The main content of this article is mostly from SAP’s published Note:

2552731 – SAP Applications on Alibaba Cloud: Supported Products and IaaS VM Types

As of 2018/01/19 this note is only in English (the other Japanese version is machine translated). In the future, the original note may be updated by SAP colleagues in charge of this note, and the content of this article may be different from the original note.

You can view the original Note in English by clicking “Read original” at the end of the article.

The Infrastructure Service provided on Aliyun can be used to deploy SAP products. Of course, not all SAP products can run on Aliyun. The restrictions for each dimension are listed below.

Supported operating systems:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (SLES12) or later.

** Relational database management system supported on Linux platform: **SAP HANA

Specific hardware requirements are described in this link:

https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/iaas.html#categories=Alibaba%20Cloud%20Computing%20Limited

Or refer to this chart:

SAP product line supported by Ali Cloud

1. Applications running on the ABAP application server (Netweaver 7.0x).

Requirements for SAP Kernel:

Kernel 7.21 EXT (Patch Level at least #919)

(2) SAP Kernel 7.22 EXT (Patch Level at least #415)

(3) or higher than the above version number

Jerry’s note:

We know that the ABAP language is based on C/C++ implementation, including its keywords (for example, the simplest keyword WRITE in C++ implementation has more than 2,000 lines) and virtual machine (ABAP Runtime). A team of computer scientists at SAP invented ABAP, a great language that enables SAP applications that help customers in more than 180 countries run their businesses better.

Google to find some information about these SAP computer scientists, such as this link:

http://sapexperts.wispubs.com/SAP-Professional-Journal/Articles/From-XML-to-ABAP-Data-Structures-and-Back-Bridging-the-G ap-with-XSLT?id=2CA6B036062F42C5B7A76A772A934911#.WmGiiaiWbdM

Back to the note, EXT stands for Extended Kernel, as distinct from the Standard Kernel.

The biggest difference between Standard Kernel and EXT Kernel is not the source code of these C/C++ implementations, but the operating system version of the Make server that generates the SAP Kernel and the C/C++ compiler version.

If you are interested in this topic, you can read this discussion on SAP Community:

What is the difference between normal Kernel 7.20 and the Kernel 7.20 EXT

https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/2114704

2. Applications running on ABAP/Java application servers (Netweaver 7.1 or later).

Requirements for SAP Kernel:

Kernel 7.21 EXT (Patch Level at least #919)

(2) SAP Kernel 7.22 EXT (Patch Level at least #415)

(3) or higher than the above version number

3. Applications running on ABAP/Java application servers (Netweaver 7.4 or later).

Requirements for SAP Kernel:

(1) SAP Kernel 7.45 (Patch Level at least #612)

(2) SAP Kernel 7.49 (Patch Level at least #316)

(3) SAP Kernel 7.53 (Patch Level at least #24)

(4) or higher than the above version number

Aliyun virtual machines running SAP products are supported on Linux

Jerry note 1:

The third column in the table, SAPS, lists a series of numbers. What is the SAPS? SAP Application Performance Standard(SAPS) is a Performance measurement Standard that describes the Performance of SAP products in a specific system configuration.

SAP first introduced the concept of SAPS in the performance measurement of SD(Sales and Distribution). In SD SAPS testing, 100 SAPS means 2000 order line items can run a typical business process in less than 1 hour, including:

  • Create the order

  • Create a Delivery Note for the order

  • According to the order

  • Modify Delivery date

  • Post goods issue

  • Create an invoice

For more details on SAPS, please read the official SAP help:

1. SAP Standard Application Benchmarks

https://www.sap.com/about/benchmark.html

2. SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark Results

  • http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx

  • http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd3tier.epx

Jerry note 2:

Note 1 you can see that SAPS tests for SD are conducted separately for 2 tier and 3tier architectures. Tier 2 means that the database server and the application server running SAP products are deployed on the same physical server and can be regarded as the service layer. The other layer is the client layer (presentation layer), which makes up the so-called 2 tier(two-tier architecture).

Obviously, if you deploy the database server and the application server separately, you have a three-tier architecture. SAPS evaluation on AliYun is based on a two-tier architecture.

If you are interested in specific deployment details, you are advised to read the official Alibaba document SAP HANA Deployment Guide

https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/57229.html?spm=5176.11065259.1996646101.searchclickresult.5af381adNWUGu1

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