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Author's profile photo Joerg Wolf

SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance: Create your SAP S/4HANA system in a fraction of the usual setup time

Last updated: April 21st, 2023

Summary

  • The SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance is a pre-packaged SAP S/4HANA system for non-production use cases such as sandboxing, proof-of-concept, scoping, or fit-gap analysis.
  • The appliance contains both curated ready-to-use demo scenarios (some based on SAP Best Practices, some freely defined) as well as a separate client with the greenfield activation of SAP Best Practices for all available localizations.
  • You can create your own personal system with full administrative rights either hosted in the cloud (takes ~ 1-2 hours) or on your own on-premise hardware (takes ~ 2-3 days).
  • For the cloud deployment you need a valid account at a supported hosting provider, currently those are AWS, Azure and GCP. The hosting costs will be charged to your account (typically 3-4 USD per system uptime hour)
  • Once you have such an account, the easiest way to start is the SAP S/4HANA trial (SAP licenses are waived for 30 days; only the cloud provider hosting fees apply). An extensive demo guide walks you through sample scenarios with pre-defined users and data sets.

Latest news from April 21st, 2023:
The SAP S/4HANA 2022 (FPS01) Fully-Activated Appliance is available:
Direct link to appliance template in SAP CAL / Demo Guides

General concepts

What is an appliance ?

An appliance is a compressed system image that can be rapidly extracted into a regular system instance by preserving everything that has been configured in the appliance during the development phase of it.
This makes it an ideal medium for pre-configured systems e.g. for sandboxing, proof-of-concept or scoping/fit-gap purposes.

In the SAP S/4HANA fully-activated appliances, you will find the SAP S/4HANA software (along with some other components, see further below), activations of SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA (incl. technical configuration e.g. for the Fiori launchpad), and prepared demo scenarios with sample master and transactional data.

The delivery infrastructure for appliances is the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (SAP CAL, https://cal.sap.com), and if you browse this site you will see many more appliances besides the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated appliances.

[Fig 1]: The concept of the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

How to use an appliance

An appliance can be consumed in two ways:

  1. Within 1-2 hours in a hosted environment, using a cloud provider infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
  2. Within typically ~ 2-3 days on your own on-premise hardware that has a supported Linux release installed (everything else will come with the appliance).
Details for option 1 (hosted):As prerequisite, you need to obtain an account at one of the supported cloud providers, and can afterwards bring up your system using the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (SAP CAL, https://cal.sap.com).The registration in SAP CAL and one of the supported hosting providers takes ~15 minutes. The start-up of your personal trial instance (no shared system !) will take ~1-2 hours.An easy entrance into SAP CAL is the SAP S/4HANA 30-day trial with the following characteristics:

  • Built-in 30-day test license for SAP S/4HANA and SAP CAL (i.e. no fees to be paid to SAP)
  • Hosting provider fees are charged to your hosting provider account (~ 3-4 $ USD per uptime hour, depending on provider and data center region).
  • Support via asking a question in the SAP CAL community
  • Possibility to extend the 30-day trial phase by acquiring an SAP CAL subscription license (requires a valid SAP S/4HANA license as well), see here for more details

If you are new to the SAP Cloud Appliance Library, there’s a detailed ‘Quick Start Guide’ on the SAP S/4HANA trial page to get started. This video playlist for SAP CAL will also help to get into the topic.

Details for option 2 (on-premise installation):If you prefer to install the appliance on your own hardware, you can also receive it via download or Blu-Ray disks.The shipment is free of charge, however, corresponding SAP licenses need to be in place (trial licenses are sufficient for delivery). The installation of an appliance differs from a “regular” SAP installation, we therefore recommend to have this done by SAP Consulting or an experienced SAP partner, however, customers can also do it on their own and will receive support from SAP.Ordering by a partner on behalf of a customer and deploying it on the customer hardware afterwards is not allowed.

The following SAP note contains more information on the ordering process (it is valid for customers and partners):
Ordering process for on-premise installation of SAP software appliances (2041140)

[Fig 2]: SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance – Consumption Methods

SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

What is the content & scope ?

The scope of the appliance centers around the SAP Best Practices content for SAP S/4HANA and is enhanced by further scenarios depending on the exact release version of the appliance.

The below walk-through scenarios (taken from the 2021 SP00 release) have been described in detail (see here) but of course you’re free to explore and adapt the system as needed since you have full administrative rights and even access to the Linux operating system.

  • Overview Pages
  • Sell from stock / outbound delivery processing
  • Accounting & Financial Close
  • Lease-in accounting
  • Investments
  • Universal Allocation
  • Treasury and bank account management
  • Overdue receivables
  • Group Reporting
  • Plan-to-produce & Demand-driven replenishment
  • Predictive Material & Resource Planning
  • Advanced Variant Configuration
  • Warehouse Inbound From Supplier
  • Plant Maintenance / Quality Mgmt.
  • Advanced ATP
  • Advanced Intercompany Sales
  • Service
  • Portolio & Project Management
  • SAP Master Data Governance
  • Human Capital Management
  • Application Interface Framework
  • Analytics (Smart Business, BI, SAC)
  • Predictive Analytics
  • Data Migration
  • SAP Fiori Rapid Activation
  • Fiori Situation Handling
  • Key User & Developer Extensibility
  • Custom Print Forms
  • SAP Screen Personas

[Fig. 3] Pre-configured walkthrough scenarios in the appliance (2022 FPS01)

What is technically contained in the appliance ?

The appliance consists of four virtual machines that are automatically bundled into one solution instance:

  1. SAP S/4HANA (the core ABAP backend incl. the SAP HANA database)
  2. SAP NW JAVA with Adobe Document Services (for forms and output management)
  3. An SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform
  4. MS Windows remote desktop for easy access to the solution

The BI platform and the remote desktop are optional components in SAP CAL (you can opt in/out of the deployment in the advanced mode of the SAP CAL instance creation) and are also not shipped to customers for the on-premise installation.

[Fig. 4] Technical components of the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

More information & known issues

These blogs (2022 / 2021 / 2020) summarize the known issues and provide fixing hints where available. They will be continuously updated.

One important note at the end:
Once you have created an appliance instance (be it hosted or on-premise), it behaves like a regular on-premise system. And this means that SAP cannot access or patch your appliance instance, thus any system tasks (be it basis or functional) need to be done by you.

Best and have fun with the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance,

Joerg

Appendix: Link collection

Assigned Tags

      137 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Amaury VAN ESPEN
      Amaury VAN ESPEN

      Hello,

      is there a simple way to deploy Appliance on top of OpenStack or via Docker ?

      https://www.slideshare.net/snoopy1710/strategic-choices-in-sap-s4-hana-deployment (for example, slide 18 of this slide deck, based on SUSE architecture).

      I'm still struggling with setting up a local sandbox based on SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance for a limited time.

      Any help/support | feedbacks would be great =)

      Thank you

      Amaury

      Author's profile photo Joerg Wolf
      Joerg Wolf
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Amaury,

      this is not possible (at least not "out of the box").

      The options are CAL (using a VM on a hyperscaler) or the deployment on your own infrastructure.

      If you have problems with deploying an instance on CAL, please ask a question in the CAL forum and share some more information there.

      Best, Joerg

      Author's profile photo Pascal Martin
      Pascal Martin

      Hi Joerg,

      I plan to order a fully activated appliance in order to test the following scope items, all related to recipe management :

      1QA, 1QC, 1QG and 22R

      My question : are these scope items included in the fully activated appliance ?

      Otherwise what shall I order to get them in the appliance ?

      Many thanks for support

      PAscal

      Author's profile photo Joerg Wolf
      Joerg Wolf
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Pascal,

      see https://answers.sap.com/questions/13787798/recipe-management-in-a-cal-system.html

      Best,

      Joerg

      Author's profile photo Manikandan Panchanathan
      Manikandan Panchanathan

      When I host it on my personal cloud, can I stop the EC2 instances when I do not use and start again when I use it again, without impacting the S/4 Hana setup? I just want to avoid spending money on the infra when I am not using it within the 30 days trial.

      Author's profile photo Marian Harris
      Marian Harris

      Hi Manikandan, if you deploy the appliance via SAP CAL, you can suspend and reactivate the system as you like, or you can put it on a predictable schedule of being activated/suspended. If you do this, I would suggest deploying the instance using the ‘advanced mode’ and in Step 2. Appliance Details, choose the option to use a public static IP address so that the IP address doesn’t change every time you suspend and reactivate the instance. You may want to think before selecting this option, some people feel it is less secure, but is very convenient for some thing like a sandbox.  Additionally, some of the cloud hosting partners have limitations on how many public static IP addresses you can use, so you may have to increase your quota for that attribute.

      Author's profile photo Miroslav Baca
      Miroslav Baca

      Hello,

      I am testing the Application Interface Framework (AIF) in SAP S/4HANA 2022 (FPS01) Fully-Activated Appliance scenario Create a Simple IDoc Interface see: https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/aif-idoc-monitoring-interface-create.html#1f4c45e3-1b0c-4bb1-a5ba-12ef9ac06aed.

      In step 5. Open the IDoc Structure Generator (transaction /n/AIF/IDOC_GEN) I am unable to create the structure - the system requires a Workbench Request, when I select my WB request the error changes to:

      System configuration requires the usage of a Customizing request
      Message No. /AIF/API_CUST002

       

       

      Can you please advise me?

      Thank you very much!
      Miroslav

      Author's profile photo Alexander Bundschuh
      Alexander Bundschuh

      Hi Miroslav,

      I guess you refer to step 6 of the tutorial and not step 5, in step 5 you create the package, in step 6 you run the structure generator, actually the screenshot in the tutorial is not complete, in the interface definition section, the second last entry field is empty in the screenshot, however here you need to enter the customizing request before executing the report, you can simply select here the customizing request that you have created when you created your package or otherwise create a new one, I just went through the report again, and for me it worked fine

      Alex

      Author's profile photo Miroslav Baca
      Miroslav Baca

      Hi Alex,

      Hey, Alex,

      thank you for your quick reply!
      You're right, I described the step number wrong, instead of the 5th step it's really the 6th step. I'm sorry.

      I'm trying to enter the TR I created into the /n/AIF/IDOC_GEN generator transaction, but unfortunately it doesn't work. I am attaching detailed images, below is the error message.

      - System configuration requires the usage of a Customizing request
      Message No. /AIF/API_CUST002 - if I enter a WB request
      - Workbench request S4HK902302 does not exist
      Message No. /AIF/GENERATORS028 - if I enter a Customizing Request

      Have I described it better now?

      I think AIF is a very powerful tool, we would love to use it, we just have to learn how to use it properly :-)!!

      Thanks again for the support!

      Miroslav

       

       

       

      Author's profile photo Alexander Bundschuh
      Alexander Bundschuh

      in the second screenshot you entered your customizing request into the field for the workbench request, in the first screenshot the workbench request is correct but the customizing request is missing, you actually need both requests, below you need to enter your customizing request

      Alex

      Author's profile photo Miroslav Baca
      Miroslav Baca

      Hi Alex,

      thanks again for the quick reply! You're right, I actually overlooked typing Customizing Request in the next field. I added the correct entry, but The IDoc Structure Generator could not create the required DDIC objects. I am getting the message:
      "Potentially unlicensed use of AIF; you cannot create interface DEMO_1/FCUSTOMER/1"

      I based on the information in the document "SAP S/4HANA 2022 (FPS01 & SP00) Fully-Activated Appliance:
      Message Monitoring with SAP Application Interface Framework
      Demo Guide"

      "The demo scenarios have been setup in an SAP delivered AIF namespace, and hence you do not need an AIF license to run those scenarios."

      Again, I don't know if I missed something and understand the description correctly, so thanks for the support and help!

      Miroslav

      Author's profile photo Joerg Wolf
      Joerg Wolf
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Miroslav,

      for the future, please raise specific system questions in a separate thread and not as comment to a blog post  (since such questions/answers tend to get lengthy and are difficult for reading other comments on a blog 😉 ).

      For AIF questions in CAL try https://community.sap.com/topics/application-interface-framework and/or https://community.sap.com/topics/cloud-appliance-library (you can also double-tag both communities when asking the question).

      Thanks and best,

      Joerg

       

       

      Author's profile photo Miroslav Baca
      Miroslav Baca

      Hello Joerg,
      thank you for the recommendation and the links you sent. I think I found there a solution about AIF licenses in the blog:

      New trial capability for SAP Application Interface Framework
      From <https://blogs.sap.com/2021/10/29/new-trial-capability-for-sap-application-interface-framework/>

      I will try it.
      If my question is not appropriately placed here please delete it.
      Next time I will follow the recommendation and look for answers in SAP product communities first.

      Have a nice day and thanks for the advice!

      Miroslav

      Author's profile photo Martin Hauschild
      Martin Hauschild

      Hi Joerg Wolf ,

      it is possible to install the ABAP / Backend Part (SAP AS) on a Windows Server 2022 (VM) ? Distributed Installation.

      And the HDB on an existing SLES 15 Server.

      For a normal S4 2022 installation, it is possible, see in PAM.

      Regards Martin

      Author's profile photo Joerg Wolf
      Joerg Wolf
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Martin,

      the appliance requires Linux on x86_64 infrastructure.

      From a sizing perspective, I would give it a try to install the SAP application server on yourHANA  box as well (if there are no other constraints).

      If you use the appliance in SAP CAL, both components are also running on the same virtual machine.

      Best, Joerg