Exploring Basic Features of Cloud Portal

The Cloud Portal is a secure, browser-based, self-service interface. It enables you to set up, configure, and deploy SAP Commerce Cloud solutions in the public cloud.

With the Cloud Portal, you can carry out common operational tasks, such as:

• Inviting users with various roles to your SAP Commerce Cloud subscription
• Connecting your code repository to the Cloud Automation Engine and creating a new build
• Configuring cloud environments
• Deploying your builds to these cloud environments
• Monitoring these environments using SAP CX Observability (also known as Dynatrace) and Cloud Logging System (CLS)

Let’s look at the structure of the Cloud Portal.

As presented in the structural overview, the Cloud Portal:

1. Operates as an Angular application within the SAP Cloud Platform.
2. Communicates with the underlying Cloud Automation Engine, located in the Azure Cloud, via API calls.
   • Remember that this Cloud Automation Engine executes all automation tasks within the SAP Commerce Cloud.
   • This integration offers key features such as Environment Management, Build Management, Deployment Management, Logging, Backup and Snapshots, Disaster Recovery, Scaling, and Performance Monitoring.
3. Functions as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. It undergoes monthly updates, which include bug fixes and feature additions.

Let’s dive deeper into the Build and Deploy process to better understand how the Cloud Portal improves the management of SAP Commerce Cloud servers.

The Cloud Portal enables you to:

1. Connect to your code repository.
2. Build your SAP Commerce Cloud application.
3. Deploy code builds to your cloud environments.
4. Configure your SAP Commerce Cloud application.

In the upcoming lessons, we'll thoroughly explore all the mentioned features.

But before that, let's review the essential requirements to use the Cloud Portal:

• You need an account with an SAP Cloud Identity user ID.
• You'll need an internet connection and a supported web browser. You can view the list of supported web browsers here: Supported Web Browsers
• You need access to a Git-based code repository, which can be either public or private (accessible through VPN or NAT). We'll cover the specifics in a later lesson.

Once you’ve gained access to the Cloud Portal, you’re generally assigned one of the two roles (Customer Developer or Customer System Administrator):

• Customer System Administrator (CSA): This role allows you to add new users, assign new roles, create builds, deploy these builds to cloud environments, and configure the SAP Commerce Cloud application.
• Customer Developer (CD): This role involves customizing the SAP Commerce Cloud project code and managing code repositories.

Please note, besides these roles, we also have the internal SAP Delivery Support role, also known as the SAP Cloud Support team. The responsibilities of this role include accessing your SAP Commerce Cloud subscription to perform tasks such as troubleshooting, migration, and monitoring.

As a Customer System Administrator, after logging into the Cloud Portal, you usually land on the Environment List page.

An environment is essentially a container of cloud computing resources within the Cloud Portal. It's specifically engineered to facilitate the smooth and continuous operation of the SAP Commerce Cloud application.

As shown, there are three distinct types of cloud environments:

1. Development: This environment is employed for creating, configuring, and testing application builds.
2. Staging: It's designed to accurately replicate production activities.
3. Production: It's primarily used for efficient operation of live commerce applications.

These environments can be in one of the three statuses:

• Provisioning: This means they’re being created but not ready yet.
• Available: This means they’re provisioned and ready.
• Error: This means they’re not successfully provisioned or in an error state.

When you select any of the listed environments, you’ll be redirected to the overview page of the specific environment.

In this page, you can configure the following:

1. Endpoints: Define web routing and access.
2. Cloud Storage: Enable files to be uploaded to cloud hot folders or archiving of log files.
3. Data Backups: Create backups of your data and files.
4. Deployment Configuration: Allows attaching trusted certificates, host aliases, and other security files.
5. Service Configuration: Provides properties configuration for aspects or services, including the generated admin password.
6. Monitoring: Allows you to monitor the commerce application logging, metrics, and traces using CX Observability (Dynatrace) and Cloud Logging System (CLS).

Once an SAP Commerce Cloud server is successfully deployed in an environment, the system automatically generates a set of endpoints. These endpoints help to streamline your web traffic and collect uptime data. By default, an environment includes several endpoints, which include but are not limited to:

• API: Represents the OCC API.
• Backoffice: Refers to the Backoffice application.
• JS Storefront: Signifies the SAP Commerce Cloud Composable Storefront.
• Background Processing: Manages the executing of background processes (for example, CronJobs, Tasks, Processes, and so on).
• Solr: Serves the Solr server.
• Storefront: Contains the accelerator storefront (Note: this is now deprecated).

Please note that for security purposes, some endpoints are blocked by default.

This wraps up a brief outline of the Cloud Portal’s basic features. We’re going to explore these aspects in more detail in the upcoming lessons.