This page presents important concepts about running SAP on Google Cloud. This page assumes that you are familiar with SAP application architectures.
For more information about the benefits of Google Cloud for SAP, including customer testimonials, see the SAP on Google Cloud home page.
SAP on Google Cloud
Google Cloud has an ongoing partnership with SAP to provide SAP-certified infrastructure for all of your SAP systems. You can even choose Google Cloud to power SAP cloud offerings, like SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, RISE with SAP, and the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) itself.
Whether you are responsible for the core, mission-critical SAP applications in a large-scale enterprise or for similarly critical SAP applications in a small enterprise, Google Cloud can help you leverage your SAP data in innovative ways, all while running your SAP applications more reliably, securely, and cost-effectively.
Some of the advantages of running SAP on Google Cloud include:
- Google's private fiber network, which provides a global, secure, and scalable foundation for your SAP deployments and lets you optimize for performance or cost.
- Automation tools, such as Terraform or Cloud Deployment Manager, and flexible deployment options that help you move your SAP environment to the cloud and to deploy at your own pace.
- A flexible virtualized architecture that lets you resize your machines as your enterprise grows and scale your infrastructure to match the variations in your workloads, so you can avoid paying for what you don't need.
- Some of the largest SAP-certified virtual machines (VMs) on the market.
- Built-in features, such as Compute Engine live migration and automatic restart, that minimize downtime for infrastructure maintenance.
- Opportunities to innovate with the Google Cloud databases, data analytics, smart analytics, AI and machine learning, and data integration capabilities.
SAP-certified solutions and infrastructure
Google Cloud works closely with SAP to ensure that the Google Cloud infrastructure are certified by SAP for all of your SAP solutions, ensuring high performance and reliability.
For the full list of SAP-certified solutions, see:
SAP software licenses on Google Cloud
SAP runs on Google Cloud under a bring-your-own-license (BYOL) model.
Bring Your Own Software and License
With the BYOL model, you must obtain your SAP software licenses from SAP or an SAP reseller, and ensure that you are in compliance with SAP's licensing terms and agreements. Google Cloud does not sell or otherwise provide licenses for SAP software.
SAP Trial and Developer Licenses
SAP provides access to an online repository of their latest products and solutions called the SAP Cloud Appliance Library. SAP Cloud Appliance Library is a fully automated deployment library that customers can use to rapidly deploy new SAP software on Google Cloud for non-production scenarios. Many of the SAP solutions are provided with a free trial or developer edition license.
Migrating SAP landscapes to Google Cloud
If you are considering moving your SAP landscape to Google Cloud, the Google Cloud Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP) can help you get started.
RAMP includes a free assessment that can give you a count of your SAP systems, including details like the following that you can use to estimate the Google Cloud infrastructure that you need to run SAP:
- CPU type and core count
- Memory amount
- Operating system
- Storage amount
For more information, see Google Cloud Rapid Assessment & Migration Program.
Compliance and sovereign controls
Google Cloud enables you to run your SAP workloads in compliance with data residency, access control, support personnel or regulatory requirements. This is delivered through Assured Workloads - a service that helps you run secure and compliant workloads on without compromising the quality of your cloud experience.
For more information, see Compliance and sovereign controls for SAP on Google Cloud.
Managing your environment on Google Cloud
Google Cloud uses a self-service model in which you, or a managed-service provider that you hire, configures, deploys, and controls your Google Cloud infrastructure and services. The following figure displays the services that are managed by Google Cloud and the services that are managed by you or your services partner. For a full list of products that Google Cloud offers, see Products and services.
For a list of partner service providers, see the Google Cloud Partner Directory.
SAP Support on Google Cloud
If your SAP systems experience problems while running on Google Cloud, you can open a support ticket with either SAP Support or Cloud Customer Care.
If you open a ticket with SAP and the root of the problem appears to be in the Google Cloud infrastructure, SAP Support routes the ticket to Customer Care. If you open a ticket with Google Cloud and the root of the problem appears to be in the SAP systems, Customer Care directs you to open a ticket with SAP Support.
To get support from Google Cloud for your SAP deployments, you need one of the following Customer Care plans:
- Enhanced Support
- Premium Support
- A support plan that was previously accepted, but is no longer marketed by Google Cloud
To receive support from SAP, your SAP deployment on Google Cloud must meet SAP certification requirements and you must be subscribed to one of the required Customer Care plans.
For more information, see:
- Getting support for SAP on Google Cloud
- Cloud Customer Care portfolio
- SAP Note 2456406 - SAP on Google Cloud Platform: Support Prerequisites (requires an SAP account)
- Certifications for SAP applications on Google Cloud
- Certifications for SAP HANA on Google Cloud
Deploying SAP on Google Cloud
When you deploy SAP solutions on Google Cloud, you first provision the Google Cloud infrastructure. After the infrastructure is in place, you install your SAP systems.
There are several ways to deploy SAP solutions on Google Cloud.
Manual deployment
When you deploy your SAP solutions manually, you are in complete control of the configuration and deployment of both the Google Cloud infrastructure and your SAP systems.
You can deploy SAP solutions on Google Cloud manually by using any one of the following interfaces:
- The Google Cloud console
- The Google Cloud CLI
- The Google Cloud APIs
After the Google Cloud infrastructure is ready, you install the SAP systems by following the SAP product documentation, which is available from the SAP Help Portal.
Automated deployment
You can use Terraform configuration files or Cloud Deployment Manager configuration templates that Google Cloud provides for SAP solutions to automate the deployment of SAP-certified Google Cloud infrastructure. For SAP HANA deployments, Terraform or Deployment Manager can also install SAP HANA.
You can also use the Guided Deployment Automation tool in Workload Manager to configure and deploy SAP systems.
When you use the automated deployment options from Google Cloud, the resulting deployments conform to SAP certification requirements, as well as both SAP and Google Cloud best practices for OS, disk configuration and sizing, and database clustering and installation.
The Terraform and Deployment Manager configuration files are intended to quickly deploy example SAP systems. To adapt the files to your requirements, you can fork, alter, and enhance them. For more information, see Overview of automating SAP deployments on Google Cloud
SAP Cloud Appliance Library
You can use the SAP Cloud Appliance Library to automatically deploy a wide variety of SAP solutions on Google Cloud. The SAP solutions are subject to SAP's licensing terms, which provide trial, educational, and developer options, among others.
The Google Cloud infrastructure that is deployed by the SAP Cloud Appliance Library can incur charges, so be sure to clean up your deployments when they are no longer needed.
Google Cloud Marketplace
The Marketplace includes SAP-specific offerings from a variety of Google Cloud partners that deploy infrastructure and solutions. For more information, see Google Cloud Marketplace.
Deployment options by SAP solution
| SAP & Database Solution | Deployment options |
|---|---|
| SAP S/4HANA | Terraform or Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment Workload Manager Guided Deployment Automation3 SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP BW/4HANA | Terraform or Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP Business Suite | Terraform or Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP HANA | Terraform or Deployment Manager2 Manual deployment SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP BusinessObjects BI | Manual deployment SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA | Manual deployment SAP Cloud Appliance Library |
| SAP Business One, version for MSSQL | Manual deployment |
| SAP ASE | Terraform or Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment |
| SAP MaxDB | Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment |
| IBM Db2 for SAP | Terraform or Deployment Manager1 Manual deployment |
Table notes:
Evaluating SAP workloads
To automate continuous validation checks for your SAP workloads that run on Google Cloud, you can use Workload Manager. Workload Manager is a service that allows you to automatically scan and evaluate your SAP workloads against best practices from SAP, Google Cloud, and OS vendors. This helps improve the quality, performance, and reliability of your SAP workloads.
For more information, see Product overview in the Workload Manager documentation.
Finding a partner for SAP on Google Cloud
Partners can help you move to, build on, and work in the cloud. Both Google Cloud Consulting Services and the many trusted partner services have the SAP and Google Cloud expertise to help you assess, plan, migrate, operate, and optimize your SAP landscapes on Google Cloud.
Google Cloud Partners
Trusted Google Cloud partners are available to help you migrate to, build on, and work in the cloud. Some global services partners, such as Accenture, Atos, Deloitte, and HCL, have created Google Cloud-specific business units to help customers migrate key workloads and applications to Google Cloud.
Partners also offer managed services for SAP environments on Google Cloud, including services such as account and resource administration, OS administration and patching, backup and recovery, and SAP Basis services.
To find the partners that have the specializations and expertise to meet your needs, search our global network of Google Cloud Partners.
Google Professional Services for SAP
Google Cloud Professional Services can provide you with the experts who can help you assess, plan, deploy and optimize your SAP systems on Google Cloud.
Services and solutions for SAP offered by Google Cloud Professional Services
Cloud assessment services – Advisory services to help you develop an efficient and effective plan for your cloud adoption journey. Typical services include total cost of ownership, technical, security and compliance, and licensing.
Proof-of-concept services – Services to help you test SAP on Google Cloud. For example: SAP ECC migration to SAP HANA or SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Warehouse (BW) migration to SAP HANA or SAP BW/4HANA, SAP OS/DB migrations, new SAP solution implementation.
Migration services – Services to migrate existing SAP environments or systems to Google Cloud. For example: all-on-Google Cloud SAP migrations, hybrid SAP migrations, single SAP system migrations, disaster recovery.
Packaged solutions – Bundled software and service offerings from SAP Partners that combine SAP software, licenses, implementation, and managed services on Google Cloud.
ISV software solutions – Partner software solutions for the migration, integration, and operation of SAP solutions on Google Cloud.
Training and education
If you are new to Google Cloud and want to try out some of the Google Cloud products and services, see Quickstarts and videos at Getting Started with Google Cloud. These are not specific to SAP.
For training about Google Cloud that is a little more in depth, see Google Cloud training.
If you already have some experience with Google Cloud and want that experience recognized, become Google Cloud Certified.
If you are interested in getting hands-on experience with a wider variety of products, check out:
SAP also offers tutorials for SAP on Google Cloud. See the Tutorial Navigator on the SAP Developer website.
For more information
For more information about SAP on Google Cloud, see
SAP on Google Cloud.
If you are familiar with AWS or Microsoft Azure, the following topics map their
services to similar services on Google Cloud: