Running both HANA Express Edition & SAP ABAP trial on a dedicated cloud server for less than € 35 a month

[Jan-WillemK]

Introduction

This blog describes the steps I took to install both an HANA Express Edition (HXE) instance and an SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP edition (NPL) in a very cost effective way.

I used to run a few virtual machines on my laptop, which was useful for some small development and training purposes. But as I wanted to do some shared development with a few of my colleagues, the need arose to have a system with common access. And as the Amazon (AWS) or Azure costs are considerable if you are running the system quite often, I wanted to have a look at other solutions.

I found out that Hetzner.de has an auction for servers that were "abandoned" by previous users. Hetzner offers those secondhand servers for a low price, and I was able to grab an I7-2600 with 32 Gb and 2x 1.5 Tb hdd for €34.57. Not bad, if I compare this price with what I used to pay for something similar at Amazon.

Getting a server and setting it up

First you have to get a machine, somewhere in the cloud. As I said, I used the auction at Hetzner. At the moment I write this blog they offer a nice machine for € 28.57 (Intel Core i7-2600  -  2x 3 TB  -  32 GB). Once you agree to the terms, you can see the server in their web-environment, and manage it from there. 



I choose to start the installation via VNC - selecting openSUSE 42.4 in English. Follow the normal setup for SUSE. I found this excellent blog. This blogis  quite useful, including the remarks. As mentioned in the blog, set the firewall and SSH services.



After the installation of SUSE, log in using a terminal (like PuTTY). I set a hostname for easy access and restarted the network with the following commands:

 sudo vi /etc/hostname 

 sudo vi /etc/hosts

 sudo rcnetwork restart

 

Installing the SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP instance

Finalize the installation and prepare the system for the ABAP installation using this blog and this blog.  Take care that you install the additional required software and take care you update to the new ASE license. I could repeat all steps, but that would only be repeating those blogs.

 

Installing the SAP HANA Express Edition (HXE)

First check the additional software dependencies as described in this tutorial. Then, follow the steps in this tutorial or this tutorial.

 

Finishing

Once you have completed the previous steps, you have a running SUSE system with both an ABAP and an HANA instance. Now it is time to change all standard password, and add some security to your system (if you hadn't done that already). Moreover, I found out that both instances can use quite a lot of processes, so I enlarged the maximum amount of processes that can be used with the following command:

vi /etc/security/limits.conf

On the clients I added the server name to the hosts-file, for easy access to the URL's calling on the server.

 

Conclusion

It is possible to have both the ABAP and the HANA instances running on one system, and cheaper than on an AWS or Azure system. That is the main advantage.

There are some disadvantages, though. The Amazon/Microsoft solutions are a bit more robust, and have an automated backup system. The solution described here has no backup in place (although it can be done with some additional work and for a few euro's per month more).

All in all I do like that I have both systems running on a quite cheap solution, and that I can share developments easy with my colleagues.