Through several initiatives of our SAP S/4HANA Customer Care and Regional Implementation Group, we’ve noticed that our hands-on SAP Cloud Appliance Library (CAL) appliance templates have been well received since 2020.

There was an extensive blog provided by Lars Rueter about our previous templates, which you can find here: https://blogs.sap.com/2020/09/23/learning-environment-for-sap-s-4hana-system-conversions/

As we want to provide you with hands-on environments which are up to date, so you can test our latest improvements and tooling, we have decided to create new improved environments on higher release versions.

Let me first clarify some confusion I’ve recently noticed by several openSAP course participants. There has been a renaming recently in our SAP CAL. Appliance Templates is the new name for what we used to call solutions before. Appliances is the new name for what used to be called instances.

We have three new appliance templates available for you:

• The first template contains an SAP ERP system on initial status without required configurations to start a conversion to SAP S/4HANA
• The second template contains the SAP ERP system with pre-configuration already executed such as corrections of Finance inconsistencies and preparation of Customer Vendor Integration (CVI)
• The third template provides the SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS01 system right after conversion without required follow-up configurations such as for SAP Fiori or embedded analytics

Why would you want to make use of those templates?

• Typical use cases include courses, inhouse trainings, customer workshops and personal education
• You can very easily create your own appliances based on those templates and have your own system available within just around one hour

Ok, now that I’ve got your attention and interest, what is required on top?

• You will need to have an account with a cloud infrastructure provider such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure.
• There is a free trial license available for the SAP licensing parts, but you will still have to pay for the infrastructure usage to your cloud provider, which is typically around 1 to 4 USD per hour depending on your contract.
• For a system conversion you need to perform activities that require a background in SAP Basis, SAP Finance, SAP Logistics and ABAP. Therefore, a system conversion is typically performed by several people. However, by providing three appliance templates at different stages of the conversion, it is possible to not have the full set of skills for working with the appliances.
• An S-User is needed for the SAP Support Portal for some activities, similarly as it would be required in a real-life conversion.

In our upcoming 10 Steps to SAP S/4HANA bootcamps (https://blogs.sap.com/2021/09/07/10-steps-to-s-4hana-for-sap-customers/) we are planning to make use of those SAP CAL appliance templates.

If you are participating in one of those bootcamps you will run through the required steps for a conversion, and we have also structured the exercises accordingly to the different skillsets required during a project.

Independent of those bootcamps, you can still create your own appliances out of those templates and run through the required activities as they are described in our standard documentation.

The first appliance template is on EhP7 for SAP ERP 7.0 and SAP ASE database. You can find more details in the diagram below. The appliance template can be accessed at https://cal.sap.com/catalog#/applianceTemplates/ea8e803a-a79d-4639-a322-0279a252116e.

Figure 1: Appliance template initial status on SAP ERP

The second template is still on EhP7 for SAP ERP 7.0 and SAP ASE database, but additionally comes with the target SAP HANA database on release 2.0 SPS06. It can be accessed at: https://cal.sap.com/catalog#/applianceTemplates/b28b67f3-ebab-4b03-bee9-1cd57ddb41b6

Figure 2: Appliance template before SUM run

The third template is the system right after the conversion on SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS01 and can be accessed at https://cal.sap.com/catalog#/applianceTemplates/93895065-7267-4d51-945b-9300836f6a80.

Figure 3: Appliance template after conversion

While we can only answer detailed conversion tooling and procedure questions during our SAP S/4HANA RIG bootcamps or openSAP courses, feel free to put questions around creation of the SAP CAL appliances into the comments of this blog.

Also, if you have any suggestions for other SAP CAL appliance templates that might be useful for you, let us know in the comments.

Now you are all set and ready to make use of those systems. Happy learning and best of success with your system conversions!

Brought to you by the SAP S/4HANA Customer Care and RIG