Automated SAP infrastructure deployment

As is well known, the use of Hana and thus also the use of Hana-based SAP solutions such as S/4, BW/4 or C/4 is closely coupled with the use of Linux as an operating system platform.

As the number of SAP installations continues to rise - the most recently known official figures are around 27,000 for Hana and around 9500 for S/4 - it is logical that Linux installations will also increase. And this is true across all company sizes. Hana/Linux is increasingly being used by large and largest SAP user companies.

Data Center Readiness

Linux has long since proven its data center readiness. And of course, developments are continuing. Both for Hana and for Linux, or rather for the Hana-Linux interaction. Hana 2.3 and Suse SLES for SAP Applications 15 are the current development milestones.

In this context, system management or enterprise management for the administration, control and monitoring of important IT components in a data center by means of software designed for this purpose plays an important role.

In the Hana-Suse SLES for SAP Applications deployment, the focus is on the Suse Manager solution package. Currently in version 3.2 (based on Suse SLES for SAP Applications 12 SP3/SP4), later this year in version 4.0 (based on Suse SLES for SAP Applications 15 SP1).

Simplification and cost savings

Basically, Suse Manager helps to drastically minimize the complexity of Hana-Suse-SLES-for-Applications environments. Individual components required for enterprise operation can be monitored and controlled with pinpoint accuracy.

Another big plus is that automation yields cost benefits, primarily because manual and recurring capacity or resources for necessary standard platform work virtually implode.

Currently, the Suse solution as a central console ensures, for example, patch management, configuration management (also for Salt-based config management) and security management with a high level of automation as part of Hana-SLES- for-SAP-Applications-Management.

Even with a multi-stage staging process with QA, test and Prod systems. Already since version 3.1, DevOps environments/software-defined infrastructures are supported, as well as container usage and VMs (in the cloud) with hardened profiles and templates.

Even more templates

In the future, with version 4.0 of Suse Manager, the template concept will be even more important. For example, it is planned to use (customizable) templates to support the automation of SAP infrastructure deployments including SAP workload setup and the automation of high availability cluster deployments.

There are also plans for optimized interaction of Suse solutions beyond Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications in the central Suse Manager console. For example, with the Suse CaaS Platform, Suse Enterprise Storage and Suse OpenStack Cloud.

With the upcoming Suse Manager version, it will also be practically irrelevant whether an SAP infrastructure deployment is realized on-premise (bare metal/virtualized) or cloud-based on Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure or the Google Cloud Platform, for example.

Both operating concepts - and hybrid cloud concepts - are supported in the same way according to the plans. The SAP existing customer has the choice!