This document is targeted to SAP system administrators who haven’t had much (or any) experience with Ansible automation. It should help you get started with Ansible, run your first playbooks, and configure and run your first SAP LaMa-based system refresh operation.

The term SAP system copy is often used as a synonym for three different processes: SAP system clone, SAP system copy, and SAP system refresh. It is important to distinguish between the different operations, because the workflows and use cases differ.

The following image shows SAP system clone, copy, and refresh LaMa workflow steps that are related to NetApp storage.

The overall solution consists of these main components:

The following image shows how SAP LaMa and NetApp storage systems integrate through Ansible Playbooks on a dedicated Ansible host, triggered by shell scripts executed from SAP Host Agent.

There are several scenarios in which data from a source system must be made available to a target system for testing or training purposes. These test and training systems must be updated regularly with data from the source system to make sure that testing and training are performed with the current dataset. These system refresh operations consist of multiple tasks on the infrastructure, database, and application layers, and they can take several days, depending on the level of automation.

To accelerate and automate the required tasks at the infrastructure and database layers, you can use SAP LaMa and NetApp cloning workflows. Instead of restoring a backup from the source system to the target system, SAP LaMa uses NetApp Snapshot and FlexClone technology so that required tasks to get a database started can be performed in minutes instead of hours, as shown in the following figure. The time needed for the cloning process does not depend on the size of the database; therefore, even very large systems can be created in a couple of minutes. You can further reduce the run time by automating tasks on the operating system and database layer as well as on the SAP postprocessing side.

The following image shows possible operational efficiency improvements when you use automation.

To integrate SAP LaMa with NetApp storage systems by using Ansible, you need a node on which you can run Ansible Playbooks. We recommend using Ansible Automation Platform. To run shell scripts and Ansible Playbooks on this host, started from SAP LaMa, you need a running SAP Host Agent on this server. SAP Host Agent takes over the bidirectional communication with SAP LaMa and executes shell scripts that will trigger the actual playbooks.

This loosely coupled architecture gives you the freedom to start workflows from SAP LaMa and also outside SAP LaMa. Playbooks and corresponding logic needs to be configured only once and can be used for different scenarios and use cases.