SAP on AWS: 6 Cloud-Native Services to Enhance Your IaaS Strategy

When embarking on a critical application migration project to the public cloud, it can be tempting to simply replicate your on-premises applications using the lift-and-shift method. However, this approach does not fully capitalize on you SAP investments on AWS.

In reality, Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-native services can streamline your infrastructure and lower costs while maintaining a high level of availability. In this article, we’ll explore six cloud-native services that can elevate your SAP experience.

1.    AWS Key Management Service (KMS)

AWS KMS is designed for the creation and management of cryptographic keys, providing robust protection for every cloud resource. One key advantage of this service is its automatic key rotation, which occurs every 365 days or as frequently as you prefer, enhancing data security.

For SAP environments, KMS is employed to encrypt data whenever we deploy EC2 instances or disks that contain sensitive information. Additionally, we can integrate KMS with AWS Backup to ensure backups are also encrypted.

2.    AWS Network Load Balancer

This AWS-native service effectively distributes workloads across multiple servers. Its scalability allows it to handle significant traffic spikes, particularly during peak demand periods for SAP systems, ensuring optimal performance.

The Network Load Balancer is essential for maintaining high-availability SAP environments. It safeguards the front end by evenly distributing traffic across SAP application servers located in various AWS regions.

3.    AWS Certificate Manager (ACM)

AWS ACM simplifies the management of SSL/TLS certificates, allowing you to create, manage, and renew certificates seamlessly.

This service is particularly beneficial for SAP environments, which may comprise hundreds of servers requiring as many, if not more, certificates. By centralizing certificate management in the cloud, we ensure uninterrupted service and mitigate the risk of missing critical SSL certificate renewals.

4.    AWS Backup

As its name suggests, AWS Backup is a cloud-native service that facilitates the backup of EC2 instances and SAP databases, complete with encryption and scheduling features. You can define distinct keys for production and development environments, ensuring optimal security.

Notably, this service fully supports SAP HANA Platform Edition 2.0 databases via the AWS Backint Agent service.

5.    Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Amazon EFS is a storage solution tailored for Linux operating systems, allowing for the creation of replicas of Network File Storage (NFS). It supports both NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.0 protocols, and offers a shared file system that spans multiple availability zones for enhanced resilience. AWS EFS provides scalable storage that doesn’t require provisioning, making it effectively “unlimited.” Various EFS storage classes are available to optimize costs based on usage.

In the context of SAP, these service keys provide flexibility and high availability. This type of file system, which can be shared or configured as NFS across several SAP Linux servers, can store critical directories, including interface files and directories essential for HA cluster setups.

6.    AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) solution that executes code in response to events or on a schedule. You can program various triggers to initiate specific actions.

A practical application of AWS Lambda is in managing non-production SAP servers. For instance, it can automatically schedule the shutdown and startup of servers and their associated SAP applications, effectively reducing platform costs. Additionally, Lambda enhances incident responsiveness in monitoring scenarios

Incorporating AWS’s native cloud services enables you to maximize the operational efficiency of your SAP applications. oXya integrates Amazon services with DevOps tools like Terraform and Ansible. During technical architecture workshops with your team, oXya’s Cloud eXcellence team will showcase how to leverage these AWS cloud-native services to optimize costs. To learn more about our services and how we can assist you, reach out to our team of cloud architects today.

And here’s one more AWS cloud-native service to consider: how to use SAP GUI with Amazon AppStream 2.0.