Six Tips to Consider When Moving SAP Workloads to AWS

Michael Eidmann, Principal
May 5, 2021

Running SAP systems in the cloud can provide several benefits to users at every level of an organization. The wave of cloud adoption has allowed businesses to increase their speed to innovate, enable cloud security controls to protect organizational assets, and offer transformative opportunities for small, medium or large enterprises. Leveraging SAP solutions in the cloud, provides a platform for unlocking new value for an organization. For companies considering migrating their SAP landscape to the public cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), should be a prime candidate. AWS is the world’s largest public cloud provider with a resilient, global infrastructure and more than 150 native cloud services. Another AWS advantage is its strong relationship with SAP. Since 2011, the two companies have worked together on production deployments of SAP applications, platforms, and databases. Today, businesses of all sizes and across virtually every industry and geography are running their SAP landscapes, including multiple production environments, on AWS to simplify infrastructure management, improve time-to-market, lower costs, and unlocking new value for their enterprises.

Migrating from a legacy system to Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an important decision, and one that needs to be taken seriously as an organization will be moving their most essential business assets to a new hosting platform. Before diving into an AWS migration project, carefully evaluate if it makes good business sense in terms of cost, ROI, and competing IT priorities. To start with, consider what the long term operational and IT goals are. Is your enterprise looking to consolidate SAP assets in the public cloud to gain operational efficiency? Is it a risk mitigation move? Is it part of an SAP upgrade? Each will come with its own set of considerations. In addition, several unexpected and expensive challenges can arise throughout the migration process. Affecting both enterprise IT operations and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), these challenges can transform a practical and profitable project into a disruptive and daunting endeavor.

A key part of the process is likely to be choosing an experienced partner that can make the migration process seamless. However, if a company has an experienced SAP Basis or NetWeaver administrator, the guidance below will provide a few AWS-specific considerations relating to compute configurations, storage, security, and management that will be useful during migration planning.

1) Utilize AWS Launch Wizard

AWS Launch Wizard for SAP is a service that guides users through the sizing, configuration, and deployment of SAP applications on AWS, and follows AWS cloud application best practices. Utilizing the Launch Wizard reduces the time it takes to deploy SAP applications on AWS. By providing guided deployment steps aligned with SAP deployment patterns and uses SAP terminology, the tool creates a familiar experience for SAP users. Another great feature of the Launch Wizard is that it provides an estimated cost of deployment, which allows medications to resources and instantly view the updated cost. Overall, the Launch Wizard helps customers achieve faster time to value for provisioning and accelerates deployment of SAP applications by 2X. Being able to quickly launch SAP environments improves agility, and the ability to support new business initiatives.

2) Choose an AWS Region and Availability Zone

AWS Cloud computing resources are housed in highly available data center facilities. To provide additional scalability and reliability, these data center facilities are in different physical locations. These locations are categorized by regions and Availability Zones. Choose a region that is close to a company’s data center or corporate network will reduce network latency between systems running on AWS and systems and users on corporate networks.

Nevertheless, proximity alone is not the only factor to consider as cost varies by region. Choosing the wrong one could cost significantly more. Take advance of the AWS’ Price List API tool to assist with calculating the cost of every configuration made. For some regions, it’s not difficult to find a 30% or 70% price difference between AWS regions.

All SAP applications (SAP ERP, CRM, SRM, and so on) and systems (SAP DB, SAP CI, application servers) should be deployed in the same Availability Zone. If High Availability (HA) is a requirement, use of multiple Availability Zones may be preferable.

3) Follow Security Best Practices

Cloud security at AWS is the highest priority. In order to provide end-to-end security and end-to-end privacy, AWS builds services in accordance with security best practices, provides appropriate security features in those services, and documents how to use those features. In addition, AWS customers must use those features and best practices to architect an appropriately secure application environment. The foundation for security of an SAP environment on AWS is the use of Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) for providing the overall isolation. Amazon VPC includes security details that must be set up to enable proper access and restrictions for resources. Amazon VPC provides features that can be used to help increase and monitor the security for an organization’s VPC that include:

  • Security groups that act as a firewall, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level.
  • Network access control lists (ACLs) act as a firewall for associated subnets, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level.
  • Flow logs capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in a VPC.

AWS Security Hub allows one to centrally view and manage security alerts and provides a compliance rating for an environment compared to Best Practices security standards. Mitigating these Security Hub findings will ensure the AWS landscape is secure and protected.

4) Choose an Instance Type

AWS provides a wide selection of instance types optimized to fit different use cases. Instance types comprise varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity and gives enterprises the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for their applications. Each instance type includes one or more instance sizes, allowing resources to scale to the requirements of a target workload. SAP systems deployed on AWS that will require support from SAP Support and must be run on an EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) instance type that has been certified with SAP.

5) Map out Data Conversions

A successful data migration strategy in SAP should be backed by a detailed data conversion plan featuring information on data cleansing, mapping and conversion rules, adaption for new cloud workflows full scale testing and full data loading as well as data validation. Depending on the migration scope, an SAP landscape tools like SAP SUM DMO ((Database Migration Option) with Data Conversion move, backup/restore, database replication or CloudEndure can be used.

6) Partner with a Managed Services Provider

Partnering with a Managed Services Provider will help organizations understand all the SAP requirements to enable IT to plan and focus on driving additional value from SAP solutions. Traditionally, IT teams initially concentrate on keeping the lights on as well as never realizing the true value of SAP. The best Application Management Services (AMS) partner works as an extension of one’s own IT staff, concentrated on enabling teams or entire organizations to drive and deliver value-add SAP solutions. An SAP AMS partner will provide tailored solutions based on organizational needs. As business or IT requirement change, an Application Management Services partner can adapt to meet those demands. Work together to define a right-sized and right-shared delivery model for the specific requirements of the organization. This should positively impact ROI on SAP and IT investments. With a top AMS provider, clients get expert SAP assistance, in all functional or technical areas, and without any travel expenses. Services are simple to access, simple to work with, and readily available.

Answerthink has extensive experience helping companies migrate SAP to AWS. As an Advance AWS Consulting Partner our AWS team can deliver SAP solutions that renew and transform core SAP enterprise systems, accelerate implementation, and provide a platform for innovation and transformation with advanced analytics and business intelligence.

 

Contact us to learn more about Answerthink and our SAP experience.