Documentation Update: Service Plans and Initial Setup for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry Runtime

[Petr_Gnatenko]

Introduction

Managing entitlements on SAP BTP can be somewhat challenging, especially if you're new to the process. For SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime, it may be even more complicated because the necessary steps vary depending on the service plan you want to use and on the commercial model of your global account.

The latest platform update introduced some improvements which give you more flexibility in managing entitlements for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime (for details, see Entitlement Management Improvements for Standard Plan). We decided to use this chance to revisit our documentation related to the initial setup of SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime and to its service plans. The updated documentation not only incorporates the latest changes in the entitlement management for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime, but also brings clarity to how the setup process works overall. It provides various levels of detail, ranging from a general overview to step-by-step instructions for both the SAP BTP cockpit and the SAP BTP command line interface (btp CLI).

This post is not going to retell the content of the documentation. Instead, it's going to focus on explaining its structure and the logic behind it, making it easier to use and navigate and highlighting the most important parts.

Service Plans and Metering for Cloud Foundry Runtime

Some time ago, we published the Service Plans and Metering for Cloud Foundry Runtime article to help our users understand how the plans listed in the SAP Discovery Center correspond to what they find in the SAP BTP cockpit. It's a good place to start, because the article gives a general overview of the service plans for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime. We've updated it to reflect the new setup and added links to the new setup instructions. Let's take a look at some of the things that you can find here.

Interactive Diagram

In the Service section, there's a diagram detailing the plans standard and free in the consumption-based and the subscription-based commercial models. This diagram is now interactive: just hover over any rectangular node of the diagram to see its description and select it to follow the link with more information.

Interactive diagram

If you select a node in the Service Plan (SAP BTP Cockpit) or Environment Plan (SAP BTP Cockpit) columns, you'll go straight to the corresponding step-by-step setup instruction. For example, if you select the free (Environment) node, you'll go to Assigning Free Service Plan with Runtime Memory Quota for Cloud Foundry Runtime.

Not sure what is meant by "service plan" and "environment plan"? Expand the diagram captions to find a detailed explanation with screenshots.

Diagram captions (collapsed)

Next time you refer to the article, you can keep the captions collapsed so that they don't get in your way.

Tables with Service Plan Descriptions

Underneath the diagram, there are two tables in Service Plans. Each of the tables contains descriptions of the SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime plans available in a particular commercial model. You'll probably only need one of these tables, so you can collapse the one that you don't need.

Service plan tables (Table 1 collapsed, Table 2 expanded)

For plans standard and free, there are now links to the corresponding setup instructions. These instructions are more high-level than the ones linked to in the diagram (more on that later).

Service Specifics

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to the Service Specifics section, which explains how you can estimate billable consumption of runtime memory for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime.

In addition to naming the parameters that influence billable consumption, the section also includes brief explanations about how to set these parameters when deploying an app or change them if the app is already deployed. To access these explanations, expand the collapsible segments in the section.

Parameter explanations (segment about setting parameters collapsed, segment about changing parameters expanded)

Initial Setup Guide

We've re-written the Initial Setup article and added a lot of sub-articles that are completely new. This entire part of the documentation focuses on assigning entitlements to a subaccount and creating an instance of the Cloud Foundry runtime environment (which simultaneously creates a Cloud Foundry org) in the subaccount. Further steps related to administrating the Cloud Foundry org are out of the scope of this guide, because they are already well described in other parts of the SAP BTP documentation. You can find the links to this documentation under Next Steps.

You'll notice that there are a lot of sub-articles under Initial Setup, but the good news is that you don't have to read them all. You just need to narrow down the parts that are relevant for you based on the type of your global account, the commercial model you use, and the service plan you want. The articles are also structured to give increasingly more detailed information the further you go down the hierarchy, so you can stop at the level that's detailed enough for you.

Let's take a closer look and make it easier to decide which parts of this documentation would be relevant in your particular case, according to the criteria mentioned above.

Global Account Types and Commercial Models

This one's simple. First, choose the sub-article based on which type of global account you use: enterprise or trial.

For enterprise accounts, the plans for the consumption-based model and for the subscription-based model are listed separately. For the plans standard and free, there are links to the corresponding setup instructions. For the plans build-runtime and build-code, there are links to the documentation of the corresponding offerings.

For trial accounts, there's only the trial plan and the corresponding setup instruction. This documentation can be useful if you want to set up the Cloud Foundry environment in subaccounts that you manually create in addition to the one that's automatically created when you first log in to your trial account.

Service Plans

Last but not least, we have instructions for setting up the Cloud Foundry environment in a subaccount with a particular plan. The overall process is very similar in all cases; however, there are subtle differences that you need to take into account. The documentation already includes all of these small details, so you can simply follow the instruction that is relevant for your chosen scenario.

Tip: If you're not sure which version of the instructions for the standard plan to follow (for instance, because your global account uses a hybrid between different commercial models), take a look at the collapsible segment in Standard Plan for Cloud Foundry Runtime.

Segment about determining the commercial model used for the standard plan (collapsed)

The instructions come in two levels of granularity that are explained below.

High-Level Instructions

The high-level instructions, such as Standard Plan for Cloud Foundry Runtime (Subscription-Based), describe the end-to-end process of enabling Cloud Foundry runtime environment in a subaccount with a particular plan. The procedure generally includes assigning a service plan to a subaccount and creating a Cloud Foundry environment instance.

These articles tell you what to do, but not how to do it. They are suitable for more experienced users who don't need click-level instructions or for someone who wants to get an overview of the whole process. The links to these articles are included in the service plan tables in Service Plans and Metering for Cloud Foundry Runtime which we discussed earlier.

Step-by-Step Instructions

The step-by-step instructions, such as Enabling Standard Plan for Cloud Foundry Runtime (Consumption-Based), provide a very detailed description of how to do the tasks required to enable the Cloud Foundry environment in a subaccount with a particular plan. The links to these articles are used in the interactive diagram in Service Plans and Metering for Cloud Foundry Runtime which we discussed earlier.

There are two tasks for each plan. One task is performed by the global account administrator, and another - by the subaccount administrator. It might be the case that both of these role collections are assigned to the same user (for example, in a trial account) but the general assumption is that these tasks are performed by different users. This is why the setup process for each plan is split into two self-contained procedures.

For each of the tasks, there are two versions of the procedure, depending on where you prefer to work: in the SAP BTP cockpit or in the btp CLI. Just expand the instruction for your preferred interface and follow the steps!

Two versions of a step-by-step instruction (SAP BTP cockpit version collapsed, btp CLI version expanded)

In the instructions for the btp CLI, each of the steps is initially presented as a short description, which can be expanded for more information. This way, the entire procedure is scannable at a glance, but you can always drill down and get more details about a particular step.

Step-by-step instruction for btp CLI (step 3 expanded, other steps collapsed)

The step-by-step instructions include all the relevant links to other parts of the SAP BTP documentation that you might need, including the links to the documentation describing the next steps.

Conclusion

With the complete overhaul of the Service Plans and Metering for Cloud Foundry Runtime article and the Initial Setup part of the documentation for SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime, we focused on a relatively small but important area of enabling the Cloud Foundry runtime environment with a particular service plan and described it in as much detail as possible.

We wanted this content to be comprehensive, but at the same time easy to follow and understand. If you have any comments or suggestions, you can leave them directly on the SAP Help Portal using the commenting function. We value your feedback and use it to improve our documentation.

Did you find this kind of documentation breakdown useful? Would you like to see more of such content in the future? Let me know in the comments!