SAP Netweaver Salt formula

Salt formula to bootstrap and manage SAP Netweaver platforms.

Features

Currently the next SAP Netweaver components are available:

• ASCS instance
• ERS instance
• PAS instance
• AAS instance
• Database instance (this adds the required users, tables, views, etc to the current Hana database)

Besides that, the formula setups all of the pre requirements as:

• Hostnames
• Virtual addresses
• NFS mounts
• Shared disks
• SWAP partition space

The formula follows the best practices defined in the official SUSE documentation.

Disclaimer: the formula only works with SAP Hana as database.

Installation

The project can be installed in many ways, including but not limited to:

1. RPM
2. Manual clone

RPM

On openSUSE or SUSE Linux Enterprise you can just use the zypper system package manager:

zypper install sapnwbootstrap-formula

Important! This will install the formula in /usr/share/salt-formulas/states/netweaver. In case the formula is used in a masterless mode, make sure that the /usr/share/salt-formulas/states entry is correctly configured in the file_roots entry of the Salt minion configuration.

Depending on the patch level of the target system and the release cycle of this project, the package in the regular repository might not be the latest one. If you want the latest features, have a look in the test development repositories at SUSE's Open Build Service network:ha-clustering:sap-deployments:devel/sapnwbootstrap-formula.

Manual Installation

A manual installation can be done by cloning this repository:

git clone https://github.com/SUSE/sapnwbootstrap-formula

Important! This will not install the the formula anywhere where salt can find it. If the formula is used in a masterless mode, also make sure to copy the complete netweaver subdirectory to location defined in file_roots entry of your Salt minion configuration.

I. e.:

cd sapnwbootstrap-formula
cp -R netweaver /srv/salt

Important! The formulas depends on salt-shaptools package. Make sure it is installed properly if you follow the manual installation (the package can be installed as a RPM package too).

Usage

Pre-requirements

The formula has some hard dependencies and all of them must be in place for a successful netweaver deployment.

• In order to deploy a correct Netweaver environment a NFS share is needed (SAP stores some shared files there). The NFS share must have the folders sapmnt and usrsapsys in the exposed folder. It's a good practice the create this folder with the Netweaver SID name (for example /sapdata/HA1/sapmnt and /sapdata/HA1/usrsapsys). This subfolders content is removed by default during the deployment.

• Netweaver installation software (swpm) must be available in the system. To install the whole Netweaver environment with all the 4 components, the swpm folder, sapexe folder, Netweaver Export folder and HANA HDB Client folders must already exist, or be previously mounted when provided by external service, like NFS share. The netweaver.sls pillar file must be updated with all this information. Netweaver Export and HANA HDB Client folders must go in additional_dvds list. Check the pillar.example for more details.

• The optimal deployment requires 4 machines in the same network for each of the Netweaver instances (the DB instance can be installed anywhere after ASCS and ERS are installed).

• SAP Hana database must be up and running.

Find an example about all of the possible configurable options in the pillar.example file.

Configuration

Follow the next steps to configure the formula execution. After this, the formula can be executed using master/minion or masterless options. For further informations, please have a look to the Salt documentation.

1. Modify the top.sls file (by default stored in /srv/salt) including the netweaver entry.

   Here is an example to execute the Netweaver formula in all of the nodes:

   # This file is /srv/salt/top.sls
   base:
     '*':
       - netweaver
   

2. Customize the execution pillar file. Here an example of a pillar file for this formula with all of the options: pillar.example The pillar.example can be found either as a link to the file in the master branch or a file in the file system at /usr/share/salt-formulas/metadata/hana/pillar.example.

3. Set the execution pillar file. For that, modify the top.sls of the pillars (by default stored in /srv/pillar) including the netweaver entry and copy your specific netweaver.sls pillar file in the same folder.

   Here an example to apply the recently created netweaver.sls pillar file to all of the nodes:

   # This file is /srv/pillar/top.sls
   base:
     '*':
       - netweaver
   

4. Execute the formula.

   1. Master/Minion execution.

      salt '*' state.highstate

   2. Masterless execution.

      salt-call --local state.highstate

Important! The hostnames and minion names of the netweaver nodes must match the output of the hostname command.

Salt pillar encryption

Pillars are expected to contain private data such as user passwords required for the automated installation or other operations. Therefore, such pillar data need to be stored in an encrypted state, which can be decrypted during pillar compilation.

SaltStack GPG renderer provides a secure encryption/decryption of pillar data. The configuration of GPG keys and procedure for pillar encryption are desribed in the Saltstack documentation guide:

• SaltStack pillar encryption

• SALT GPG RENDERERS

Note:

• Only passwordless gpg keys are supported, and the already existing keys cannot be used.

• If a masterless approach is used (as in the current automated deployment) the gpg private key must be imported in all the nodes. This might require the copy/paste of the keys.

OBS Packaging

The CI automatically publishes new releases to SUSE's Open Build Service every time a pull request is merged into master branch. For that, update the new package version in _service and add the new changes in sapnwbootstrap-formula.changes.

The new version is published at:

• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/network:ha-clustering:sap-deployments:devel/sapnwbootstrap-formula
• https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/sapnwbootstrap-formula (only if the spec file version is increased)

License

See the LICENSE file for license rights and limitations.

Author

Xabier Arbulu Insausti (xarbulu@suse.com)

Reviewers

Pull request preferred reviewers for this project:

• Xabier Arbulu Insausti (xarbulu@suse.com)