Availability of Managed HANA Service in SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry

[bmcdonn2]

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to inquire about the availability of the managed-hana service in the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry environment. I've found a few references to the service but have had difficulty accessing the service within my productive CF account.

First off, here are the references to the service in question:

1. SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01: New Developer Features - I believe this is where the service was first announced. The service in question is described in the section Instance Manager. At the time of the announcement (April 2017), it seemed that the service was only available in the on-premise XSA runtime but that it would be expanded to SAP Cloud Platform in the future. Is it just that, nearly 2 years later, this service is still not available in SAP Cloud Platform?
2. Set up and Use an Application-Managed Instance - This is the documentation on how to setup an instance of the service. The documentation implies that Cloud Foundry can be used but I have not seen it available in my cf marketplace.

So with that in mind, my goal is to create a service instance of managed-hana for use in a multi-tenant application deployed on SAP Cloud Platform in the Cloud Foundry environment. I currently use the HANA Service with a combination of schemas and statically created hdi-containers. The hope is that the managed-hana service can be used to isolate tenants where each tenant will have their own HDI container.

What I've found is that there is apparently no way to access the managed-hana service within my Cloud Platform account. As I mentioned earlier, I cannot located in my CF marketplace. I've also checked on the entitlements in my global account and cannot find a matching service there either.

I'm thinking it might have something to do with the service brokers I have setup in my CF account but I can't find any documentation on how to create a service broker that has the managed-hana service available.

In the meantime, I have developed a method to replicate the functionality covered by this service that is sufficient but if I've learned anything over the years, it's that it's also best to stick with the standards if possible. Having identified managed-hana as the standard, I'm trying my best to follow SAP's lead.

I appreciate any information anyone can provide on this question.

Thanks,

Brian

[johannes_scheerer · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

you found a gap that we indeed intended to close some time ago.

Meanwhile, we re-evaluated the instance manager concept. Our conclusion is that it should be offered in a more general way. Therefore, we will extend the functionality and, only when we are finished with this change, we will make it available on SAP Cloud Platform. The current plan is to have this available later this year.

Best regards,

Johannes.

[bmcdonn2 · Accepted solution]

Johannes,

Thank you for your response. I'm glad to know that I can stop chasing the idea that something standard currently exists and look forward to when this functionality becomes available. Until then, I think my custom solution should work.

Thanks!

Brian

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi Brian,

Have you read this blog already?

Best regards,
Ivan

[bmcdonn2]

Ivan,

I did see that blog and it is actually the primary reason I am posing this question. The blog discusses how to distinguish tenants at runtime by diagramming how individual tenants are separated into individual HDI containers. The application itself accesses these HDI containers using a Dynamic Instance Mapping service. The problem is, no details are ever provided for how to implement the Dynamic Instance Mapping service. I discovered the manged-hana service while trying to research an implementation but I cannot find how it can be activated within the SAP Cloud Foundry Cloud Foundry Environment. This is why I posed the question.

If you have any information on how to implement this dynamic mapping that is or is not the managed-hana service than I welcome the information.

Thanks,

Brian

[Ivan-Mirisola]

Hi Brian,

I believe the best explanation on how AppRouter works in the sense of tenant extraction is described here. You may also be interested on more examples of tenant host patter as described here.

Please give a more concrete example of what is it that you are trying to achieve with multi-tenancy. I believe it would make it easier for everyone else to understand.

Best regards,
Ivan

[bmcdonn2]

Ivan,

In the interest of providing complete information on this ticket, every suggestion you've made relates to tenant discrimination within a multi-tenant context. It was my mistake to not indicate on the original ticket that I've already solved that aspect of the multi-tenant question. That is, I am already using the approuter with different routes to establish a tenant context within my application. The primary focus of the question then is how to use that information to dynamically select an HDI container. I have a home-grown solution but my research turned up a potentially standard offering which would be the preferred solution if I could gain access to it.

Johannes provided me with that answer stating that such a service was originally intended to fill that role but that they have reconsidered how to apply it. Given this, there is currently a gap in the functionality. I intend to fill that gap with a custom solution until a standard solution is provided.

Thanks,

Brian