Checklist for SAP NetWeaver on Google Cloud

This checklist will help you to improve the design, migration, implementation, and maintenance of your SAP NetWeaver landscapes on Google Cloud.

As you go through the checklist, take into account your own business needs. If you make choices that differ from what we've recommended, keep track of those differences for later tasks in the checklist.

  • To scale your SAP NetWeaver landscape and increase redundancy, run SAP central services, each SAP application server, and each database server in its own separate Compute Engine VM instance.
  • Follow these guidelines to ensure the correct sizing for your VM instances:
    • Before you move your existing systems from on-premises or other cloud environments, use your current workload statistics and utilization as a baseline for sizing when migrating to Google Cloud.
    • If you don't size the VMs correctly for the load, when you combine multiple SAP System IDs with other business solutions, your applications might become resource constrained and run poorly.
    • To learn more about sizing for SAP solutions on Google Cloud, see What is sizing? and the SAP Quick Sizer.
  • If you choose to run more than one SAP application instance on the same VM or run multiple application servers from the same SID on the same VM, you should install them with different hostnames to allow you to relocate such instances if they outgrow a single VM.
    • SAP profiles contain the instance hostname in both the file name and in SAP variables like SAPLOCALHOST and SAPGLOBALHOST. Because of this property, we recommend that you configure alias IPs and alias hostnames for those instances from the start.
    • To maintain mappings of the alias IPs and hostnames for the entire project, configure Cloud DNS in Google Cloud as a central resolver rather than using a local DNS resolver.
  • To adjust your workloads dynamically as application demand rises and falls, consider implementing SAP application auto-scaling mechanisms:
    • In most large SAP environments, application server workloads have daily, predictable variations. Because the timing and rate of these workload changes are generally consistent and rarely change, these servers are great candidates to benefit from the elastic nature of cloud infrastructure.
    • To benefit from auto-scaling options for your SAP workloads, see Best practices for SAP app server autoscaling.
  • For more information about SAP configuration standards and supportability, see the SAP Support Portal Home and SAP on Google Cloud solutions.
  • To learn which regions and zones support specific Compute Engine VMs, see Available regions and zones. Keep in mind that SAP NetWeaver-certified Compute Engine VMs might not be available in all locations.
  • Choose your regions and zones for an SAP NetWeaver deployment based on your business locations. SAP NetWeaver instances must be placed in the same region, and the high-availability components (such as SAP central services) should be deployed in different zones within the region for maximum redundancy.
  • To select the best regions for your SAP NetWeaver deployment, see Best practices for Compute Engine region selection.
  • To select a network design that can withstand different types of system failure, see Designing robust systems.
  • To learn how to backup the database and the file system for SAP NetWeaver, see AS Java Backup and Restore and Backing Up and Restoring your SAP System on UNIX.

  • To secure the backup archives, you must store the backup files in a separate secure location. Here are some common choices:

    • You can store the backups in Google Cloud Storage.
    • You can store the archives on a drive in a custom or third-party location (for example, on-premises).
    • You can also store the backups in Google Cloud by using Filestore or the Google Cloud NetApp Volumes.
    • Store multiple copies in multiple locations on different media types to assure recoverability.
  • Define the backup frequency and retention period for your file system data and database files based on your business needs for the recovery point objective (RPO) and the recovery time objective (RTO).

For a checklist of best practices for high-availability configurations for SAP NetWeaver on Google Cloud, see High availability for SAP on Google Cloud.

To automate continuous validation checks for your SAP NetWeaver workloads that run on Google Cloud, use Workload Manager. Workload Manager allows you to automatically scan and evaluate your SAP NetWeaver workloads against best practices to improve their quality, performance, and reliability.
  • In addition to accessing SAP NetWeaver through a web interface or the SAP GUI, you might also need to establish inbound and outbound communication with other SAP solutions or third-party systems. Typical examples of this include IDOC interfaces, process integration with external business partners, and SAP Landscape Transformation Replication with on-premises reporting systems. To enable inbound and outbound interfaces, use the following resources to set up routing and firewall rules in your VPC network:

  • SAP NetWeaver software supports a distributed architecture that allows the distribution of system instances over multiple virtual machines. This architecture provides benefits of both scale and redundancy.
  • The distributed nature of SAP NetWeaver requires load balancing for end-user requests. On Google Cloud you can use native SAP software load balancing in combination with Google-native L4 or L7 load balancers, or choose to set up third-party load balancers from the Google Cloud Marketplace.