Provisioning a SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA Database

The easiest way to get to the SAP BTP Cockpit is by using a direct link to the SAP BTP cockpit. Choose one of the following links:

• Direct link to SAP BTP Cockpit for the enterprise account: https://emea.cockpit.btp.cloud.sap
• Direct link to SAP BTP Cockpit for the trial account: https://account.hanatrial.ondemand.com/trial/#/

Use SAP HANA Cloud Central to perform database administration tasks on SAP HANA Cloud databases and SAP HANA Cloud data lakes. Use the following path to locate the SAP HANA Cloud Central:

1. Log on to your SAP BTP account, and navigate to your subaccount.
2. Select Instances and Subscriptions.
3. Select SAP HANA Cloud to open the SAP HANA Cloud Central.

The following administration tasks can be performed in SAP HANA Cloud Central: 

• Get an overview of the status of all SAP HANA Cloud instances that you can access.
• Review notifications and alerts.
• Check the configured memory, compute, and storage consumption of an instance.
• Check the High Availability configuration of an instance.
• Deploy new SAP HANA Cloud instances.
• Change the configuration of an instance.
• Add a data lake to an existing instance.
• Start, stop, and delete instances.
• Recover or Recreate an instance.
• Open the SAP HANA Cockpit for an instance.
• Open the database explorer for an instance.

The SAP HANA Cloud Central is the place to provision and manage your SAP HANA Cloud instances. In a fresh SAP BTP account, the SAP HANA Cloud Central is empty, and it's the database administrators task to provision the SAP HANA Cloud databases. The Create Instance wizard will help you to setup SAP HANA Cloud instances.

To create your first SAP HANA Cloud database instance, follow the guided procedure steps of the Create Instance Wizard. In the SAP HANA Cloud Central, choose the (1) Create Instance button to start the Create Instance wizard, and provision an SAP HANA Cloud instance.

In this first step of the Create Instance Wizard, you must decide which type of instance you want to create. The following options are available:

• SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database provides an in-memory and multi-model database system to store and analyze relational but also document data which allows for real-time data analytics and transactional processing in one combined system. The in-memory database can handle OLAP and OLTP workloads, setup hybrid Extension to on-premise SAP HANA systems and can be associated with a data lake instance.
• SAP HANA Cloud, data lake SAP HANA data lake efficiently and securely stores, manages, and analyzes large amounts of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. The data lake instance manages access to files in the data lake through the files component and can be used for high performance analysis on petabyte volumes of relational data with HANA Cloud, data lake relational engine.
• (Cloned) SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database Creates an SAP HANA database instance from the cloning template of another SAP HANA database instance.

In the above slide, as an example, we want to provision an (2) SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database instance. To start the provisioning process, select (3) Next Step.

In this step, you must important information like instance name, description, the administrator password, and the version to be installed.

• In the Basics (1) area, you must specify the database instance name and description of the SAP HANA database instance you want to create. An instance in SAP HANA Cloud is like a tenant for an on-premise SAP HANA database and isn't restricted to three characters.

• In the Administrator (2) area, you specify the productive password for the database administrator account DBADMIN. The password needs to be at least eight characters long, with one UPPER and two lower case letters and one number.

  There's no SYSTEM user available. You must use the DBADMIN user for the initial setup tasks. The DBAMIN is the super user for your SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA Database instance. This user shouldn't be used on a daily basis. Create new user accounts and roles for all users accessing the database.

  Note

  Because of the default security setting in SAP HANA Cloud, the password for the DBADMIN (SAP HANA Cloud) and HDLADMIN (data lake) users will expire after 180 days.
• In the Version (3) area, you can select the current Quarterly Release Cycle (QRC) release or the previous QRC release. In the screenshot the current version QRC 4/2023 is selected by default, but from the dropdown menu it is possible to select the latest QRC 3/2023 version.

To continue the provisioning process, select (4) Next Step.

In the third step you specify the SAP HANA database memory and storage. The number of vCPUs depends on the amount of RAM you specify. As not all SAP HANA workloads are the same, SAP has introduced the following performance classes:

The required number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) can't be changed manually, but is automatically determent via the Compute-Memory Ratio based on the requested memory. The amount of storage space also depends on the requested memory, but the requested storage space can be bigger.

To continue the provisioning process, select (4) Next Step.

In this step, you can specify which Availability Zone (1) you want to use. The availability zone can be set to automatically, or you can choose your zone manually.

The supported memory size varies by availability zone. If the availability zone in which you want the instance placed isn't selectable from the list, lower the memory size of the instance. Keeping the setting to automatic will make sure that the best zone for your database size and performance is selected.

You can also setup Replica (2) databases of your SAP HANA database instance. A replica database is used to improve the availability of your SAP HANA database instance. A replica database is automatically kept up to date during normal operations and if a takeover is required it will be performed automatically.

You can setup a maximum of two replicas for SAP HANA Cloud. One synchronous replica in the same availability zone, and one asynchronous replica in a different availability zone.

To continue the provisioning process, select (3) Next Step.

In the SAP HANA Database Advanced Settings step, you can setup some additional features. In the (1) Additional Features area you can specify if you need the script server, document store. When you don't need the smart data integration feature, you can deselect the data provisioning server.

Script Server

The script server is used to execute application function libraries written in C++.

Document Store

This server is required for the document store repository. The document store allows native operations on JSON documents and joins with other column or row store tables.

Data Provisioning Server

The Data Provisioning Server is a native SAP HANA process. It is built as an index server variant, runs in the SAP HANA cluster, and is managed and monitored just like other SAP HANA services.

The data provisioning server is part of SAP HANA smart data integration. It provides capabilities such as data provisioning in real time and batch mode, real-time data transformations, data quality functions, adapters for various types of remote sources, and an adapter SDK for developing additional adapters.

In the (2) Additional Features area you can choose which IP addresses are allowed to connect to your SAP HANA Cloud database instance. Your choice depends on how the application uses the SAP HANA database instance.

The choices are:

• Allow only BTP IP addresses. This is the most secure option, but this also means the SAP HANA database instance can only be access from applications inside the SAP BTP environment. No connections to the outside world.
• Allow all IP addresses. This option allows a connection from every IP address in the whole world. This option is only suitable if you have a public service that needs to be accessible from anywhere in the world.
• Allow specific IP addresses and IP ranges (in addition to BTP). This option allows you to specify your companies IP addresses or IP ranges. With this option your employees from the corporate network can access the SAP HANA database instance in the SAP BTP.

The Cloud Connector: You must also decide whether you want your SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA Database to connect to your on-premise remote data sources through the cloud connector.

The Cloud Connector serves as a link between SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) applications and your on-premise systems. It allows you to use your existing on-premise assets without exposing the entire internal landscape to the outside world. It combines an easy setup with a clear configuration of the systems that are exposed to the SAP BTP.

The Cloud Connector runs as on-premise agent in a secured network and acts as a reverse invoke proxy between the on-premise network and SAP BTP. It provides fine-grained control over your on-premise systems and resources that can be accessed by cloud applications. It also allows you control over which cloud applications can use the Cloud Connector.

The Cloud Connector provides the following features for business-critical enterprise scenarios:

• Automatic recovery of broken connections.
• Audit logging of inbound traffic and configuration changes.
• High-availability setup.

In the enterprise SAP BTP account, you can also add an SAP HANA Script server and a SAP HANA Document Store as additional features to the SAP HANA database instance. When adding these features to an SAP HANA database instance, you may require more vCPUs (compute), which will increase your licensing cost.

In the final step of the Create Instance Wizard, you should review your choices, and if everything looks good start the SAP HANA Cloud database instance deployment by selecting the (1) Create Database button.

The SAP HANA Cloud database instance is being created. Refresh the screen every few minutes to see an updated status.

What is set up during the creation process of SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database:

• A SAP HANA database instance is created with data at rest encryption enabled.
• The SAP HANA database instance is connected to SAP HANA cockpit.
• The SAP HANA database instance is connected to SAP HANA database explorer.
• The database user DBADMIN is created for administration purposes.
• The SAP HANA database is connected to backup infrastructure via the Backint interface.
• A backup cycle of 14 backup generations is setup, and the initial backup is created.

As soon as all these tasks are performed the SAP HANA Cloud, SAP HANA database instance is available for you to explore.

It's also possible to create an SAP HANA Cloud database instance using the Cloud Foundry CLI. Before you can create a database instance, you must install the Cloud Foundry CLI, and log on to the SAP BTP as previously explained.

To create an SAP HANA Cloud database using the Cloud Foundry CLI, execute the following steps:

1. Open a Linux Terminal or Windows PowerShell.
2. Log in to the SAP BTP using the command cf login -o <organisation> -s <space> -a <API endpoint>, and enter your credentials.
   • -o : The organization to connect to.
   • -s : The space to connect to.
   • -a : The API endpoint to use.
3. To create a new database service, execute the command:
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   cf create-service <service offering> <service plan> <service name> -c 
   '{"data":
       {
         "memory": <xx>, 
         "systempassword":"<password>"
       }
    }'

   Example:

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   cf create-service hana-cloud hana HC200-Database -c '{ "data": {"memory": 64, "systempassword": "Welcome1"}}'

   The above command will create a database service named HC200-Database with 64GB memory, and the DBADMIN user will get the password Welcome1.

   Note

   In a free tier or trial account, the maximum amount of memory you are allowed to specify is restricted to 30 GB database instance.

Have a look at the Create an SAP HANA Database Instance Using the CLI page to have a complete list of parameters that can be used to create a database instance.