Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Setting up a SAP Cloud Appliance for Testing with the JBoss Fuse Camel JCo Component


This article will help you setup a SAP Cloud Appliance with a SAP Netweaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP MaxDB [trial edition] instance running on AWS so you can test the JBoss Fuse Camel JCo Component.  An example usage with Fuse is in this article.

We will go through the steps to get the instance ready with the license and with some example data to begin testing.    The main steps are as follows:

- Amazon account creation and prerequisites for configuring it
- Using the Access and Secret keys
- The 5 steps to get the SAP Cloud Appliance ready in cal.sap.com
- Create and install a Minisap license
- Create example data to work with (380 entries on CUSTOMER_LIST)

Cloud Appliance
First we must have a Amazon Account at aws.amazon.com.  Amazon will be our cloud provider and we must have the security credentials (Access Key and Secret Key) to add to the SAP CAL account. These types of accounts can be created using consolidated billing in AWS. Note that there are several prerequisites for configuring your AWS account:
  • Enable the Amazon EC2 service for your AWS account
  • Your IAM user has the following roles: AmazonEC2FullAccess, AmazonVPCFullAccess, ReadOnlyAccess, and AWSAccountUsageReportAccess
For more information about specific questions for the AWS cloud provider for SAP, see the FAQ.

After adding the EC2 service on AWS, you must follow the following steps:
  • The Access Key and the Secret Key of your AWS account
  1. Navigate to http://aws.amazon.com. 
  2. Logon to your account. 
  3. Choose Account  then Security Credentials. 
  4. In the Access Credentials section: 
    1. To see your access key, choose the Access Keys tab. 
    2. To see your secret key, choose the Secret Access Key tab and then choose the Show link. 
  • The virtual private cloud parameter (VPC) VPC is needed to be configured in the AWS location US-East (Virginia). 


Now that we have the Access Keys we can get the SAP Cloud Appliance ready.  We have to go to cal.sap.com to go through 5 steps:


1. Register


2. Add the security credentials


3. Add the solution and in our case we chose the  SAP Netweaver Application Server ABAP 7.4 on SAP MaxDB [trial edition].


4. Create the instance which can take awhile to activate/start


5. Now we can connect to the SAP system and add the sample data.  You can click on connect under operations which will bring up the access point.


You can click on SAP GUI (NPL,001,00) but before doing so you need the SAP GUI in order to connect to the instance.  You can get the SAP GUI from the service marketplace or from the appliance with ssh/scp.


From the getting started guide which can be accessed through the connection access point screen above:

You need a SAP GUI 7.20 Patch level 9 or above.
For the Windows OS (32 bit and 64 bit) you can find the SAPGUI software package on the server at: /sapmnt/A4H/custom/SAP_GUI_for_Windows_7.30_Patchlevel_4_Hotfix_1_for _SAP_SCN_(Trial)_20130611_0830.exe
You have to copy the according file to your computer and start the self-extraction.
A SAPGUI for the Java Environment can be found on the server at: /sapmnt/A4H/custom/SAP_GUI_FOR_JAVA_730.zip
You have to copy the according file to your computer, unpack the archive and follow the installation instructions.


Create License

The ABAP system comes with a temporary license that allows you to logon to the system. As first step before using the system you need to install a 90 days Minisap license as follows:
1. Logon to ABAP via SAP GUI with user SAP* in tenant 000. “SAP*/ch4ngeme”




2. Start transaction SLICENSE 
3. Get a “Minisap” license at http://www.sap.com/minisap . As system ID choose NPL - SAP NetWeaver 7.x (MaxDB). As hardware key use the hardware key shown in transaction SLICENSE.


4. Click “Install new License” under edit and select the downloaded license from step 3.


5. After license installation call transaction SECSTORE and run a check for all entries using F8. 

This is needed to enable RFC after the change of the installation number from INITIAL to DEMOSYSTEM. Installing the Minisap license will change the installation number from INITIAL to DEMOSYSTEM. The developer access key for user DEVELOPER and installation number DEMOSYSTEM is already in the system and you can start developing in the customer name range (Z*, Y*).

Create the Data
Now we can create the data on SAP.
Step 1: Navigate to transaction “SE38”
Step 2: Run the program SAPBC_DATA_GENERATOR clicking the clock with green checkmark
Step 3: Hit the clock/checkmark again
Step 4: Start Transaction SE37 and launch function module “BAPI_FLCUST_GETLIST” by clicking on the wrench
Step 5: Provide a search pattern in the CUSTOMER_NAME field (such as S*) and hit the execute button
Step 6: You should have 380 entries in the resulting CUSTOMER_LIST
Step 7: Click on the list icon to browse the list