SAP FAQ

For a general overview of how to use SAP solutions on AWS, see Getting Started.

AWS manages the physical infrastructure up to the virtualization layer.  The operating system and any SAP appplications and databases running above the virtualization layer are managed by the customer.  If a managed service is required, AWS has a network of partners that offer SAP consulting and managed services on AWS. To find an AWS SAP partner, see Find an SAP Partner.

No. AWS is an SAP-certified Global Technology Partner and focuses on providing a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud. AWS does not offer services specific to SAP but does have a network of partners that can provide SAP consulting and managed services on AWS. To learn about the types of services offered and to find an AWS SAP partner, see Find an SAP Partner.

Visit the Find an SAP Partner page.

Various SAP test drives, trials and developer images are available on AWS. For more information, see SAP Test Drive, Trial, and Developer Systems for AWS.

SAP customers and partners are using AWS for use cases ranging from running a single SAP test system to hosting a complete SAP production environment. To learn more about how SAP customers and partners are using AWS, see Getting Started with SAP on AWS.

Most SAP solutions on AWS use a Bring Your Own Software and Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model.  Some SAP solutions are available on AWS with on-demand, free trial, and free developer licenses.  To learn more, see Getting Started with SAP on AWS.

No, AWS does not sell SAP licenses.  There are SAP partners in the AWS Partner Network that resell SAP licenses. To find one, visit Find an AWS SAP partner.

Yes, SAP customers can use their existing SAP licenses on AWS. For technical information about SAP licenses on AWS, see SAP Note 1178686 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

For SAP solutions that use a CPU-based licensing model, the number of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) virtual cores, not Amazon EC2 vCPUs, should be used to determine the number of CPU licenses required. The number of virtual cores per EC2 instance type can be found on the Virtual Cores by Amazon EC2 and RDS DB Instance Type page.

Operating system licenses are included in the hourly price of an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance.  To learn more, see Amazon EC2 Pricing.

Database licensing for SAP solutions on AWS uses a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model.

To find out which SAP solutions are certified to run in production on AWS, see SAP solutions on AWS.

For the most up-to-date list of certified applications, see SAP Note 1656099 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

The list of Amazon EC2 instance types certified by SAP for production use can be found in SAP note 1656099 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

AWS supports the following operating systems for SAP solutions:

- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server - see http://aws.amazon.com/suse/
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux - see http://aws.amazon.com/rhel/
- Microsoft Windows Server - see http://aws.amazon.com/windows/

For specific version information, see SAP Note 1656099 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

See SAP Note 1656099 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

See SAP Note 1656250 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

AWS Support provides 24x7 one-on-one technical support. Customers can choose a tier that meets their requirements.

For more information, see http://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/.

AWS Premium Support is required only when running SAP production systems on AWS. For additional information, see SAP Note 1656250 (requires SAP Service Marketplace credentials).

For monthly price estimates of AWS infrastructure for SAP HANA, see SAP HANA on AWS.

See the Getting Started page and the Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS guide.

Yes.  SAP and SAP partners do offer certain SAP applications as pre-built systems on AWS.  To learn more about which SAP applications are available as pre-built images and how to access them, see the following links:

- SAP Test Drive, Trial, and Developer Systems for AWS
- SAP Cloud Appliance Library for AWS
- AWS Marketplace

See the SAP Whitepapers page.

See Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS.

See Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS.

See Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS.

See Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS.

See Implementing SAP Solutions on AWS.

See the SAP on AWS Backup and Recovery Guide.

For additional information, see SAP HANA on AWS.

Option 1: Automated - The SAP HANA Quick Start Reference Deployment provides an automated process to deploy all of the required AWS infrastructure components for an SAP HANA system.

Option 2: Manual – The SAP HANA Manual Deployment Guide provides step-by-step instructions and guidelines how to provision the required AWS infrastructure components for an SAP HANA system.

You can design custom multi AZ and multi region HA and DR HANA production solutions by leveraging Amazon CloudFormation, Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon EC2 Auto Recovery services with relative ease. E.g., you can use any of the below six HA/DR solutions to meet your various Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and cost requirements:

For more details and recommendations see SAP HANA HA and DR Guide.

You can use native HANA backup functionality to backup your HANA database to an Amazon EBS volume. Once the HANA backup files are stored in the EBS volume, you can easily snapshot that volume to S3 using the EBS Snapshot feature. Alternatively, you can also use a custom script or one of the many of the third party products available in our marketplace to regularly copy your HANA backup files from EBS volume to an S3 bucket. Please refer to the SAP HANA Operations Guide for additional details.

The following scenarios are supported for production by SAP on the X1 instance type.

• Native HANA applications
• Data marts and analytics
• SAP Business Suite applications (e.g. ERP)
• SAP S/4HANA
• SAP Business Warehouse
• SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC)
• SAP HANA Live / Sidecar
  

With the initial release of the x1.32xlarge instance type only scale-up systems are supported. Support for scale-out is expected to be available shortly.

Following are the different migration solutions to migrate your HANA or non HANA database to the AWS cloud:

• HANA on premise to the X1 instance: You have multiple options to migrate your existing HANA database from on premise to the X1 instance and the AWS cloud, depending on various factors such size of your source database, network connectivity between your data center and AWS regions, and acceptable downtime. Since you are not changing your Database or Operating System, you can use standard SAP homogenous system copy tools like Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM) to migrate your HANA database from on premise to the X1 instance. Alternatively, you can also choose to use standard HANA backup/restore process or HANA System Replication to move your HANA database to the X1 instance.

• Non HANA on premise to the X1 instance: You can migrate your non-HANA Database from on premise to HANA on the AWS by using SAP’s standard OS/DB Migration toolset for Heterogeneous System Copy like Software Update Manager (SUM) with Data Migration Option (DMO) or Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM).

• HANA on R3 (Single node and Scale-out) to the X1 instance: You have multiple options to migrate your existing HANA database on AWS to X1 instances. You can launch a new HANA Database on the X1 instance using the Amazon Quick Start and perform a backup/restore to migrate your data to the new X1 instance. Alternatively, you can setup HANA System Replication (HSR) between your existing R3 instance and the newly launched X1 instance. When the systems are fully synced, you can failover the X1 instance with zero to minimal downtime.

Pricing of the X1 instance type can be found at Amazon EC2 Pricing. Pricing of SAP HANA specific configurations combining the X1 instance type and SAP certified Amazon EBS storage configurations can be found at http://aws.amazon.com/sap/solutions/saphana/