This deployment guide shows you how to deploy the Google Cloud resources for an IBM Db2 instance on Linux that supports SAP applications.
The instructions in this guide use Terraform to deploy and configure the VM, the Linux operating system, the required disk volumes for IBM Db2, and install the Google Cloud's monitoring agent for SAP NetWeaver.
For details on planning your deployment, see the IBM Db2 for SAP planning guide.
Prerequisites
If you require your SAP workload to run in compliance with data residency, access control, support personnel, or regulatory requirements, then you must create the required Assured Workloads folder. For more information, see Compliance and sovereign controls for SAP on Google Cloud.
If you don't already have a Google Cloud project with billing enabled, then you must create one before you can deploy a virtual machine (VM) for your IBM Db2 installation.
Creating a project
- Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
-
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
-
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
-
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
-
Make sure that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
Configuring the gcloud
command environment
These instructions use
Cloud Shell to enter gcloud
commands that deploy or configure
your Google Cloud resources. Cloud Shell is accessed through the
Google Cloud console in your browser.
Cloud Shell runs on a VM that Google Cloud provisions each time
you start Cloud Shell. The first time you use Cloud Shell,
Google Cloud also creates a persistent $HOME
directory for you,
which is restored each time you open Cloud Shell.
The provisioned VM includes the latest
Google Cloud CLI.
Therefore, the gcloud
commands that you use in Cloud Shell are the same as
those you would use in a locally installed instance of the gcloud CLI.
If you have the gcloud CLI installed, you can issue the gcloud
commands that are used in these instructions from your local machine. However,
with a locally installed gcloud CLI you must always make sure that you
are using the latest version of the gcloud CLI.
Whether you use Cloud Shell or gcloud CLI, you
can set and change the properties of your gcloud
command environment and save
them as a configuration. Configurations are collections of key-value pairs
that influence the behavior of the gcloud
commands.
Some basic actions you can take with a configuration in Cloud Shell include:
Initialize a configuration:
gcloud init
Check the settings of your current gcloud configuration:
gcloud config list
Switch to the required Google Cloud project. Replace
PROJECT_ID
with your Google Cloud project ID.gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
Set a default region. Replace
REGION
with a Google Cloud region.gcloud config set compute/region REGION
Set a default zone. Replace
ZONE
with a Google Cloud zone.gcloud config set compute/zone ZONE
Create a new configuration. Replace
NAME
with the name for the configuration.gcloud config configurations create NAME
For more information about working with configurations, see Managing gcloud CLI configurations.
Creating a network
For security purposes, create a new network. You can control who has access by adding firewall rules or by using another access control method.
If your project has a default VPC network, don't use it. Instead, create your own VPC network so that the only firewall rules in effect are those that you create explicitly.
During deployment, VM instances typically require access to the internet to download Google Cloud's Agent for SAP. If you are using one of the SAP-certified Linux images that are available from Google Cloud, the VM instance also requires access to the internet in order to register the license and to access OS vendor repositories. A configuration with a NAT gateway and with VM network tags supports this access, even if the target VMs do not have external IPs.
To create a VPC network for your project, complete the following steps:
-
Create a custom mode network. For more information, see Creating a custom mode network.
-
Create a subnetwork, and specify the region and IP range. For more information, see Adding subnets.
Setting up a NAT gateway
If you need to create one or more VMs without public IP addresses, you need to use network address translation (NAT) to enable the VMs to access the internet. Use Cloud NAT, a Google Cloud distributed, software-defined managed service that lets VMs send outbound packets to the internet and receive any corresponding established inbound response packets. Alternatively, you can set up a separate VM as a NAT gateway.
To create a Cloud NAT instance for your project, see Using Cloud NAT.
After you configure Cloud NAT for your project, your VM instances can securely access the internet without a public IP address.
Adding firewall rules
By default, incoming connections from outside your Google Cloud network are blocked. To allow incoming connections, set up a firewall rule for your VM. Firewall rules regulate only new incoming connections to a VM. After a connection is established with a VM, traffic is permitted in both directions over that connection.
You can create a firewall rule to allow access to specified ports, or to allow access between VMs on the same subnetwork.
Create firewall rules to allow access for such things as:
- The default ports used by SAP NetWeaver, as documented in TCP/IP Ports of All SAP Products.
- Connections from your computer or your corporate network environment to your Compute Engine VM instance. If you are unsure of what IP address to use, talk to your company's network admin.
- Communication between VMs in a 3-tier, scaleout, or high-availability configuration. For example, if you are deploying a 3-tier system, you will have at least 2 VMs in your subnetwork: the VM for SAP NetWeaver, and another VM for the database server. To enable communication between the two VMs, you must create a firewall rule to allow traffic that originates from the subnetwork.
To create the firewall rules for your project, see Creating firewall rules.
Deploying a Linux VM for Db2 with Terraform
The following instructions use Terraform to deploy a VM instance with Linux and
all of the persistent disks that IBM Db2 requires to support SAP applications.
You define the values for the installation in a sap_db2.tf
configuration file that Google Cloud provides.
The following instructions use Cloud Shell, but if you prefer, you can use Terraform in your local terminal instead.
Open the Cloud Shell.
Download the
sap_db2.tf
configuration file to your working directory by entering the following command in the Cloud Shell:wget https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/latest/terraform/sap_db2/terraform/sap_db2.tf
Open the
sap_db2.tf
file in the Cloud Shell code editor.To open the Cloud Shell code editor, click Open Editor.
In the
sap_db2.tf
file, update the following argument values by replacing the content inside the double quotation marks with the values for your installation.Most optional arguments have a default value. When you don't specify an optional argument, the Terraform configuration uses that argument's default value, if any.
Argument Data type Description source
String Specifies the location and version of the Terraform module to use during deployment.
The
sap_db2.tf
configuration file includes two instances of thesource
argument: one that is active and one that is included as a comment. Thesource
argument that is active by default specifieslatest
as the module version. The second instance of thesource
argument, which by default is deactivated by a leading#
character, specifies a timestamp that identifies a module version.If you need all of your deployments to use the same module version, then remove the leading
#
character from thesource
argument that specifies the version timestamp and add it to thesource
argument that specifieslatest
.project_id
String Specify the ID of your Google Cloud project in which you are deploying this system. For example, my-project-x
.zone
String Specify the zone in which you are deploying your SAP system. The zone must be in the same region that you selected for your subnet.
For example, if your subnet is deployed in the
us-central1
region, then you can specify a zone such asus-central1-a
.machine_type
String Specify the type of Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) on which you need to run your SAP system. If you need a custom VM type, then specify a predefined VM type with a number of vCPUs that is closest to the number you need while still being larger. After deployment is complete, modify the number of vCPUs and the amount of memory. For example,
n1-highmem-32
.subnetwork
String Specify the name of the subnetwork that you created in a previous step. If you are deploying to a shared VPC, then specify this value as SHARED_VPC_PROJECT_ID/SUBNETWORK
. For example,myproject/network1
.linux_image
String Specify the name of the Linux operating system image on which you want to deploy your SAP system. For example, rhel-9-2-sap-ha
orsles-15-sp5-sap
. For the list of available operating system images, see the Images page in the Google Cloud console.linux_image_project
String Specify the Google Cloud project that contains the image that you have specified for the argument linux_image
. This project might be your own project or a Google Cloud image project. For a Compute Engine image, specify eitherrhel-sap-cloud
orsuse-sap-cloud
. To find the image project for your operating system, see Operating system details.instance_name
String Specify a name for the host VM instance. The name can contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. The VM instances for the worker and standby hosts use the same name with a w
and the host number appended to the name.db2_sid
String Specify the SID of your IBM Db2 database instance. The ID must consist of three alpha-numeric characters and begin with a letter. All letters must be in uppercase. For example, ED1
.db2_sid_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for /db2/DBSID
volume, which is the root directory of your IBM Db2 database instance. The minimum size is 8 GB. The default value is8
.db2_home_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2/db2DBSID
volume, which is the home directory of your IBM Db2 database instance. The minimum size is 8 GB. The default value is8
.db2_dump_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2/DBSID/db2dump
volume, which holds the dump files from your IBM Db2 database instance. The minimum size is 8 GB. The default value is8
.db2_sap_temp_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2/DBSID/saptmp
volume, which holds the database instance's temporary tablespace. The minimum size is 8 GB. The default value is8
.db2_sap_data_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2/DBSID/sapdata
volume, which holds the database data files. The minimum size is 30 GB. The default value is30
.db2_sap_data_ssd
Boolean Optional. Specify true
to provision an SSD persistent disk for the/db2/DBSID/sapdata
volume. If you specifyfalse
, then a balanced persistent disk is provisioned. The default value istrue
.db2_log_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2/DBSID/logdir
volume, which holds the database transaction logs. The minimum size is 8 GB. The default value is8
.db2_log_ssd
Boolean Optional. Specify true
to provision an SSD persistent disk for the/db2/DBSID/logdir
volume. If you specifyfalse
, then a balanced persistent disk is provisioned. The default value istrue
.db2_backup_size
Integer Optional. Specify the size in GB for the /db2backup
volume, which holds the database backups. If you don't specify this argument or set its value to0
, then no disk is provisioned for the/db2backup
volume.usr_sap_size
Integer To run IBM Db2 and SAP NetWeaver on the same VM instance, specify the size of the /usr/sap
disk in GB.If you don't specify this argument or set its value to
0
, then no disk is provisioned for the/usr/sap
volume.sap_mnt_size
Integer To run IBM Db2 and SAP NetWeaver on the same VM instance, specify the size of the /sapmnt
disk in GB.If you don't specify this argument or set its value to
0
, then no disk is provisioned for the/sapmnt
volume.swap_size
Integer To run IBM Db2 and SAP NetWeaver on the same VM instance, specify the size of the swap volume in GB. If you don't specify this argument or set its value to
0
, then no disk is provisioned for the swap volume.network_tags
String Optional. Specify one or more comma-separated network tags that you want to associate with your VM instances for firewall or routing purposes. If you specify
public_ip = false
and do not specify a network tag, then make sure to provide another means of access to the internet.public_ip
Boolean Optional. Determines whether or not a public IP address is added to your VM instance. The default value is true
.service_account
String Optional. Specify the email address of a user-managed service account to be used by the host VMs and by the programs that run on the host VMs. For example, svc-acct-name@project-id.iam.gserviceaccount.com
.If you specify this argument without a value, or omit it, then the installation script uses the Compute Engine default service account. For more information, see Identity and access management for SAP programs on Google Cloud.
sap_deployment_debug
Boolean Optional. Only when Cloud Customer Care asks you to enable debugging for your deployment, specify true
, which makes the deployment generate verbose deployment logs. The default value isfalse
.reservation_name
String Optional. To use a specific Compute Engine VM reservation for this deployment, specify the name of the reservation. By default, the installation script selects any available Compute Engine reservation based on the following conditions. For a reservation to be usable, regardless of whether you specify a name or the installation script selects it automatically, the reservation must be set with the following:
-
The
specificReservationRequired
option is set totrue
or, in the Google Cloud console, the Select specific reservation option is selected. -
Some Compute Engine machine types support CPU platforms that are not
covered by the SAP certification of the machine type. If the target
reservation is for any of the following machine types, then the reservation
must specify the minimum CPU platforms as indicated:
n1-highmem-32
: Intel Broadwelln1-highmem-64
: Intel Broadwelln1-highmem-96
: Intel Skylakem1-megamem-96
: Intel Skylake
The minimum CPU platforms for all of the other machine types that are
certified by SAP for use on Google Cloud conform to the SAP minimum CPU
requirement.
The following example
sap_db2.tf
configuration file creates a VM that is configured to run both the IBM Db2 database server and SAP NetWeaver. The configuration file directs Terarform to deploy ann1-standard-16
VM that is running a SLES 15 SP3 operating system. The VM includes all of the directories that are required to run IBM Db2 with SAP NetWeaver.# # ... module "sap_db2" { source = https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/latest/terraform/sap_db2/sap_db2_module.zip # # By default, this source file uses the latest release of the terraform module # for SAP on Google Cloud. To fix your deployments to a specific release # of the module, comment out the source property above and uncomment the source property below. # # source = "https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/YYYYMMDDHHMM/terraform/sap_db2/sap_db2_module.zip" # ... project_id = "example-project-123456" zone = "us-central1-f" machine_type = "n1-standard-16" subnetwork = "example-subnet-us-central1" linux_image = "sles-15-sp3-sap" linux_image_project = "suse-sap-cloud" instance_name = "ex-vm-db2-lin" db2_sid = "AS1" db2_sid_size = 15 db2_home_size = 15 db2_dump_size = 15 db2_sap_temp_size = 20 db2_sap_data_size = 50 db2_sap_data_ssd = true db2_log_size = 30 db2_log_ssd = true db2_backup_size = 100 usr_sap_size = 15 sap_mnt_size = 15 swap_size = 24 # ... }
-
The
To initialize your current working directory and download the Terraform provider plugin and module files for Google Cloud:
terraform init
The
terraform init
command prepares your working directory for other Terraform commands.To force a refresh of the provider plugin and configuration files in your working directory, specify the
--upgrade
flag. If the--upgrade
flag is omitted and you don't make any changes in your working directory, Terraform uses the locally cached copies, even iflatest
is specified in thesource
URL.terraform init --upgrade
Optionally, to create the Terraform execution plan:
terraform plan
The
terraform plan
command shows the changes required by your current configuration. If you skip this step, theterraform apply
command automatically creates a new plan and prompts you to approve it.To apply the execution plan:
terraform apply
When you are prompted to approve the actions, enter
yes
.The terraform
apply
command sets up the Google Cloud infrastructure according to the arguments defined in the Terraform configuration file. The process can take a few minutes. To check the progress of your deployment, follow the steps in the next section.After the VM instance deploys, if you need Compute Engine to save the boot disk in the event the VM instance is deleted, then follow these steps:
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Compute Engine VM instances page.
To open the VM instance details page for your VM instance, click the name of the VM instance.
Click Edit.
In the Boot disk section, for the Deletion rule, ensure that the Keep disk option is selected.
Click Save.
Verifying deployment
To verify deployment, you check the deployment logs in Cloud Logging and check the configuration of the VM.
Check the logs
In the Google Cloud console, open Cloud Logging to monitor installation progress and check for errors.
Filter the logs:
Logs Explorer
In the Logs Explorer page, go to the Query pane.
From the Resource drop-down menu, select Global, and then click Add.
If you don't see the Global option, then in the query editor, enter the following query:
resource.type="global" "Deployment"
Click Run query.
Legacy Logs Viewer
- In the Legacy Logs Viewer page, from the basic selector menu, select Global as your logging resource.
Analyze the filtered logs:
- If
"--- Finished"
is displayed, then the deployment processing is complete and you can proceed to the next step. If you see a quota error:
On the IAM & Admin Quotas page, increase any of your quotas that do not meet the IBM Db2 requirements that are listed in the
Open Cloud Shell.
Go to your working directory and delete the deployment to clean up the VMs and persistent disks from the failed installation:
terraform destroy
When you are prompted to approve the action, enter
yes
.Rerun your deployment.
- If
Check the configuration of the VM
After the VM instance deploys without errors, connect to your VM using SSH. From the Compute Engine VM instances page, you can click the SSH button for your VM, or you can use your preferred SSH method.
Switch to the root user.
sudo su -
At the command prompt, enter
df -h
. Ensure that you see an output similar to the following:Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 4.0M 8.0K 4.0M 1% /dev tmpfs 52G 0 52G 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 21G 18M 21G 1% /run tmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sda3 30G 4.3G 26G 15% / /dev/sda2 20M 2.9M 18M 15% /boot/efi tmpfs 11G 0 11G 0% /run/user/0 /dev/mapper/vg_db2sid-vol 15G 48M 15G 1% /db2/AS1 /dev/mapper/vg_db2dump-vol 15G 48M 15G 1% /db2/AS1/db2dump /dev/mapper/vg_db2sapdata-vol 50G 84M 50G 1% /db2/AS1/sapdata /dev/mapper/vg_db2saptmp-vol 20G 53M 20G 1% /db2/AS1/saptmp /dev/mapper/vg_db2log-vol 30G 63M 30G 1% /db2/AS1/log_dir /dev/mapper/vg_db2home-vol 15G 48M 15G 1% /db2/db2as1 /dev/mapper/vg_db2backup-vol 100G 135M 100G 1% /db2backup /dev/mapper/vg_usrsap-vol 15G 200M 15G 2% /usr/sap /dev/mapper/vg_sapmnt-vol 15G 48M 15G 1% /sapmnt tmpfs 11G 0 11G 0% /run/user/1000
To confirm that the swap directory is created, run the following command:
cat /proc/meminfo | grep Swap
You should see an output similar to the following:
SwapCached: 0 kB SwapTotal: 25161724 kB SwapFree: 25161724 kB
Clean up and retry deployment
If any of the deployment verification steps in the preceding sections show that the installation wasn't successful, then you must undo your deployment and retry it by completing the following steps:
Resolve any errors to ensure that your deployment doesn't fail again for the same reason. For information about checking the logs, or resolving quota related errors, see Check the logs.
Open Cloud Shell or, if you installed the Google Cloud CLI on your local workstation, then open a terminal.
Go to the directory that contains the Terraform configuration file that you used for this deployment.
Delete all resources that are part of your deployment by running the following command:
terraform destroy
When you are prompted to approve the action, enter
yes
.Retry your deployment as instructed earlier in this guide.
Installing the database server
Now that your operating system is configured, you can install your IBM Db2 database server.
For guidance on installing SAP NetWeaver with IBM Db2, see the installation guide that is specific to your SAP NetWeaver system.
To install IBM Db2 on your Linux VM, follow these steps:
- Establish an SSH connection to your Linux-based VM.
Download or copy the complete SAP media set for IBM Db2 to your VM.
You can download the SAP media set from the SAP support portal.
Install the IBM Db2 database server with the SAP Software Provisioning Manager.
Install your IBM Db2 license file.
For more information about installing an IBM Db2 license that you obtained from SAP, see SAP Note 816773 - DB6: Installing an SAP OEM license.
Validate your installation of Google Cloud's Agent for SAP
After you have deployed a VM and installed your SAP system, validate that Google Cloud's Agent for SAP is functioning properly.
Verify that Google Cloud's Agent for SAP is running
To verify that the agent is running, follow these steps:
Establish an SSH connection with your Compute Engine instance.
Run the following command:
systemctl status google-cloud-sap-agent
If the agent is functioning properly, then the output contains
active (running)
. For example:google-cloud-sap-agent.service - Google Cloud Agent for SAP Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/google-cloud-sap-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled) Active: active (running) since Fri 2022-12-02 07:21:42 UTC; 4 days ago Main PID: 1337673 (google-cloud-sa) Tasks: 9 (limit: 100427) Memory: 22.4 M (max: 1.0G limit: 1.0G) CGroup: /system.slice/google-cloud-sap-agent.service └─1337673 /usr/bin/google-cloud-sap-agent
If the agent isn't running, then restart the agent.
Verify that SAP Host Agent is receiving metrics
To verify that the infrastructure metrics are collected by Google Cloud's Agent for SAP and sent correctly to the SAP Host Agent, follow these steps:
- In your SAP system, enter transaction
ST06
. In the overview pane, check the availability and content of the following fields for the correct end-to-end setup of the SAP and Google monitoring infrastructure:
- Cloud Provider:
Google Cloud Platform
- Enhanced Monitoring Access:
TRUE
- Enhanced Monitoring Details:
ACTIVE
- Cloud Provider:
Performing post-deployment tasks
Before using your IBM Db2 instance, we recommend that you perform the following post-deployment steps:
- Update your IBM Db2 software with the latest patches, if available.
- Install any additional components.
- Configure and back up your new IBM Db2 database.
For additional post-deployment guidance, see the Post-installation Tasks section of the installation guide that applies to the SAP system that you are using with IBM Db2.
Troubleshooting
This section contains information about how to correct common issues.
Troubleshooting connecting to your VM
If you are having issues connecting to your VM through ssh
, ensure that you
have created a firewall rule to open port 22
on the Google Cloud network
you are using.
For other possible issues, see
Known issues
for connecting through ssh
from the browser.
Troubleshooting Google's monitoring agent
To troubleshoot issues concerning the monitoring agent for SAP NetWeaver, see Troubleshooting monitoring.