Hello and welcome to the SAP HANA Academy.
The topic of this video tutorial series is Getting Started with SAP HANA on the Google
Cloud Platform and in this video we will take a look at the available versions.
Hi, I am Denys van Kempen.
At the time of the recording, there are two versions available for Cloud Launcher on the
Google Cloud Platform:
express edition and express edition (server+applications)
where server+apps is categorised under developer stacks.
If we take a quick look at the download manager for the express edition, you can see that
we also have both versions as virtual machine.
Server-only is a little over 4 GB whereas server+apps needs 13 GB; quite a big difference
in footprint, once installed, in other words.
Server-only contains the HANA database.
Server+apps also includes the built-in extended services application server XS, advanced model
plus a number of tools, like the SAP HANA cockpit, for example, for system management.
So, let’s take a closer look.
Here we have them both: same HANA version, 2.0 SPS 02
and same operating system: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (SP 2, if not mistaken).
The description is the same for both with links to tutorials and documentation, including
our Academy playlist on express.
But if we look at the cost estimate, we can see that there is a bit of a difference.
For 30-day, 24 hours per day usage, the bill comes to either 147 or 213 US dollar
- the number you see maybe a bit different -
which, if my calculations are correct,
amounts to either 20 or 30 cents an hour.
For development, it would probably be more like $10 a week, assuming you run the VM for
6 hours a day, or so, and take the weekend off.
The difference is because for just the HANA database, we take the n1-highmem-2 server
type - so that’s 2 vCPUs + 13 GB memory.
For Server+apps we allocate 4 vCPU and 26 GB memory: n-highmem-4.
Also the solid state disk is twice the size: 36 versus 70 GB.
Let’s launch both on compute engine.
Give the VM a name and select the zone.
I have picked a data center close to me.
Machine type is different, we have seen that.
Same for the size of the boot disk.
Note that the firewall rules have been bundled.
For server only, we see the different ports for the SAP host agent, SAP Start Service,
the name- and indexserver processes, all with 9-0 included, as the instance number.
We have discussed this in some detail in a previous video, so I will assume here that
you are familiar with how this works.
For the server+applications VM, HANA port and XS Advanced ports are bundled.
So we will have to create the VM first to know which holes are drilled in the wall.
Note that IP forwarding is set to On for the HANA XSA VM whereas it is Off for server only.
You can set it to the value you want, of course, but this is non editable parameter.
So if it is on and you want it off, you will have to create a new VM.
You cannot change it after creating the VM.
Let’s start the deployments.
Same idea: there is a jinja template and a python script to create the vm and firewall rules.
It is pretty quick for both.
Suggested next steps are the same as well.
You can assign a static external IP address to the VM,
- this is optional, we have covered this in a video, but it is pretty convenient -
and you need to perform some post deployment configuration steps.
For the server-only version it is called Change Master Database password but this does in
fact involve running an initialization script that also resets encryption master and root keys.
For the server+apps version, the description has been changed a bit to reflect this.
So, let’s connect: this is server-only.
sudo su - hxeadm Again, there is a video that goes through
the process step-by-step so if I am moving a bit too fast here, please review that one.
On the console we are prompted to provide a new master password
and confirm that we want to proceed with the configuration.
Note that there is a log file, in case anything should go wrong.
The database is started, passwords are changed, and the SSFS master and root keys are updated
for both the system and tenant database.
I have fast forwarded the output a bit but it takes less than a minute all-in-all and
we are good to go.
This is a database-only version, so management tools are not included.
You may want to install HANA studio on a client PC, for example, to create users, tables,
and so on, otherwise it is all command line or using scripts and that might get a bit tedious.
OK.
Let’s do the same for the XSA version.
Same procedure Set the password;
You are prompted if a proxy is required.
Also, if you want XSA to be configured in the background.
Let’s not do that, so we can see what actually happens.
As with the server-only version, HANA is started and the SSFS master and root keys are reset.
Here we can see that the password for XSA_ADMIN, XSA_DEV and the TEL_ADMIN user,
all for the system database, are set
and then we have to wait until a number of XSA apps are ready
(most are background services) and at times, it might look like nothing happens.
So let’s open a second session and run the top command
and here you can see system activity.
Eventually, we are done and the system returns to a semi idle state, with 1 or 2% cpu.
If we scroll up a bit, here is the log file, so you always review what actions were executed
exactly, in case you are interested.
Next step?
We can connect to one of the XSA apps, cockpit for example.
For this, we need to know the port.
There are two ways how you can figure this out.
One is on the command line.
As we are already connected, let’s start with that.
‘xs l’, l is shorthand for login.
The API URL and username XSA_ADMIN are already provided, password is the one you set when
we first connected.
The hostname hxehost does not correspond to the hostname of the VM, for me, dvk-sap-hanaexpress-xsa-vm1-vm
but this does not matter; it is just an alias.
With ‘xs apps’ we can list the available apps, url and state.
We see for example, the web IDE and cockpit web app.
The other approach is to copy the API URL and open it in a web page.
The google cloud shell recognises URLs and activates them as hyperlink, so we can just click.
Of course, hxehost cannot be found so you will need to get the external IP from the
Compute Engine page of the cloud console.
So the full URL is HTTPS, external IP, port 39030 (9-0 being the instance number) /v2/info
Depending on the browser, you will get some type of warning as for HTTPS a self-signed certificate is used.
Continue And here we have our list.
This is JSON output, for humans a bit harder to read.
Chrome has a JSON formatter as extension, makes it a bit easier.
On this page, you can just click the URL as well.
Here we have the Web IDE, for example.
But, instead of replacing hxehost each time with external IP,
I will just update the hosts file on my computer to add it as an alias.
Of course, you will want to do this after you have assigned a fixed IP to the VM -
one of the optional steps, we just saw (and yes, there is a tutorial video on that as well)
- otherwise, you will be updating the host file each time you restart the VM.
Might not be such a good idea.
So, now I can open the app by clicking the URL here.
Connection is not private, already mentioned that, self-signed certificate.
Logon as xsa_dev, and here we have the SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA
I don’t see cockpit listed here, so let’s switch back to terminal.
Cockpit-admin-web-app
Here we have the cockpit manager
and here we can connect to cockpit for the system database, for example.
We can look at the tenant databases in Manage Databases.
And also at the HANA system as a whole in Manage Services.
OK.
To wrap up.
On the Google Cloud Platform, we now have two solutions for Cloud Launcher.
Server+apps contains the XS advanced model built-in application server including HANA
cockpit for system administration and the Web IDE for development.
The server only version does not include XSA.
It does include the XS classic model application server but this one has already been deprecated
in the HANA 2.0 SPS 02 release and for system management, you will probably want to install
HANA studio on a client PC and studio also - well, it is not exactly deprecated, but
the last update was with the HANA 1.0 SPS 12 release, over a year ago, so, this will
be phased out as well, sooner or later.
However, if all you need is an in-memory database, then the server-only VM is perfectly fine, of course.
You can find more video tutorials on our YouTube channel.
If you would like to be informed about new video tutorials, please subscribe to our channel.
You can connect with us on LinkedIn or follow us on Twitter - as well for updates -
and we also have a page on Facebook and Google+.
If you are watching this video on YouTube, do not hesitate to leave your comments to
the video page and, if you like, give us your vote on his video.
Thank you for watching.