AWS for SAP

Simplify SAP Management and Operations with AWS Systems Manager for SAP

Introduction

Since its initial release in early 2023, the AWS Systems Manager for SAP team has been working to enhance the service based on customer feedback to help SAP customers manage their SAP systems on AWS. In this blog we will review the following two enhancements that have been released with AWS Systems Manager Application Manager.

  • SAP HANA Database system registration via AWS System Manager Application Manager console: Prior to the introduction of the AWS Systems Manager Application Manager console, registration and discovery of an SAP HANA database system required the use of the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). You can now use AWS System Manager Application Manager console to register and perform operational activities with SAP HANA database in addition to command line interface. This includes support for both single node and high availability SAP HANA database systems.
  • With the AWS Systems Manager (SSM) for SAP integration with SSM Application Registry application tagging, view SAP HANA application insights through AWS Systems Manager Application Manager Console: AWS customers running complex SAP workloads often struggle with management of their SAP automation tasks. Many customers use tools & scripts carried over from their on-premise deployments and have asked for a single pane of view to manage and operate these applications. SSM Application Manager provides these capabilities to ease the management of SAP applications. With the launch of AWS Systems Manager (SSM) for SAP integration with SSM Application Registry application tagging, customers will be able to view application details for SAP HANA applications registered through the AWS Systems Manager Application Manager console. This integration enriches the customer experience by providing details about the resources, instances, monitoring, and estimated cost in the context of specific SAP application.

Overview

In this section we will show how you can now easily register an SAP HANA database (single node and high availability) system with the AWS Systems Manager Application Manager console.

Pre-requisites

SAP HANA Database system registration via AWS System Manager Application Manager console

  1. Open the AWS Systems Manager console at link.
  2. On the left navigation pane, choose Application Manager.
  3. Select on Create Application and then choose Enterprise Workload
  4. Enter an Application name for example “HANADBHA” and Application Description for example “SAP HANA Database High Availability”
  5. Select on Browse instances, select the Instance ID of the SAP HANA Database you wish to register. Note to register a high availability SAP HANA database you can choose instance ID of either the primary node or secondary node
  6. Enter the SAP System identifer (SID) and SAP instance number of the SAP HANA database system you are registering
  7. Select the Secret ID of the secret stored in AWS Secretes Manager that contains the security credentials of the HANA system database
  8. Select on “Add credentials” to add a tenant database.
  9. Enter the tenant database name and then select the Secret ID of the secret stored in AWS Secretes Manager that contains the security credentials of the HANA tenant database
  10. Select on Create.

The registration process will take approximately 3-5 five minutes to complete
After successful registration a green message bar will be displayed at the top of console informing you the registration has been completed.
Once registration is complete you will be returned to the Application Manager screen listing your registered applications.

View details of application        
To view the details of the application you just registered, search for the application name under Find Applications. Once it lists the registered application, select on the application name in the list as shown below.

After selecting on the application on the Application Manager screen you will see the details of the application you just registered including Application type, Application ID, and Application source as shown below. For additional details on how to work with Application Manager applications and view operations information about your AWS resources, refer to Working with applications.

To see the components that comprise the system, select on the Resources tab and then scroll down to the Topology section.

Since the system we registered is a high availability system, you can see three components have been registered

  • HDB – HDB0 = parent component representing the logical database
  • HDB – HDB00-sappridb = child component representing the primary database host entity
  • HDB – HDB00-sapsecdb = child component representing the secondary database host entity

*Note- during the registration process we only needed to select the Instance ID of the primary database, the secondary database was automatically discovered and registered by AWS Systems Manager for SAP

To see additional information for a specific component select on the radio button to the left of the component name. In this example we’ll look at the details of the secondary SAP HANA database system that was registered by AWS Systems Manager for SAP including SAP HANA database version, OS version, SAP HANA system replication mode and SAP host name.

After completing the configuration of SSM for SAP in the Application Manager Console, we can see the various widgets enabled. We start with the Overview tab to see the dashboard of the specific SAP application. To learn more, please refer to Register an application with AWS Systems Manager Application Manager.

Onboarding your SAP Application to CloudWatch Application Insights and Cost Reporting

Application tagging feature allows the SSM Application Manager to apply the tag to specific EC2 instances running SAP applications. After the registration you don’t need any additional manual configuration or additional steps to add logs of SAP system to SSM console. SAP application need to be onboarded to CloudWatch Application Insights from the SSM Application Manager > Monitoring tab for the insights to be displayed.

Follow the steps below to onboard the SAP application with CloudWatch Application Insights for SSM:

  1. In the Application Manager console, find your SAP Application, and select on it to go to the Application Details View
  2. In the Components tree, choose the application name
  3. In the Monitoring tab, navigate to the Application Insights section, select on Add an Application button.
  4. This will open the Add an Application widget in CloudWatch Application Insights
  5. On the Specify application details page, from the drop down list under Select an Application or resource group, select the name of your SSM for SAP application, that contains your SAP resources
  6. Under Monitor EventBridge events, select the check box to integrate Application Insights monitoring with CloudWatch Events to get insights from Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2, AWS CodeDeploy, Amazon ECS, AWS Health APIs and notifications, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, and AWS Step Functions.
  7. Under Integrate with AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter, select the check box next to Generate AWS Systems Manager OpsCenter OpsItems for remedial actions to view and get notifications when problems are detected for the selected applications. To track the operations that are performed to resolve operational work items called OpsItems, that are related to your AWS resources, provide an SNS topic ARN.
  8. Choose Next to continue to set up monitoring.
  9. Choose the bullet icon for the specific HANA database listed
  10. On the Review detected components page, the monitored components and their workloads are automatically detected by CloudWatch Application Insights as listed. Choose Next
  11. On the Specify component details page, enter the HANA database username and password. Select Next
  12. Review your application monitoring configuration under Review and submit, and choose Submit.
  13. The application details page opens, where you can view the Application summary, the list of Monitored components and workloads, and Unmonitored components and workloads. When you submit your configuration, your account deploys all of the metrics and alarms for your SAP application, which can take up to 2 hours.
  14. Go back to Application Manager console, find your SAP Application, and select on it to go to the Application Details Views’s Monitoring tab. Application Insights monitoring information should now be displayed.

In the Monitoring Tab we are able to see Application insights and alarms, from the SAP application.

Please find the screenshot of the Instances tab

The EC2 instances will have the new aws Application tag that was added automatically. From this you can perform actions including stopping the EC2 instance or view the EC2 instance details without having to go to the EC2 Console.

In the Compliance Tab you can check noncompliance items, pending patch and Runbooks to fix. In the Runbooks tab you can see the execution logs from the runbook that you selected, and the status. Some of these tabs including Compliance, Opsitems, Runbooks do not have the SAP application awareness in the current version, we plan to include these in the future when SSMSAP provides deeper integration with SSM AppManager.

In the Logs Tab, we can access logs of our SAP application from Cloudwatch.

In the Cost Tab, we can explore the cost history and cost trends of applications, receiving matching cost-savings recommendations, and optimizing resource spending. The current integration of Cost Explorer for SSMSAP provides costing based on underlying EC2 instances that HANA (single node, HA) is running on.

Conclusion

In this blog you have learned how you can now use AWS System Manager Application Manager console to register and perform operational activities with SAP workloads in addition to command line interface. You have also learned how to manage and operate the SAP applications from a single pane of view using AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Application Manager Console. SSM Application Manager and myApplications provides these capabilities to ease the management of SAP applications.

To learn why thousands of customers trust AWS to migrate, modernize, and innovate with their SAP workloads, visit the SAP on AWS page.