SAP:SAP B1 implementation guide

• SAP Business One implementation guide

• Implementing the SAP Business One system

• Prerequisites

  • Account setup

  • Basic network and security settings

  • Connect to an ECS instance from the internet

• Create and configure an ECS instance for SAP Business One and SAP HANA

  • Open the ECS purchase page

  • Choose a pricing model

  • Choose the data center region and zone

  • Choose the instance type

  • Choose the network type

  • Choose the base operating system

  • Provision and configure storage

  • Security settings

  • Purchase plan

  • Launch instances

• Instance post-configuration

  • Add a DNAT entry

  • Add an SNAT entry

  • Connect to SAP ECS instances

  • Harden OS security

  • Change the hostname

  • Prepare SAP Business One installation media

  • Check the operating system

• Install the SAP Business One solution

• Support

Version control

Version	Revision date	Types of changes	Effective date
1.0			2018/05/07
1.1	2018/07/31	1. Updated the certified Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms.	2018/07/31

SAP Business One implementation guide

This guide covers SAP Business One deployment on Alibaba Cloud.

The SAP Business One Planning Guide on Alibaba Cloud covers implementation planning.

Implementing the SAP Business One system

SAP Business One on Alibaba Cloud runs on an ECS instance with the following software:

• SAP HANA 1.0 SP12

• SAP Business One 9.0

• SLES 11 SP4

Deployment architecture

SAP Business One deployment on Alibaba Cloud follows standard SAP processes but reduces the required effort and time.

• SAP Business One Server: Follow standard SAP installation procedures for any physical or virtual environment.

• SAP Business One Client: Host the client software on a separate ECS instance with a virtual desktop solution such as Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.

• Business One Database: SAP Business One and SAP HANA are installed on the same ECS instance. The SAP in-memory computing platform enables real-time data analysis.

Prerequisites

Complete the following tasks before you create an ECS instance for your SAP deployment.

Account setup

• Sign up for an Alibaba Cloud account

• Add a payment method.

• Perform real-name registration. This is required only if you create an ECS instance in a region within mainland China.

Basic network and security settings

• Plan and design a VPC to create an ECS instance in a private network.

• Create a security group with inbound and outbound rules that meet your business needs.

• Create an SSH key pair for Linux instance authentication.

Connect to an ECS instance from the internet

A VPC is a logically isolated private network on Alibaba Cloud. Use a NAT Gateway or elastic IP addresses (EIPs) to connect ECS instances to the internet.

A NAT Gateway is an enterprise-class gateway that provides SNAT and DNAT proxy services with up to 10 Gbps forwarding capacity and cross-zone disaster recovery. It requires configured public IP addresses grouped into shared bandwidth packages.

An EIP is a NAT IP address mapped to an ECS instance's private NIC through NAT. The ECS instance communicates with the internet without exposing the EIP on its NIC.

Create and configure an ECS instance for SAP Business One and SAP HANA

To create an ECS instance for SAP Business One, follow these steps:

Open the ECS purchase page

• Log on to the ECS console.

• In the navigation pane on the left, click Instances.

• On the Instances page, click Create Instance.

Choose a pricing model

Choose Subscription or Pay-As-You-Go as the billing method.

ECS supports two billing methods:

• Subscription: Prepaid monthly (USD/month). Best for fixed 24/7 services such as web services.

• Pay-As-You-Go: Postpaid per minute (USD/hour, minimum 0.01 USD per lifecycle). Best for temporary scaling, testing, and scientific computing.

Compare billing methods in Purchase ECS instances.

Choose the data center region and zone

Deploy all SAP applications (ERP, CRM, SRM) and systems (DB, Application servers) in the same zone. The region and zone cannot be changed after instance creation. Consider the following:

• Regions closer to your customers provide lower network latency and faster download speeds.

• Available zones, instance types, storage types, and network pricing vary by region.

• ECS instances in regions outside mainland China do not support interchanges between Linux systems.

• If you are creating multiple instances for your SAP system, consider the following:

  • For shorter network latency, you can create the instances in the same zone.

  • For higher disaster recovery, you can create the instances in different zones within the same region.

• Instances in different regions cannot communicate with each other over the intranet.

Choose the instance type

Instance type availability varies by region. Supported scenarios are listed in Instance generations and type families.

SAP applications must run on SAP-certified ECS instances. The following table lists certified instance types approved for production use.

Instance type	vCPU	Memory (GiB)
ecs.se1.14xlarge	56	480
ecs.re4.20xlarge	80	960
ecs.re4.40xlarge	160	1920

Choose the network type

• Network Type: SAP Business One requires VPC. Select your VPC and vSwitch, or use the defaults.

• Security Group: Select a security group to control inbound and outbound network access for your SAP ECS instances.

• Network Billing Type: Select pay-by-data-transfer. Charges are based on hourly data transfer (GB). Prices vary by region.

• Network Bandwidth Peak: Set a peak bandwidth to cap charges from traffic spikes.

Network type	Internet access?	Network bandwidth peak
VPC	Yes	If no EIP is used, set the peak bandwidth to a non-zero value. An internet IP address will be bound to your instance. The address cannot be changed or unbound.
VPC	No	Set the peak bandwidth to 0 Mbps.

Choose the base operating system

Public Image: An Alibaba Cloud-provided OS image. Install the required software and configure the environment. Supported operating systems for SAP NetWeaver:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)

Provision and configure storage

Select cloud disks for the system disk and data disks.

• A System Disk is required to install the operating system.

  • Local, temporary, instance-based storage.

  • Data stored on instance storage volumes persists until the ECS instance is released.

  • For the system disk, use Ultra Cloud Disks. You can also choose SSD Cloud Disks for better performance.

• A Data Disk that you add here is released with the instance and cannot be detached. You can also create a cloud disk independently.

  • Persistent block-level storage volumes for use with ECS instances.

  • For data disks, use Ultra Cloud Disks in your SAP non-production environments and SSD Cloud Disks in production environments.

• Each user account can have up to 250 cloud disks, with a maximum capacity of 32768 GB per data disk.

• You can add up to 16 data disks, either blank or from a snapshot.

Cloud disk types and features vary by region. Disk parameters and performance test. Three volume types are available:

• SSD cloud disks

  Ideal for I/O-intensive applications. They provide stable and high random input/output operations per second (IOPS).

• Ultra cloud disks

  Ideal for applications with a medium I/O load. They provide up to 3000 random IOPS for ECS instances.

• Basic cloud disks

  Ideal for applications with a low I/O load. They provide several hundred IOPS for ECS instances.

Recommended storage for SAP Business One and SAP HANA. SAP HANA storage configuration is detailed in the SAP HANA Deployment Guide on Alibaba Cloud.

Directory	Disk type
SAP Business One and HANA software	Ultra cloud disks
HANA data files	SSD cloud disks
HANA log files	SSD cloud disks
HANA shared	SSD cloud disks
Intermediate backup storage	Ultra cloud disks

Security settings

The authentication method depends on the operating system.

Operating system	Authentication method
Linux	SSH key pairs or password

• Set the authentication method now or after instance creation.

• To set it later, reset the password or bind an SSH key pair in the ECS console.

Purchase plan

• Subscription Type: Select a duration of 1 Month or 1 Year. To auto-renew upon expiration, select Auto-renew. Auto-renewal.

• Instance Name: Specify a name for the instance.

• Number of Instances: Up to 10 pay-as-you-go instances at a time. No limit for subscription instances.

Launch instances

• Overview and cost. Review the overview and cost to confirm that your configuration is correct.

• Click either Add to Cart or Buy Now.

• On the Confirm Order page, verify the order details.

• For a subscription instance, click Place Order, complete the payment, and then activate the instance.

• For a pay-as-you-go instance, click Activate.

After activation, view instance details in the ECS console, including name, public IP, and VPC private IP.

Instance post-configuration

Add a DNAT entry

Add a DNAT entry to map a public IP address to a private IP address, allowing the ECS instance to provide internet-facing services.

Add an SNAT entry

Add an SNAT entry to allow ECS instances without public IP addresses to access the internet through the NAT Gateway.

Connect to SAP ECS instances

Do not assign public IP addresses to SAP Business One ECS instances. Connect only through a bastion host using SSH.

• Connect to the bastion host first, then use an SSH client to reach the SAP ECS instances.

• To use Business One Tools for installation or maintenance, install the client on a Windows ECS instance.

• To connect to the SAP HANA database, use a remote desktop client to access the Windows Server instance, then install SAP HANA Studio.

Harden OS security

After instance creation, perform a security compliance check and configure security settings:

• For Linux instances, see Harden operating system security for Linux in Security Advisories.

Change the hostname

The default hostname is the instance ID. Name SAP hosts according to SAP-specific restrictions (maximum 13 characters for SAP Release 4.6 or later). SAP note 611361 - Hostnames of SAP servers.

For SAP systems on SUSE Linux Server:

# vi /etc/HOSTNAME

or

# echo 'newhostname' > /etc/HOSTNAME

This change to the hostname is permanent.

Reboot the server and verify the change before installing SAP.

Prepare SAP Business One installation media

Download the SAP Business One product package from the SAP Support Portal:

• Go to the SAP Business One Software Download Center on the SAP Support Portal at https://support.sap.com/b1software.

• Do one of the following:

  • To download an installation package, click Installation.

  • To download an upgrade package, click Updates.

There are two main options for copying SAP Business One installation media to an ECS instance on Alibaba Cloud:

• Download from the SAP Service Marketplace to an ECS instance

  Download directly from the SAP Service Marketplace to your ECS instance for the fastest transfer. Store installation media on an OSS volume and attach it to instances as needed. You can also snapshot the volume and create multiple volumes for parallel attachment.

• Copy from your network to an ECS instance

  If you already have the required SAP installation media on your network, you can copy it directly to an Alibaba Cloud ECS instance.

Check the operating system

After launching an ECS instance, verify that your system includes the required software components per these SAP notes:

• 1310037 - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11: Installation notes

• 1984787 - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12: Installation notes

• 2001528 - SAP HANA Database SPS 08 revision 80 (or higher) on RHEL 6 or SLES 11

• 2240716 - Recommended OS settings for SLES 11 / SLES for SAP Applications 11 SP4

Install the SAP Business One solution

After provisioning and configuring the ECS instance, install SAP Business One using the official SAP installation guides.

SAP Business One and HANA are installed on a single ECS instance. Size the instance to meet at least the minimum SAP HANA memory requirements.

The primary steps to implement SAP Business One are as follows:

• SAP HANA installation steps are in the SAP HANA Deployment Guide on Alibaba Cloud.

• To install SAP Business One, you need to install the following components on the server:

  • Server tools, including the following:

    • SLD, license manager, and extension manager

    • Data interface server

    • Job service

    • Workflow service

  • Repository

    It includes the shared folder B1_SHR, the common database SBOCOMMON, and online help files in all supported languages.

  • Microsoft Outlook integration server

  • Remote support platform

  • Integration framework

  • Add-ons

    Installing the SAP add-ons as part of the server installation process registers them for all companies on the server. If you do not install them now, you must register the add-ons manually later in the SAP Business One client.

Support

• Alibaba Cloud Support: Assists with provisioning and configuring SAP Business One on ECS instances.

• SAP Support: Contact SAP Support for SAP-related issues. SAP evaluates the ticket and transfers it to Alibaba Cloud if the issue is infrastructure-related.