Guided Exercise: Preparing Ansible Playbooks to Configure SAP Servers for SAP Installation

In this exercise, you access and use the lab environment, and browse the available resources.

Outcomes

You write a playbook so that all servers are ready to consume SAP HANA or SAP NetWeaver-based software.

As the student user on the workstation machine, use the lab command to prepare your system for this exercise.

This command ensures that the environment is configured correctly for creating your Ansible Playbooks in the following lab.

[student@workstation ~]$ lab start sap-baseconfig

In this course, you do not configure separate disks or a network in the lab environment, although it is common in a production environment.

1. Change to the ansible-files directory in your home directory:

   [student@workstation ~]$ cd ~/ansible-files
   

2. Create the group_vars/hanas file with the following content:

   ### If the hostname setup is not configured correctly
   #   you need set sap_ip and sap_domain.
   #   we use the full qualified domain name in the inventory
   #   so we can generate thes variables
   sap_hostname: "{{ inventory_hostname.split('.')[0] }}"
   sap_domain: "{{ inventory_hostname.split('.')[1:]| join('.') }}"
   
   ### redhat.sap_install.sap_general_preconfigure
   sap_general_preconfigure_modify_etc_hosts: true
   sap_general_preconfigure_fail_if_reboot_required: false
   sap_general_preconfigure_update: true
   sap_general_preconfigure_system_roles_collection: 'redhat.rhel_system_roles'
   
   ### redhat.sap_install.sap_hana_preconfigure
   sap_hana_preconfigure_update: true
   sap_hana_preconfigure_fail_if_reboot_required: false
   sap_hana_preconfigure_reboot_ok: true
   sap_hana_preconfigure_system_roles_collection: 'redhat.rhel_system_roles'
   

   With this configuration, you achieve the following outcomes:

   • You update name resolution according to SAP requirements on each server.

   • The playbook does not stop if a reboot is required.

   • You update the system and reboot if required at the end of the sap_hana_preconfigure role.

   • The roles from community.sap_install are forced to use the supproted redhat.rhel_system_roles instead of the unsupported fedora.linux_system_roles

3. Create the group_vars/s4hanas file with the following content:

   ### If the hostname setup is not configured correctly
   #   you need set sap_ip and sap_domain.
   #   we use the full qualified domain name in the inventory
   #   so we can generate thes variables
   sap_hostname: "{{ inventory_hostname.split('.')[0] }}"
   sap_domain: "{{ inventory_hostname.split('.')[1:]| join('.') }}"
   
   ### redhat.sap_install.sap_general_preconfigure
   sap_general_preconfigure_modify_etc_hosts: true
   sap_general_preconfigure_update: true
   sap_general_preconfigure_fail_if_reboot_required: false
   sap_general_preconfigure_reboot_ok: true
   sap_general_preconfigure_system_roles_collection: 'redhat.rhel_system_roles'
   
   ### redhat.sap_install.sap_netweaver_preconfigure
   sap_netweaver_preconfigure_fail_if_not_enough_swap_space_configured: false
   sap_hana_preconfigure_system_roles_collection: 'redhat.rhel_system_roles'
   

   With this configuration, you achieve the following outcomes:

   • You update DNS and the /etc/host file according to SAP requirements.

   • The playbook does not stop if a reboot is required.

   • You update the system and reboot if required.

   • Because you are installing a small lab system, you do not need to add a large swap space.

   • The roles from community.sap_install are forced to use the supproted redhat.rhel_system_roles instead of the unsupported fedora.linux_system_roles

4. Create the prepare-for-sap.yml playbook to prepare the HANA and NetWeaver servers:

   ---
   - name: Phase 3A - prepare for SAP HANA installation
     hosts: hanas
     become: true
   
     roles:
         - community.sap_install.sap_general_preconfigure
         - community.sap_install.sap_hana_preconfigure
   
   - name: Phase 4A - prepare for SAP NetWeaver installation
     hosts: s4hanas
     become: true
     roles:
         - community.sap_install.sap_general_preconfigure
         - community.sap_install.sap_netweaver_preconfigure
   

5. In the current version of the lab we have an outdated package repository. So we need to remove the compat-sap-c++-11 requirement from the latest role, because that was not available a year ago. To do so run the following command:

    sed -i 's/  - compat-sap-c++-11/  # compat-sap-c++-11/g' /home/student/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/sap_install/roles/sap_general_preconfigure/vars/RedHat_8.yml
   

6. Execute the prepare-for-sap.yml playbook:

   [student@workstation ansible-files]$ ansible-playbook prepare-for-sap.yml -v -K
   BECOME password: student
   ...output omitted...
   

   A description of the parameters:

   • -v: Enables debugging (more verbose output)

   • -K: Prompts for the sudo password