Primer on putting HANA on Amazon (AWS) Cloud

Well, you finally decided to start with install  your first HANA Database and then enhance it to include Business Suite on HANA. Not only did you make a good resolve, you landed up at the right place to know more about it. 

This primer is a step by step guide on putting together costs and a base HANA install on Amazon Webservice.  Lets hit the hammer on the head of the nail and get started with the step by step process right away.

Step 1 : Sign up for Amazon EC2 account on https://aws.amazon.com/free/. Keep in mind that this is a limited free account and starts the money clock after 1 year of being free.

Setting up a Simple Cloud ⇿ A layman's Experiment

Well, if your cloud is an in premise for someone, what does it take the someone to setup the cloud. In this post, i will endeavor to take a quick peek on setting up a simple Cloud landscape.

A bucket list of what you will need to setup your own cloud Infrastructure would look something like below :

1. A Public IP Address
2. A Computer that can be connected to the internet. (We will talk more about what this computer should look like in coming posts).
3. A big enough hard drive.
4. Decide an application that you would want to host on the cloud. A simple FTP application could work well should you decide to use it for an experiment.


The Hardy Boys ↜↝ SAP ERP Blog

The blog will run like a Hardy Boys Detective Story going forward with two plots running in parallel as we start talking more about (1) SAP ERP  and (2) Cloud, both in tandem.

SAP coins the term 'Basis' that deals with Installation, Deployment & Administration of a SAP System Landscape. 'SAP Administrator' a.k.a. 'Basis expert' configures the SAP System landscape to be used by Functional Consultants for configuring the system based on needs of Business Users and Business Processes to be implemented within SAP. Configuration of a SAP System is an overlapping responsibility shared by the Administrator and Functional experts.

What is a Cloud?

Information Technology Gurus devised the term 'Cloud' to represent a collection of IT services and hardware which are visible to a user as a vague group of hi-tech paraphernalia localized in 'some' remote location.

 A cloud solution is expected to be accessible to an end user over the internet.  Interesting enough, something that could be a cloud system to one person could very well be an in-premise system for someone else who may localized in the same same physical location as the physical system. A cloud system is an in-premise system somewhere and hence will have all qualities of an in premise system plus a lot more.

An IT solution  in cloud  would invariably be accessed via the internet using a web browser or an app on your mobile device.

If one was to visualize an IT cloud in a dream, you would see Technology and Business Processes evaporating into a la-la land and converting into a genie who is at your service, albeit with little bit less than 'Your Wish is my command'!   Always remember, what is cloud for you now is still in-premise for someone some where who is now famously called your Cloud Service Provider!!

What does it usually take to build a cloud or if you are still in your dream, what becomes off the technology and Business Processes evaporated into cloud?

Before we jump into building a cloud lets reflect upon some existing cloud implementations that we may already be familiar with. Listed out are a few of those below :

* Google drive @ drive.google.com
* dropbox @ www.dropbox.com
* E-mail services like yahoo @www.yahoo.com, Microsoft E-mail @www.live.com
* Amazon Cloud @ aws.amazon.com

Overall, Most of the cloud services can be categorized into one of the three categories :
1. Social Networking
2. E-Mail
3. Documents and Application Hosting Services


Private Cloud vs Public Cloud vs Hybrid Cloud

Starting off with cloud requires a good understanding of the Private Cloud, Public Cloud and a Hybrid Cloud Solutions. A one line summary of each of them would go as follows.

A private cloud would reside completely within an enterprise' own data center.
A public cloud  would reside completely on a Cloud providers infrastructure e.g. Amazon (AWS), Google, Microsoft (Azuer) etc.
A hybrid cloud  would have a combination of both of the above. One part of the IT solution would be hosted in the enterprise' own data center while another part would be in a public cloud.

Cloud providers today diversify their services into two key segments: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) & Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) is a very basic service that replaces an enterprise' In Premise hardware only but adds the ease of scalability, redundancy and utilization based costing right of the bat. It effectively transfers the risk and costs of maintaining a data center to a service provider but stops right there. The onus of all configuration of cloud software, including the Operating system and overlaying applications lies on your enterprise.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) goes a step further and takes over the responsibility of base configuration to the cloud providers. More on PaaS to come in later posts.

Before wrapping up this blog post, lets take a quick look at cloud providers out there in the market.

Open Source Cloud Providers
* Apache Cloudstack stands out as the premiere and free cloud  software to to create and deploy cloud services.
* Xen Cloud Platform is an open source virtualization solution. XCP includes tools that are enterprise ready like Xen Hypervisor with Xen API for Cloud, Storage and networking operations.