SAP on Google Cloud : The fundamentals

Thousands of businesses rely on SAP to handle crucial business processes in finance, HR, warehouse management, supply chain etc. SAP systems need the highest level of availability, resiliency and performance , if not the enterprise could come to a standstill.

Google cloud provides industry standard solutions for SAP workloads, be it in terms of SAP certification, infrastructure scalability, resiliency or security. Google cloud also enables exponential growth of enterprises through value added capabilities like Machine learning, Smart analytics, AI etc.

In this blog series we will explore the constructs of hosting SAP on Google cloud — the fundamentals, architecture, security and best practices.

Part 1: The Fundamentals (This blog)

Part 2: Deployment considerations

SAP portfolio

Here is a quick overview of the fundamentals of SAP application portfolio and some popular terminology associated with it before we look at what Google cloud brings to the table for your SAP workloads.You would see some of these terms being referenced later in this blog series

SAP Business suite : SAP Business suite is a set of industry application components that support multiple business functions across all leading industry verticals ie Enterprise Resource Management(ERP), Customer Relationship Management(CRM), SAP supply chain management(SCM),Product life cycle management(PLM) and Supplier Relationship Management(SRM).

SAP ECC: SAP ECC stands for ERP Central component and consists of several modules like Sales and Distribution(SD), Financials(FI), Human Capital Management(HCM) etc. As the name indicates, it forms the central component of SAP Business suite.

SAP S/4 HANA: SAP ERP systems underwent a major transformation in 2015 with the introduction of S/4HANA enterprise application suite. There are multiple modules available currently in S/4HANA catering to multiple industry verticals — energy , services industry, financial , natural resources etc

SAP Netweaver: SAP NetWeaver is at the core of SAP application stack. It consists of components written in either ABAP(Advanced Business Application Programming ) or Java Platform, Enterprise Edition and and run on the SAP NetWeaver Application Server..

SAP ASCS : ABAP Central Services (ASCS) is the main application service of SAP, which consists of Message Server and Enqueue Server. The Message server processes all incoming requests and distributes them to other application servers. Enqueue server manages table locks to avoid conflict between operations accessing the records.

SAP PAS/ AAS : PAS represents the Primary Application Server in the SAP Architecture and AAS is additional application servers. In a standard deployment where all services except the database run on the PAS instance. A Distributed deployment will have one of more AAS as an optional component

SAP BW : Business Warehouse is the data warehousing solution from SAP. It can be leveraged to create and manage data warehouses, do data management activities, create reports and perform analytics operations. It can be used to build and manage data warehouses, execute data management activities, carry out analytics operations and generate reports.

SAP SLT: SLT is essentially an ELT tool that enables loading and replication of data from SAP /Non-SAP source system into a SAP HANA database. The replication can either be real-time or scheduled.

SAP solution manager: This tool , commonly referred to as SolMan, is used by customers for centralized management , automation and enhancement of SAP landscape.

SAP Business One: SAP Business One , commonly known as SAP B1 is the ERP solution from SAP targeting small and midsize businesses. It covers multiple business functions like Financials, accounting, inventory,sales, customer relationship management etc.

SAP Fiori : SAP FIori is the latest User Experience(UX) solution for SAP software, which can be considered as the replacement of SAP GUI.It provides a presentation layer for SAP solutions like success factors,S/4HANA, Employee Central etc

SAP databases : SAP software can run on any of the following DB platforms — DB2, Oracle, SQL server, Sybase, Max DB and HANA. SAP HANA (High performance Analytic Appliance) is SAP proprietary in-memory database designed to support both OLAP and OLTP operations. While ECC supports other databases, S/4HANA deployments can only use HANA as the database platform.

SAPS : SAPS stands for SAP Application Performance Standard . The units are defined as hardware-independent and describe SAP environment system performance.It helps identify the right hardware configuration for your SAP applications.

Why consider Google Cloud for your SAP workloads

Irrespective of how extensive your SAP portfolio is, Google cloud provides the resources required to deploy your SAP workloads from ground up if you are a greenfield customer or tools and services required to migrate your sap workloads if you are a brownfield customer. Google cloud offers certified hardware for hosting SAP solutions at enterprise scale.Let’s look at some of the key benefits of hosting SAP infrastructure in Google cloud is as follows

• Ensure high availability for SAP workloads through Google Cloud’s Live migration capabilities. Your SAP applications will not be impacted by any hardware maintenance activities or failures as the VMs will be seamlessly migrated to a different host
• The high speed private fiber network of Google Cloud with cold potato routing helps deliver better user experience with minimal latencies , which is crucial for business critical SAP applications
• Google cloud offers large VMs with memory of up to 12 TB memory, certified for SAP HANA that can be used for scale out deployment up to 64TB+
• Google supports custom VMs ,where you can configure the number of CPU cores and memory required for your instances and pay only for what you use.Custom machines from N1,N2 and N2D families can be used for SAP deployments that provide a definitive cost advantage
• With sustained use discounts, you can further optimize the cost of your dev/test environments that run on-demand.
• With flexibility offered by Infrastructure as Service, you can start small with your SAP infrastructure sizing and scale as you go. The Active assist service in google cloud provide right-sizing recommendations to optimize your resource usage
• Google cloud has a layered security model that helps you configure end to end security for your SAP workloads. The security capabilities include Titan chip integration to establish hardware root of trust, large private network with cold potato routing that keeps your data safe, built-in default encryption, DDoS protection, Access transparency, VPC service controls, private Google access etc to name a few. We will be exploring some of these in detail in later parts of this blog series
• Google cloud provides advanced monitoring capabilities for HANA systems through Google Cloud Monitoring Agent for SAP HANA. The HANA system metrics collected by the agent can be integrated with cloud monitoring for further analysis and visualisation
• SAP BackInt agent can be used for backup of SAP HANA databases with an option to store backup copies directly in low cost Google Cloud storage

Getting started : Deployment , Licensing and support model

Deployment : SAP infrastructure can either be deployed manually or automated using tools like Terraform and Cloud Deployment manager. Automation is recommended to ensure adherence to organizational standards and to eliminate human error. You can also deploy SAP HANA using Terraform and Deployment manager templates. If automation is a prerogative for your organization, you can review the detailed guide on SAP deployment automation

Licensing : Only Bring your own license(BYOL) model is supported for SAP workloads on Google cloud. The licenses should be purchased from an SAP reseller or directly from SAP. There are no pay as you go licensing options available in Google cloud for SAP

Support Model : SAP applications are supported under Premium and enhanced support plan. If you have a legacy Google cloud support plan that includes SAP, you can continue to use that. To qualify for support, the SAP implementation must only use Google Cloud VM SKUs that are certified by SAP. You should refer to the SAP certified instances for SAP applications and HANA while planning the deployment. Also refer to the SAP note that has additional details about the prerequisites for SAP on Google cloud support.

What is next?

In upcoming blogs in this series, we will explore the SAP landscape on Google cloud in detail. We will touch upon the deployment considerations, the reference architectures and deep dive into the security and best practices for SAP deployment on Google cloud

Watch this space for more!!!

Reviewer : Snehal Belikatte