alias for chkconfig that caused a couple of headaches).

Hats off and a standing ovation for them:

How to install SAP HANA, express edition on Ubuntu on the Google Cloud Platform

• Core database (or server-only flavor): https://www.sap.com/developer/tutorials/hxe-gcp-ubuntu-db.html
• Database server + XS Advanced applications: https://www.sap.com/developer/tutorials/hxe-gcp-ubuntu-xsa.html

The installation process compared to the original series described in my post from February (also updated) has simplified a lot. This is reflected on the new tutorials.

The time it takes to set up HXE is also shorter because of a brand new feature in the download manager: the ability to download the installation binaries directly into the Virtual Machine on the cloud.

This also works if you want to download any of the additional components like Streaming Analytics, Enterprise Architecture Designer, External Machine Learning library, etc. Just make sure you have the right version of the Java Runtime Environment (or install it as instructed in the tutorials)

A little note, though: the pre-installed images like the one you get from the launcher have a folder called Downloads (cd Downloads) with the installers already downloaded. I would recommend you check that out before going for the download manager in console mode.

Whether looking to get started or ready to implement a productive application, there are plenty of installation options for HANA express. This is still one of my favorites because it can be completely for free: free HANA license, free operating system, free credits from the Google Cloud Platform when you first register and more than 500 free official tutorials (and counting…).

If you think this is good news to your friends, please share!

Of course, I would love to know how this goes, so let’s connect on  Twitter or on LinkedIn !