Best Practice 2.4 – Use multiple
environments
Use multiple SAP environments to experiment, develop, and test your workload. Use increasing levels of controls as environments approach production to gain confidence your workload will operate as intended when deployed. Generally, a three-tier environment for development, test, and production is minimum for SAP landscapes.
Suggestion 2.4.1 - Use temporary environments for experimentation
Provide technology testing and developer teams with sandbox or temporary environments with minimized controls to enable experimentation and risk mitigation.
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AWS Documentation: AWS Launch Wizard for SAP
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SAP on AWS Blog: Infrastructure as Code Example: Terraform and SAP on AWS
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SAP on AWS Blog: Automate Start or Stop of Distributed SAP HANA systems using AWS Systems Manager
Suggestion 2.4.2 - Provide development environments to allow work in parallel and improved agility
Provide non-production environments to allow work in parallel, increasing development and test agility. Implement more rigorous controls in the environments approaching production to allow developers the necessary means for innovation. Generally, a three-tier environment for Development, Test and Production is minimum for SAP environments.
Suggestion 2.4.3 - Provide a consolidated test environment that replicates production as closely as possible to improve release quality
Test and staging environments should mirror as closely as possible the interfaces, security, resilience, and performance characteristics of your production environment to identify architectural and code interaction problems before being released. Consider shutting down secondary resources in clusters or scaling down (both horizontally and vertically) application server performance of this environment when not in use to improve landscape cost efficiency.
Suggestion 2.4.4 - Use infrastructure as code (IaC) and configuration management systems to deploy environments consistently
Use infrastructure as code (IaC) and configuration management systems to deploy environments that are configured consistent with the controls present in production to ensure systems operate as expected when deployed. Use tagging and resource groups to label and enhance environment metadata such that it can be used for automation and compliance purposes.
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AWS Documentation: AWS Launch Wizard for SAP
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SAP on AWS Blog: Infrastructure as Code Example: Terraform and SAP on AWS
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AWS Documentation: What are AWS Resource Groups?
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SAP on AWS Blog: Tagging Recommendations for SAP on AWS
Suggestion 2.4.5 - Turn off non-production environments when not in use
When environments are not in use, turn them off to avoid costs associated with idle resources (for example, development systems on evenings and weekends).
