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Author's profile photo Kiril Gavrailov

SAP Automation Pilot – Automate your DevOps work with ease

Problem

What do you usually do when your solution deployed on the SAP Business Technology Platform goes sideways for some reason? How do you handle updates of your app and your database? How do you handle failure within the workloads of SAP provided services like SAP Integration Suite?

It is a complicated answer, I know. But we can summarize it with a couple of different options:

manually

You have a detailed wiki/git page with screenshots and the step-by-step procedure of how to handle complex DevOps scenarios. This way is time-consuming and has a ton of challenges.

with scripting

You might support а bunch of shell, python, or whatever scripts that automate those operations. And whenever something changes (versioning, changes int the services that you use, etc.) you adapt those scripts and continue.

with REST

You might have a bunch of Postman pre-defined REST API calls which you invoke (either manually on automatically). You maintain this content up-to-date and face similar challenges as with scripting.

All of these approaches are perfectly fine. What they lack is two things: 

  1. A standard method of operation no matter if you are on Cloud Foundry and or Neo
  2. Pre-defined content that you can use as-is or extend without having enormous contextual knowledge about Platform, scripting, or something else.

The challenges you have might include:

Solution

SAP Automation Pilot enables you to automatically solve all of the above by providing you with five distinct features: 

  1. Pre-defined automation content, which we call commands, maintained and updated by us. We have organized it into catalogs that can handle different scenarios – like an update of your HANA database or restart of a full application stack. Or with simple operations like – executing a REST API or executing a script.
  2. Powerful and highly-scalable execution engine which we have based on Kafka, allows you to run multiple commands in a scalable manner.
  3. Ability to easily enrich the provided content with your own without any coding, all you need to know is how REST works.
  4. Close integration with SAP Alert Notification service, which enables you to automate the reactions to your alerts fully.
  5. Easy schedule and execute regular DevOps activities

Where does it work?

It works right next to the Platform, and it allows you to operate different regions no matter the location with a single instance of Automation Pilot. Currently, it works on US30 BTP landscape, and we plan availability in Europe and APJ regions. However, the US region can also handle your solution no matter the location.

What about a trial?

We are currently in the process of planning for a trial version of Automation Pilot, stay tuned.

How can I learn more?

First, start with checking out Automation Pilot’s help page – there you are going to find much useful information and the help contains GIFs where you can see exactly how to achieve something. 

In this blog post, we are going to reference multiple useful blog posts that we write for your convenience. Let’s start with: 

Automatic Alert Remmediation with Automation Pilot, Alert Notification and ServiceNow

Do you want a demo or have a question?

Just drop us an email to support.autopilot@groups.sap.com and we are going to arrange it.

When?

Automation Pilot general availability should happen at the beginning of August(note that delay is always possible) and it is already consumable via Cloud Cockpit for CPEA based accounts with beta features flag enabled.

Automation Pilot is CPEA service, we charge for blocks of 1000 API calls. The final price is going to be available immediately after the GA. We are also working on SAP Store integration for providing it to non-CPEA accounts.

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      5 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Gustavo Carrera Martinez
      Gustavo Carrera Martinez

      Hi Giril

       

      I'm trying to enable some services like Automation Pilot and others in a trial version to build a simple test scenario.. Do you know if AP is already available for trial?

       

      Thanks!

      Author's profile photo Kiril Gavrailov
      Kiril Gavrailov
      Blog Post Author

      Dear Gustavo,

      unfortunately, AutoPi is not yet available on trial. We are working on providing such a version of AutoPi.

      If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to get in touch at k.gavrailov at sap dot com

       

      Thanks,

      Kiril

      Author's profile photo Teodor Klimentov
      Teodor Klimentov

      Hello,

      SAP Automation Pilot now offers a free plan. It is available in the same regions, where the standard plan is available.

      Teodor

      Author's profile photo Ahmed Ali Khan
      Ahmed Ali Khan

      Hi Teodor Klimentov

      I tried to find SAP Automation Pilot on trial version but there is no such service available, Can you please help how can i find it?

      SAP%20AUTOMATION%20PILOT%20Not%20available%20on%20trial

      SAP AUTOMATION PILOT Not available on trial

      Author's profile photo Biser Simeonov
      Biser Simeonov

      Hi Ahmed Ali Khan !

      Thanks for bringing your question to our knowledge.

      There are couple of steps I can advise to check out in case you don't see the SAP Automation Pilot among the list of available services to be enabled:

      • Step #1 - Service availability: validate that your Subaccount is running on an SAP Business Technology Platform region on which you can enable the SAP Automation Pilot (link to documentation: What is SAP Automation Pilot) . Please note: once enabled, SAP Automation Pilot can execute commands towards different SAP BTP runtimes, SAP services, third party Ops tools or via its REST API, so it's not limited to the region in question.
      • Step #2 - Managing Entitlements and Quotas Using the BTP Cockpit:  in case you have a BTP Subaccount running on a BTP region that support the SAP Automation Pilot but you still don't see the service among the list of available services , then please check the Entitlements and Quotas for your account using the BTP Cockpit. That's needed because the entitlement equals to your right to provision and consume a resource , i.e. runtimes, application memory or specific BTP services. A quota represents the numeric quantity that defines the maximum allowed consumption of that resource. There might be a case where for your global account you haven't set the SAP Automation Pilot as an entitlement or you have done so you might have run out of quotas for this resource and you need to increase it.

      Further info that might be helpful:

      Please let me know if this info helps and if you have managed to enable the service.

      Kind regards,

      Biser