Connecting SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition to SAP Cloud ALM for operations

Adam needs further details about how to connect the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition tenant to the SAP Cloud ALM tenant. Carl explains the data flow between both services.

The SAP Cloud Application Lifecycle Management, in short SAP Cloud ALM (internal abbreviation: CALM) is designed to monitor your cloud-centric landscapes, including both, cloud solutions as well as selected on-premises solutions.

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition uses a push mechanism to transfer monitoring metrics on a regular basis to the SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

The collection of different monitoring data is done in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition tenant. In turn, this data is stored in the SAP Cloud ALM using SAP HANA database technology, then prepared and aggregated, and finally processed. As a result, the visualization in the SAP Cloud ALM takes place in the form of metrics and various other graphical output formats using different monitoring applications.

When doing the configuration, you must decide which monitoring metrics are to be sent to the SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

After you have requested an SAP Cloud ALM tenant, there are additional mandatory configuration steps that are required to set up SAP Cloud ALM for productive use.

In the Identity Authentication Service (IAS), users have to be on-boarded and specific roles have to be assigned to the respective users. As a follow-up task the Landscape Management has to be configured with a setup procedure.

In order to connect an SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition tenant to an SAP Cloud ALM tenant, complete the following steps:

1. SAP Cloud ALM: Service Key

To create a communication channel in order to push the system real time data from the public edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud tenant to an SAP Cloud ALM tenant, a communication user is formed with a pair of Client ID and Client Secret.

The Client ID and the Client Secret is contained in a system generated Service Key.

* The service key usually gets created automatically. Please check if the Service Key is available, if not create it manually.

Note

More details are present in this lesson.

2. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: Communication Systems

Communication systems are created in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to enable the communication among different systems. For example, the connection to an SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

Note

More details are present in this lesson.

3. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: Communication Arrangements

Communication Arrangements help customers to configure the electronic data exchange between the system, like SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and a communication partner. For example, an SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

Note

More details are present in this lesson.

4. SAP Cloud ALM: Service Entry in Landscape Management

** Depending on your subscribed service, there are different ways of importing or creating service information in the Landscape Management application in SAP Cloud ALM.

Usually, Cloud Services are imported automatically on a daily basis. If the service entry you are going to use is not available, the following options can be used, depending on the specific service:

• Create service entry using function automatic creation by service registration

• Create service entry manually

Note

More details are present in this lesson.

Adam knows now the basics for the configuration of the communication between the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and the provisioned SAP Cloud ALM tenant, but wants to know where the mentioned applications can be found, how the user interfaces look, and which specific data has to be entered to make the communication work properly.

The SAP Cloud ALM is running on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). Initially, the SAP Cloud ALM Service Key get's generated there.

It is the responsibility of the SAP BTP administrator to provide the Service Key, which is stored in the Subaccount of the SAP Cloud ALM tenant.

Either the Service Key has been generated automatically (since 2023-06-14) or the BTP Administrator has to generate the Service Key manually.

You can store one SAP Cloud ALM Service Key in the Landscape Management application to connect all managed services and systems to SAP Cloud ALM for monitoring setup. This Service Key is used regularly to ensure proper connectivity.

The following main elements build a Service Key:

api

The first part (without /api) is the URL of the SAP Cloud ALM tenant. (1)

clientid

This is the name of the communication user. (2)

clientsecret

This represents the password of the communication user. (2)

url

This is the token service url used for the OAuth authentication. (3)

verificationkey

This is the public key of an x509 client certificate generated by SAP. (4)

Carl explained in the last session to Adam the importance and use of the Service Key and mentioned also the Landscape Management application in the SAP Cloud ALM tenant, where the Service Key has to be managed if needed.

Adam now wonders, whether he needs more background information regarding this Landscape Management application, in order to fulfill all requirements for a successful communication between the public edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud tenant and the SAP Cloud ALM tenant. With this further knowledge he expects to get a better understanding of the interrelations, in case something goes wrong in the communication setup.

Carl explains that this app helps to manage the information about services, business services, and systems that you use for your SAP solution landscape. This information is the basis for all SAP Cloud ALM apps.

Carl lists the features of the Landscape Management in the SAP Cloud ALM. Nevertheless, he made it clear that the main focus for the customer use case at GloManCorp is the automatic import of Customer Cloud Services in combination with the Connectivity Maintenance feature. However, as services can be different and moreover the connectivity should be treated as a mission-critical issue, the feature Access to SAP Cloud ALM Service Key is mandatory for push monitoring use cases.

The main features of the Landscape Management in SAP Cloud ALM are:

• Automatic Import of Customer Cloud Services: Cloud services subscribed to by the customer are automatically imported and updated from SAP's cloud landscape directory. The initial import contains all cloud services which belong to the same customer number as SAP Cloud ALM. Customers can maintain a Corporate Group (CCC) S-User to also import cloud services that belong to subsidiaries of the same Corporate Group.
• Connectivity Maintenance: Landscape Management is the main application to set up the necessary connectivity for any use case that uses a pull mechanism to collect monitoring data, trigger activity in managing components, or send data to other receivers, like SAP Focused Run or incident management integration.
• Access to SAP Cloud ALM Service Key: Customers can store and access their SAP Cloud ALM Service Key in Landscape Management. The Service Key is needed to connect to the SAP Cloud ALM APIs. For example, for push monitoring use cases. Via Landscape Management this Service Key can be retrieved without accessing the SAP BTP Cockpit.
• Status overview for SAP Cloud ALM use cases: Landscape Management shows, which use cases are supported for each known service and system. In the scope selector, you can select service types based on their supported use cases. Furthermore, for each service or system, Landscape Management shows, if the use case is already configured, if the data collection is active or inactive, and if the data collection is in an error state.
• Event integration with Business Service Management: Business Service Management status events are displayed attached to every service and system type on the overview screen in Landscape Management. This way customers always know for which of their services maintenance is planned or downtime has been posted.

More information about the Landscape Management app can be found in the SAP Support Cloud ALM Expert Portal.

At GloManCorp the use case for monitoring is defined in the following way: The data collection takes place in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition tenant and will be send via an automatic push mechanism at regular intervals to the SAP Cloud ALM tenant. It is then brought to display for further analysis, for example, in form of metrics.

In this way the communication partners are clearly defined as sender, which is the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, and receiver, which is represented by the SAP Cloud ALM.

Carl explains to Adam that a communication scenario is a Design Time description of how two communication partners communicate with each other. It consists of inbound and/or outbound services, as well as supported authentication methods.

Furthermore the communication scenario provides technical information, such as the used inbound and outbound services and their service type, for example, OData or SOAP, and the number of allowed Communication Arrangement instances. If the scenario exposes inbound services, it specifies the authorizations that are required to execute the services.

Communication System

A communication system is a specification of a system that represents a communication partner and the technical information required for the communication, such as the host name, port, users for inbound and/or outbound communication, certificates and so on.

An administrator user on the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud has to create the communication system in the Communication Systems app in the SAP Fiori launchpad. The communication partner can vary for each system.

Communication User

A communication user is a specific type of technical user who is assigned to a communication system. The user can be assigned a password or X.509 certificate.

This user is added as a user for inbound and/or outbound communication to communication systems.

Communication Arrangement

A communication arrangement is a Runtime description of a specific communication scenario. It describes which communication partners communicate with each other in the scenario, and how they communicate.

To describe this Runtime behavior, you have to create a communication arrangement for a scenario, assign the communication system and communication users, and select the authentication method that shall be used.

Note

When configuring communication arrangements and connections to external systems, always choose the most secure communication method. Always choose the most secure encryption algorithm and use the maximum available length for the key.

You can maintain the inbound services and/or outbound services depending on the scenario.

An administrator user in the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud tenant creates the communication arrangement in the Communication Arrangements app in the SAP Fiori Launchpad.

Communication Scenario

Each communication arrangement must be based on a communication scenario.

A communication scenario bundles predefined settings for inbound and/or outbound communication and is a basis for communication between systems. In addition it combines Design Time artifacts.

More details for this topic can be retrieved from the following Learning Journey: Maintain a Communication Arrangement for Inbound Communication

To send data from the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition to SAP Cloud ALM you need to create a communication system within the SAP S/4 HANA Cloud tenant. At GloManCorp, Adam has to take care about this task. Carl demonstrates how to create such a communication system, explains the different steps and the needed input values.

With the Communication Systems app you can create communication systems. Communication systems are created to enable the communication among different systems.

With this app you can create new communication systems that you can use later to establish communication arrangements. To enable communication between different systems you have to register these systems in the Communication Systems app. The communication system represents the communication partner within a communication:

• For inbound communication, this is the system that calls services provided by your system.

• For outbound communication, this is the system that provides services called by your system.

How to set up the communication system for the SAP Cloud ALM is explained in the video called Set Up Application Monitoring for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition on the SAP Cloud ALM Expert Portal.

More information about communication systems in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can be found in the SAP Help Portal.

Carl explains that the communication arrangement refers to the Communication Scenario and defines the purpose using a specific communication system created beforehand. In this way it represents the run-time of a Communication Scenario, whilst the scenario itself is the design-time (coding).

In an SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition tenant, many communication types and purposes are predefined.  For example, SAP_COM_0527 is for Application Monitoring Push Integration, SAP_COM_0395 is for Asset Management Master Data Integration, and others. In our case, we use the communication arrangement SAP_COM_0527.

Depending on what you want to monitor, you select the data set to be collected and sent to the SAP Cloud ALM in the section.

After the Communication Arrangement is saved, its collected data will be pushed over to the SAP Cloud ALM tenant according to your job execution schedule.  From the SAP Cloud ALM tenant, you can see some capabilities become Active.

How to set up the Communication System for the SAP Cloud ALM is explained in the video called Set Up Application Monitoring for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition on the SAP Cloud ALM Expert Portal

General information of how creating a Communication Arrangement is documented at SAP Help Portal.

Now we establish the connection between SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP Cloud ALM. As a next action we want to check, if the configuration was successful.

Depending on your subscribed service, there are different ways of importing or creating service information in the Landscape Management app:

Automatic Import by SAP (Preferred)

For many subscribed services, related service information is imported automatically on a daily basis by the System Landscape Information service (SLIS).

Note

The System Landscape Information service is an SAP Service that provides a highly integrated handling of system landscape data and offers a single upload channel for both, system data and customer profile.

To display the current status, open your SAP Cloud ALM and launch the Landscape Management app. Then open the Configuration Icon on top, expand the section Import of Subscribed SAP Services. In the area Status of imports choose the icon.

If you don't want to wait for the daily import, you can import your services on demand in the Status of Imports popover by choosing Import My Subscribed SAP Services.

Note

If your service hasn't been imported automatically, you may need to create the service information manually. This concept will be described in the section Manual Creation (only If required).

Hint

Additional information for global ultimate customers: As a global ultimate customer (that is, a customer managing SAP cloud products that are subscribed under multiple customer accounts, for example, after an acquisition) you need to enter an S-user who has the authorizations to access the system data for all subsidiary customer accounts to ensure that the Landscape Management app has access to the data. The S-user must not be a technical S-user but a standard dialog S-user with Corporate Group (CCC) Group authorizations.

For more information on how to create such an S-user, refer to SAP Note 3070306.

To add the S-user, open the Landscape Management app and choose the Configuration Icon. Under Import of Subscribed SAP Services, choose + (Add S-User) and enter the credentials of the S-user.

Automatic Creation by Service Registration

If the Automatic Import by SAP for your service is not available, please check if this service provides a push-enabled services that register themselves in SAP Cloud ALM. For example, SAP SuccessFactors.

These services are created automatically in the Landscape Management app as part of the Communication Arrangement or registration. If the services already exist in the app, the technical details are updated automatically.

Note

If your service hasn't been imported automatically, you may need to create the service information manually by following the steps described in the section Manual Creation (only if required).

Manual Creation (Only if Required)

The automatic import by SAP is the preferred way to import service information for services. However, you can also manually add any additional services if necessary. For example, services of the type Unspecific Cloud Service (HTTP) or SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway.

After manually creating a service, the newly created entry gets the status New.

After you started data push from the cloud services, and your monitoring functions are configured, the status will change to Active.

Caution

If you add, edit, or (if applicable) delete your services, business services, systems, or endpoints in this app, an update will be sent automatically to other SAP Cloud ALM apps that are affected by this change.

As you already now, when opening the active service by choosing the corresponding entry. In addition you can also find in section Supported Use Cases the Configuration Status and Runtime Status for each sinlge Use Case.

More information on the administration of Services in the SAP Help Portal.

As a final step we want to call the Heath Monitoring function within the SAP Cloud ALM and check if monitoring data is available.

To do so, log on to the SAP Cloud ALM, choose the group SAP Cloud ALM for Operations and select the tile Health Monitoring. In our case monitoring metrics are available for the configured Product.

As usual more information can be found on the SAP Cloud ALM Expert Portal or try the SAP Learning Page with filter to SAP Cloud ALM.