Configuring Instana for monitoring SAP systems
@Padmini Krishnamurthy @Sunjit Tara
The SAP system has multiple functions to manage complex business processes and gain real-time insights. The SAP system maintains a complex architecture and hence monitoring is challenging. Thanks to Instana for its full stack observability solution. In the Accelerate observability for SAP using Instana blog, various aspects of monitoring SAP systems and its roadmap is discussed. This blog covers how to configure Instana for monitoring SAP systems. More about the capabilities and features will be discussed in the upcoming blogs.
Configuring SAP ABAP sensor
You can configure SAP ABAP sensor for both remote and local monitoring without modifying the SAP system. Both remote and local monitoring provides the same set of metrics. But, local monitoring gives a more comprehensive view including the underlying infrastructure, associated processes, and stack information.
ABAP sensor uses the sapJCo library to connect to the SAP system and pull the metrics. So the sapJCo library is required for configuration. Due to license restrictions from SAP, you need to download the dependency library by using the SAP license and provide it to the sensor in the configuration.yaml file under the section libpath.
All the configurations are done in the agent configuration file <agent-install-dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml.
Configuring remote monitoring
The SAP host is configured remotely with the standard connection requirements along with the jco library location.
Add the following changes in the agent configuration file and it supports the multi-instance scenario as well.
com.instana.plugin.sap.abap:
remote:
- host: 'host-1'
sysnr: '30'
client: '200'
user: 'USER1'
password: 'password'
lang: 'en'
availabilityZone: 'SAP ABAP Remote monitoring'
pool_capacity: '10'
libpath: <INSERT_SAP_JCO_LIBRARY_LOCATION>
poll_rate: 5 # seconds
. . .
The following figure shows the typical remote monitoring view of ABAP sensors from the infrastructure. The agent is configured to connect to four different SAP systems.
Figure 1. Remote monitoring view of ABAP sensors
To view the metrics associated with the underlying SAP system, click Open Dashboard.
Figure 2. Dashboard view
A dedicated dashboard for the ABAP system shows the summary of all the instances associated and monitored on Instana.
Figure 3. Dashboard for the ABAP system
Configuring local monitoring
The SAP host is configured locally with a standard connection requirements along with the jco library location. In the local monitoring configuration, the local tag is used instead of remote. The host key is not required during local connection as it always picks up the loopback address as usual.
com.instana.plugin.sap.abap:
local : #multiple configurations supported
- sysnr: '72'
client: '100'
user: 'User1'
password: 'password'
lang: 'en'
pool_capacity: '10'
libpath: <INSERT_SAP_JCO_LIBRARY_LOCATION>
poll_rate: 60 # seconds
Local monitoring gives a view from the infrastructure which includes the host and the process information with its statistics.
In the local monitoring, SAP sensor is stacked to the host and it is associated with the underlying sapstartsrv process and its metrics.
Figure 4. Local monitoring
A typical infrastructure view for local monitoring dashboard is shown in the following figure which associates the sapstartsrv process to the ABAP sensor to provide complete end to end stack.
Figure 5. Infrastructure view for local monitoring dashboard
Conclusion
This blog covers configuring ABAP sensor for remote and local monitoring and how metrics are collected and showcased in local and remote configurations. A sequence of blog posts will be introduced to further explore the metrics dashboard and their practical applications to simplify the life of a SAP administrator.
Reference
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/instana/blogs/vipin-m-v/2024/06/26/configuring-instana-for-monitoring-sap-systems