Setup SAP HANA, express edition, in Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure using SAP Cloud Appliance Library

Go to the SAP Cloud Appliance Library and create an account and register.

As a pre-requisite you need to have performed the same in a Cloud Provider and generated an access key in Amazon Web Services or a Subscription ID in Microsoft Azure, depending on your choice. Check this FAQ wiki for more information on AWS. For Azure, you can access your Subscription ID from the More Services menu.

Link your account in the cloud provider from the Account menu:

For MS Azure, you can find your subscription ID here:

In Amazon Web Services, you can create a user specifically for CAL and generate the access keys:

Check this FAQ wiki for more information

Look for SAP HANA express and click on Create Instance:

Click on Advanced Mode :

Choose your account and click on Step 2:

Once in Step 2, fill in the instance details and click on Create

Note - AWS: Be sure to choose ECS-Internet to have an external IP to connect to your machine.

Review the access ports. These will generally be enough for your machine:

You will be prompted for a password. Make sure this password follows the rules and you remember it, as it will be the password for the administration and development users:

Perform the final Review. You can specify if you want the machine to be suspended automatically so that you do not incur in higher costs:

And Create your machine:

You will get a disclaimer about the use of HANA Express. After you read it, you will be prompted to store and download a key. Store it and Download it in a secure location you can access later:

IMPORTANT: Save the downloaded .pem file. You will need it to access the instance from an SSH or SCP console.

The machine will take about 20 minutes to become available. You will see the instance as Active once it is ready for use:

Click on the instance to access the details. Use your external IP address to map it to the hosts file in your computer.

You need administration permissions to do this.

• For Windows Computers:
  Your user will need administration rights. Right-click on Notepad and choose Run as Administrator. If you are an administrator user, proceed to the next point.

Open the file or navigate with Windows explorer. You need to edit the file called hosts in the directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

• For Mac OS:
  Open a terminal (Finder -> Applications -> Terminal) and type sudo nano /etc/hosts

Add the IP address followed by the name of the host, vhcalhxedb:

Save and close the editor.

Note: If Notepad asks you to create a new file you do not have enough permissions to save the file. Creating a new file will not alter the configuration as intended.

In order to change the XS Advanced users or if you want to check on the progress of your system during startup, you need connect to the server using an SSH console.

• If you are using a Windows computer, you will need to download an SSH client such as the PuTTY Installation Package.

  Convert the .pem key first, using PuTTYGen (downloaded with PuTTY installation package). This will generate a .ppk file. Save it in a secure folder.

  

  Back in PuTTY, go to Auth-> Select the .ppk you generated.

  

  In session, use vhcalhxedb as the address and click on Open to connect:

  

  Log in as root:

  

• If you are using an Apple computer, open a terminal (Finder -> Applications -> Terminal)

  Run the following command in the terminal, replacing the .pem file, username and IP by the one in your virtual machine:

  ssh -i /path/my-key-pair.pem root@vhcalhxedb
  

Once in the console, you will need to change the passwords for users XSA_DEV and XSA_ADMIN.

Switch to user hxeadm first and then log in to the SQL prompt with user SYSTEM:

hdbsql -i 90 -d systemdb -u SYSTEM

You will be prompted for a password. Enter the password you set up in the second step. Now, replace the password below by a password of your choice. Do not think too hard and avoid special characters, you will be prompted to change it upon your first log in using a graphical interface:

alter user XSA_ADMIN password HanaRocks17;
alter user XSA_DEV password HanaRocks17;

Like this:

Use command quit to exit the SQL console.

After the machine appears as active, it will take about 10 minutes before the services are available. If you have connected to the server using SSH or have downloaded the XS Command Line Interface from the Download Manager you can check the progress by logging in to the CLI and using the xs apps command.

sudo su - hxeadm
xs login -a https://localhost:39030 --skip-ssl-validation -u XSA_ADMIN

Note: You can optionally download the CLI using the download manager. You can get the download manager from the HANA Express download site after you register. Choose clients.zip to download it. If you downloaded the CLI and are connecting from your local computer, replace localhost with vhcalhxedb

As follows:

You will be prompted for your password and then for the space. This is the password you setup in the previous step. The space in this case will be SAP. Command xs apps will show you which services are ready:

Alternatively, you can check the Web IDE in URL https://vhcalhxedb:53075/ (using user XSA_DEV).

If you get an error message indicating that the certificate is self-signed, proceed to log in:

Note:The first time you use users XSA_DEV or XSA_ADMIN, you will be prompted to change the passwords.

If the service is still loading, you will get the following 503 Service Unavailable error message:

The instances in the Cloud Appliance Library have additional applications pre-installed and ready for you to use. If you are not planning on using them, you can free up resources from the Administration Cockpit:

In a separate incognito window, open URL https://vhcalhxedb:51015/ and log in with user XSA_ADMIN. Open the Application monitor:

You will see the applications that are currently running. You can stop, restart, check the logs and find out the URL from this interface too. If you will not be using, for example, the SHINE model or the Enterprise Architecture designer, you can stop them using the stop icon. You can turn them on again at any time with the Play icon: