Solman 7.2 @AWS "Free Trial" - what costs to expect and why?

[IngoPfeiffer]

Hi

I am supporting a SAP-customer on Solman-topics and we are looking at potentially starting the AWS-CAL trial for Solman 7.2 but would appreciate some input regarding costs for decision making from those of you who have already gained some experiences. I have studied quite some material available here at SCN and from SAP and list my conclusions and questions below. Looking forward to your feedback and answers.

1) SAP instructs to create an AWS-account of type AWS Free Tier and with Basic Support -> this would according to my understanding mean no cost for AWS for 12 months.

Detailed info about AWS Free tier to be found at: https://aws.amazon.com/free/?nc2=h_mo and https://aws.amazon.com/free/faqs/

Q1 Do the features being packaged into this AWS Free tier allow complete deployment of the SolMan 7.2 CAL instance or do you need to make use of billable features (either as necessity or as "usage gets more convenient"-feature)? My impression from discussions here at SCN is that the latter might be the case (e.g. sizing influences costs, EBS (?) or Static IP are to be paid)...!? --> what is your experience and choice of options and effect on costs?

2) The suspending of the instance reduces costs.

Q2 What features are continuing to cost while the instance is closed for use? What is the related cost for and can it be influenced/minimized in any way?

The following discussions give hints regarding extra cost asked about in Q1&Q2,

http://scn.sap.com/thread/3865854

http://scn.sap.com/message/16524045#16524045

3) SAP offers the CAL SolMan for 90 days for free.

Q3 What are the costs to continue using the AWS-based instance after day 90? Did anyone discuss this with SAP already?

I hope those of you who have gathered experiences are willing to share them.

Best regards - Ingo

PS - SAP states in the third FAQ at (), that "Each of the offered trial solutions are being provisioned in Amazon AWS and use different instance sizes. For each of the trial offerings we created a “Getting Started” guide, which outlines the used instance sizes and the associated costs.In addition you will also see estimated costs, which is calculated based on the current hourly rates, when you start the instance for your trial."

I cannot find this info in the Solman 7.2 CAL Getting Started Guide available at the link below and I wonder if anyone got hold of this info (relates back to my Q1)

https://caldocs.hana.ondemand.com/caldocs/help/Getting%20Started%20with%20SAP%20Solution%20Manager%2...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ingo,

Unfortunately I can't answer all your questions, but I can share my recent experiences in setting up SSM72 in SAP CAL:

First of all I have followed the documentation which is in Evan Stoddard's blog "sap-solution-manager-72-coming-soon-to-sap-cal".

In my experience you will be forced to use the r3.2xlarge instance for Linux as the minimum instance when you create a SSM72 instance in SAP CAL.

Unfortunately this instance is no part of the free tier AWS. So you will be charged for about 1.71 USD (Region US-East-1) or 1.80 USD (Region EU-West-1) per hour of EC2 usage.

Quote from Amazon Web Services (AWS Case 1639905721):

"As per our Free Tier Terms, the use of r3.2xlarge instance is not covered for use under free tier. Only a t2.micro Linux or Windows Instance is covered for use under Free Tier. In addition, you are able to utilize up to 30GB of EBS Storage Volume Space under Free Tier."

End Quote

I have raised some threads about this subject:

3863984, 3865373, 3865854 and 3867560.

Hope this will clarify somehow.

Kind regards,

Frans Metselaar

[IngoPfeiffer · Accepted solution]

Thanks Frans. That answers partly my Q1 :-)...

I then assume when suspending the instance, the 1,80 USD will not be billed. Do you have any additional features in use at AWS that add to the bill, either only when activated or permanently? Do you have any further conclusion from the discussion in your thread 3865854 ??

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Ingo,

Here it becomes some misty for me. I'm certainly not an experienced user of the AWS and certainly not in combination with SAP CAL. And it is possible I misinterpret the information.

My perception is the costs increases although I had manually suspended the SAP CAL instances. It is unclear to me what I can / should do at AWS site to stop the charging.

About thread 3865854 I have had answers, but as I said, in my opinion t is not possible to use the free tier for SSM72 in SAP CAL.

Kind regards,

Frans 

[TomCenens]

Hi Ingo

Sorry for the late reply (you requested me to check this thread out which I totally forgot until I saw a post which included the customer name you referred me to in our earlier conversation).

The indicative cost is the running cost per hour (rough indication). This doesn't include fixed cost like disk space usage, elastic ip address usage). When you've got data on a disk on Amazon, they cannot rent the same space to someone else hence you get a fixed cost, same for the IP address, you keep it (it's useful, it comes in handy) so you pay for the usage.

You can however very much limit the cost by keeping the server down when it's not in use. You can control this using SAP CAL dashboard or you could also go onto Amazon AWS and do it there (even on a server level, you've got root access so you can manually stop DB, stop SAP etc). SAP CAL dashboard will (unless enhanced by now) just stop the server. It won't stop the application(s) first.

Amazon AWS - EC2 console also offers you a view on the costs so you can get more information there once you have run the instance for X period of time to get a sense of what costs what.

From a SAP Partner perspective, we've been using Amazon AWS for a long period now and we can control the cost to be as low as a couple hundred of dollars (stop/starting the server and applications when we really need them and not spending too much time on it) to bills up to thousands of dollars when we run something 24/7 and people are working on it all the time.

When the instance is stopped, you're not paying for the running cost. That doesn't mean when no one is logged on or the CPU is not doing much, it's really when the instance on Amazon AWS is in a stopped state.

Hope this helps.

Best regards

Tom

[TomCenens]

Suspend in SAP CAL = stop instance in Amazon AWS

[estoddard]

Hello all:

Normally, when an instance is suspended via the SAP CAL instance list's Operations controls, the hourly cost should cease from the AWS side, save for some very small costs for the hard drive footprint. It is not recommended to suspend from the AWS side, according to the SAP CAL team.

For this initial 7.2 SP01 version, we are not yet providing the possiblity to continue past the 90-day free trial, as this is ramp the-up version of the software. We will be updating this solution with the latest 7.2 and SAP HANA patches and corrections as we get closer to general availability, and then the possibility of extension will be available.

This first instance is intended for the testing and evaluation of the content activation process, which is a key activity in moving from 7.1 to 7.2. We are in the process of creating a newer version that will have the SAP S/4HANA solution package content, this will be available in the next weeks.