Deployment Automation for Hybrid Cloud Use

From a customer meeting with an infrastructure manager of a medium-sized company: First, we talked about the successful S/4 conversion and the course of the project as well as the S/4 on-premises infrastructure, which functioned well in the process. In the second half of the meeting, the focus turned to hybrid cloud computing.

Specifically, this involved the procurement of public cloud infrastructure-as-a-service via Microsoft Azure. The operations team had already done a lot of preliminary work, and a number of cloud systems were also used for testing.

Now it was a question of using larger SAP systems, including high-availability systems. It was also important to be able to set up highly automated systems with optimized provisioning and deployment and with a wide variety of systems.

The aim is now to bring a Suse Blueprint to bear - an SAP environment transformation with Suse in four steps: Automation, Manage, Evolution, Operation. The following is about step 1: Automation for provisioning and deployment.

Terraform and Salt

The infrastructure manager was extremely impressed by the fact that the Linux operating system Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications version 15.2 packages the open source standard tool Salt for deploying SAP infrastructures in public clouds. Likewise Terraform, which can be used for automated provisioning. SLES for SAP Applications is already being used in conjunction with S/4.

What are Terraform and Salt all about? In simple terms, the Terraform open source software ensures that defined infrastructures are provisioned and implemented by IaaS providers as specified. Furthermore, setups can be stored for reuse at virtually any time.

Later adjustments are also possible. Various efforts that otherwise arise during provisioning and deployment are drastically minimized with Terraform. Terraform partners with various public cloud providers such as AWS, Google, Microsoft and others.

Complete lifecycle

On the other hand, the award-winning open source automation tool Salt focuses on deployment and configuration. However, Salt can also be used to install, configure and deploy entire software packages.

Terraform and Salt are elements of the "SAP Environment Lifecycle with Suse" initiative, which covers four topics: Automation with Provisioning and Deployment, Manage with Operate, Evolution with Optimize and Transform, Operation with Monitoring and Report.

Terraform is used for provisioning, Salt for deployment. On the solution side, SLES for SAP Applications and Suse Manager come into play. In addition, Microsoft Cloud Wizzards, Suse High Availability and SAPtune underpin the automation step with provisioning and deployment.

The initiative is based on many years of cooperation with SAP and the requirements for the use of SAP infrastructures, both on-premises and increasingly in cloud consumption.

Suse thus provides SAP users with solutions and technologies to implement their SAP hybrid cloud concepts in a simplified, reliable, efficient and cost-saving manner - including a high degree of automation - effectively and with benefits. Following the previously designed Blueprint, nothing more stands in the way of uninterrupted operation of the system landscape with SAP and Suse.