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Do It Yourself Exploring SAP HANA

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SAP HANA – Close-UpThe advantages and possible applications of SAP HANA have been described and discussed a lot in recent years (see, amongst others, „SAP HANA I – Introduction and Roadmap“). Many companies, however, have only come into contact with SAP HANA in the form of presentations by SAP or SAP partners. If we are to believe what SAP pu-blications tell us, every single SAP user will think about using SAP HANA. Moreover, SAP Consulting has been of-fering a new service to SAP users since November 2013: migration from SAP Business Suite to HANA for a fixed price.

According to SAP publications the Rapid Database Migration Service ensures a smooth transition from SAP Business Suite to the SAP HANA database. The migrati-on takes place without reimplementation, say the press releases. Existing processes are supposed to continue without any interruption.

But far removed from trial installations or elaborate Pro-of of Concepts one can still get a first impression of the „look & feel“ of the platform. We will give you tips on how to access your own HANA instance so that you as an administrator and developer can initially familiarise

yourself with HANA. We will also take a closer look at what these platforms offer and consider for which pur-poses they are of interest. Of course, you will also get information on the costs incurred.

Currently, two cloud offerings stand out – especial-ly when talking about initial steps with SAP HANA: CloudShare and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

SAP HANA

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CloudShare

Two virtual machines are included:

CloudShare provides cloud computing platforms for testing and developing systems, software and IT appli-cations. Among other things, a pre-configured SAP HANA Developer Edition is provided.

Windows server for development purposes including pre-configured tools (SAP HANA Studio, SAP HANA Client, Office Professional Plus 2010, Visio 2010 Professional Edition) and 4 GB of RAM

SAP HANA server on SUSE Linux Enterprise

The only requirement for using this cloud service is a user account in the SAP Community Network (SCN ac-count). Here you can register for free.

In terms of costs the CloudShare product is different from many other offerings: the cost is fixed at $137 per month.

If you want to get a first impression of CloudShare you can try the service for 30 days without charge. After this period you have the option to license the account. Re-gistration information is available here.

For more details about SAP HANA at CloudShare click here.

SAP HANA

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Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) also provides access to SAP HANA in the cloud. This is SAP HANA One, an in-stance of the SAP HANA platform hosted at AWS. There are several re-quirements for the use of SAP HANA at AWS: an SCN user account, an AWS account and a pair of keys for safeguarding access to the instance.However, AWS and CloudShare offer different pricing models. While CloudShare calls for a fixed monthly charge, AWS will be billed according to usage. The price per hour and in-stance is approximately $ 3.49. Plea-se make sure you stop the instance if you are not using it.

As long as the instance is running, money will be charged.

It is not enough to log out from AWS to stop the instances. Moreover,

low costs are incurred even for stop-ped instances (e. g. for storage). If an instance is no longer needed, it should therefore not only be stop-ped but terminated („Terminate In-stance“). Only then will no further fees be incurred for this instance.In order to estimate the costs in ad-vance we recommend the cost calculator.

For more information about SAP HANA at AWS click here.

SAP HANA – CloudShare versus AWS

CloudShare AWS

Offer SAP HANA Developer Edition SAP HANA Developer Edition

Registration SCN User Account

CloudShare Account

SCN User Account

AWS Account

Prices Fixed: $137 per month Variable: from $3.49 per hour

Tools SAP HANA Studio, SAP HANA Client, Office

Professional Plus 2010, Visio 2010 Professional

Edition

SAP HANA Studio Developer Edition,

SAP HANA Client Developer Edition,

ABAP Server

Instances • 4 vCPU‘s, 22 GB, 150 GB disk Plus one

remote desktop with Windows7,

1 vCPU, 2 GB, 20 GB disk (HANA

studio, client, additional tools)

• 2 vCPU‘s, 17.1GB RAM 154GB disk

• 4 vCPU‘s, 34.2GB RAM 154GB disk

• 8 vCPU‘s, 68.4GB RAM 154GB disk

The following table shows a comparison of the two services:

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Regarding the importation of data into an SAP HANA database there are no differences between AWS and CloudShare.The import can be done by the client via SAP HANA Studio or directly on the SAP HANA server via HDBSQL. Both methods require the target tab-les to be created in the database in advance. The simplest scenario is fil-ling one single table with SAP HANA Studio. The files to be imported may be in CSV or Excel format. The import guide allows you to select between importing to an existing table or re-building it. In addition, the import file can be manually mapped to the

columns of the table. After a preview of the import result, the data is loa-ded by the guide.If several tables are to be filled at once, all import files must reside on the same file system which can be accessed by the SAP HANA server. The loading process can be started on the client by SAP HANA Studio or directly on the database server via HDBSQL. The import is monitored by a control file that contains informati-on about the target table, import file and error log.

Importing data

A control file may be as follows:

Then the process can be started:

import data

into table „TESTSCHEMA“.“EXAMPLE“

from ‚example.csv‘

record delimited by ‚\n‘

fileddelimitedby‚,‘

optionally enclosed by ‚“‘

error log ‚TESTSCHEMA_EXAMPLE.err‘

IMPORT FROM ‚/myshare/example.ctl‘;

UPDATE TESTSCHEMA.EXAMPLE MERGE DELTA INDEX;

Now the data is loaded and written into the database.The command line tool HDBSQL is especially well suited to loading exchange files from third-party sys-

tems into the HANA database auto-matically. However, here you are li-mited to CSV format – the direct import of XML data for example is not possible in this way.

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Developers’ Interest

From an administrator‘s perspective the services offered by AWS and CloudShare hardly differ. However, there are several aspects that are of interest to SAP developers: What new opportunities exist for applica-tion programming in ABAP? How will these access specific elements in the HANA database? How is the program logic shifted from the ABAP into the database? Can the (ABAP) application servers even be repla-ced completely? SAP developers therefore not only have to deal with the new elements of the ABAP code. They also have to explore the new possibilities of HANA databases with SAP HANA Studio as an administration and de-velopment interface. To do so, you

firstly need a HANA database and secondly an ABAP application ser-ver. For testing purposes, there are several options: • Use of an existing SAP ABAP Ap-

plication Server; • Creating a new instance in AWS

or CloudShare via an „SAP Net-Weaver AS ABAP 7.03“ trial license;

• In addition, AWS offers the pos-sibility to install an „SAP Net-Weaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP HANA“ instead of the image „HANA One“; for this there is a „90 days trial“ license by the SAP Cloud Appli-ance Library, click here.

For whom is SAP HANA in the cloud interesting?

If you do not choose the extra effort associated with alternatives 2 and 3 above, you can still explore many of the new features with a HANA Stu-dio connected to a HANA database. In particular, ABAP developers can become acquainted with HANA Stu-dio, because this is where HANA shifts development tasks from the ABAP Workbench. View modelling and creation of database procedu-res are examples of complex tasks that are performed in HANA Studio; the relevant objects are then taken from the ABAP code later. Another

interesting feature of HANA is the embedded XS engine which can be evaluated even without an SAP Application Server.

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Administrators‘ interest

When it comes to the administration of a single SAP HANA instance Ama-zon Web Services and CloudShare are rather similar. Administrators access either by using a public IP with the SAP HANA Studio or direct-ly by using SSH on the command line.

In addition, Amazon offers access to the SAP HANA One Management Console for some administrative ac-tivities. It is a web interface that al-lows the following:

• Monitoring of resource utilizati-on (CPU, RAM, Disk Storage, HANA Services)

• Stop and start HANA instance• Backup and recovery• Upgrade to a higher SAP HANA

release – if available

The SAP HANA One Management Console only enhances simplificati-on, since all these activities are pos-sible via SAP HANA studio or on the command line.CloudShare provides not only an SAP HANA VM but in addition a ma-chine with SAP HANA Studio instal-led on it and, furthermore, Micro-soft Office 2010 is provided.In SAP HANA Studio there is a pre-configured connection to the HANA instance, so you can use it im-mediately.This is helpful in the Cloud Share en-vironment as the VMs get a new pu-blic IP if being restarted after auto-matic suspend. So when using the management tools outside the CloudShare environment, the connections to the HANA instance must be adjusted regularly.

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In our opinion, SAP HANA in the cloud is particularly interesting for testing and development purposes. For example we tested and evaluated SAP HANA via AWS as a supplement to an online course offered by the Has-so Plattner Institute. However, we realized that the hourly costs billed for AWS quickly exceeded the fixed costs of CloudShare. But if you only need SAP HANA for a few hours a month, AWS would be the appropriate choice.

Imprint

Date: January 2014

Author: Roland Bartussek Gregor Bister Christian Krüger Miriam Roller

Contact:

marketing@avato-consulting.com

www.avato-consulting.com © 2014 avato consulting

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