As customers move their SAP landscapes into Azure, it is not all about just replacing server, storage, and network infrastructure. As customer, you also look for replacing products, that you are using for such tasks like backup/restore, monitoring, archiving, etc. You want to simplify operations by ideally using SaaS services the public cloud provides. In the case we describe here, on a very deep technical level, we are describing how to leverage Azure Blob storage directly for SAP archiving using ILM functionality of S/4HANA 2021. A development SAP and Microsoft cooperated in. Azure BLOB storage is a massively scalable, highly available, and durable, and a secure object storage solution in the cloud. To use it for archiving SAP data, you so far had to use other products in the middle that would support writing and reading into or from Azure Blob storage on the one side. And on the other side represent the respective interfaces to SAP to be recognized as archive target. Something that is not necessary anymore with S/4HANA 2021 and future versions of S/4HANA. This article will explain how to setup and configure S/4HANA ILM using Azure Blob storage as archiving target.
As we start this article, please note a very important selection criterion for Azure Blob storage:
Premium Tier BLOCK BLOB low latency storage is not suitable for this purpose which has only LRS and ZRS storage redundancy options.
Azure Portal Configuration
Create Application ID in Azure Active Directory
Give a name for your application and select the account type as shown below. Application ID Creation
Create Client SecretCreate Client Secret
Copy the "Client Secret" Value and secure it as it will be visible only for the first time.
Add "Access Azure Storage" Permission in API Permission as shown below.API Permission
Enter Program Name "RILM_STOR_TEST_AZURE" and execute
Enter the HTTP Destination, OAuth Client Profile, and Configuration as shown below
Execute and the result as shown below
Next Steps
With the successful Azure BLOB connectivity concluding our blog, for other ILM Store and Origin customizing and publishing, please refer to SAP Documentation for the SAP ILM configuration guide.
Quick References
The following notes and links come in handy during the configuration.