SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance: Create your SAP S/4HANA system in a fraction of the usual setup time

[JoergWolf]

Last updated: May 1st, 2024

Summary

• The SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance is a pre-packaged SAP S/4HANA system for non-production use cases such as sandboxing, proof-of-concept, scoping, or fit-gap analysis.

• The appliance contains both curated ready-to-use demo scenarios (some based on SAP Best Practices, some freely defined) as well as a separate client with the greenfield activation of SAP Best Practices for all available localizations.

• You can create your own personal system with full administrative rights either hosted in the cloud (takes ~ 1-2 hours) or on your own on-premise hardware (takes ~ 2-3 days).

• For the cloud deployment you need a valid account at a supported hosting provider, currently those are AWS, Azure and GCP. The hosting costs will be charged to your account (typically 3-4 USD per system uptime hour)

• Once you have such an account, the easiest way to start is the SAP S/4HANA trial (SAP licenses are waived for 30 days; only the cloud provider hosting fees apply). An extensive demo guide walks you through sample scenarios with pre-defined users and data sets.

Latest news from May 1st , 2024:
The SAP S/4HANA 2023 (FPS) Fully-Activated Appliance is available:
Direct link to appliance template in SAP CAL / Demo Guides

What is an appliance ?

An appliance is a compressed system image that can be rapidly extracted into a regular system instance by preserving everything that has been configured in the appliance during the development phase of it.
This makes it an ideal medium for pre-configured systems e.g. for sandboxing, proof-of-concept or scoping/fit-gap purposes.

In the SAP S/4HANA fully-activated appliances, you will find the SAP S/4HANA software (along with some other components, see further below), activations of SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA (incl. technical configuration e.g. for the Fiori launchpad), and prepared demo scenarios with sample master and transactional data.

The delivery infrastructure for appliances is the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (SAP CAL, https://cal.sap.com), and if you browse this site you will see many more appliances besides the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated appliances.

[Fig 1]: The concept of the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

How to use an appliance

An appliance can be consumed in two ways:

1. Within 1-2 hours in a hosted environment, using a cloud provider infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
2. Within typically ~ 2-3 days on your own on-premise hardware that has a supported Linux release installed (everything else will come with the appliance).

Details for option 1 (hosted):As prerequisite, you need to obtain an account at one of the supported cloud providers, and can afterwards bring up your system using the SAP Cloud Appliance Library (SAP CAL, https://cal.sap.com).The registration in SAP CAL and one of the supported hosting providers takes ~15 minutes. The start-up of your personal trial instance (no shared system !) will take ~1-2 hours.An easy entrance into SAP CAL is the SAP S/4HANA 30-day trial with the following characteristics:

• Built-in 30-day test license for SAP S/4HANA and SAP CAL (i.e. no fees to be paid to SAP)

• Hosting provider fees are charged to your hosting provider account (~ 3-4 $ USD per uptime hour, depending on provider and data center region).

• Support via asking a question in the SAP CAL community

• Possibility to extend the 30-day trial phase by acquiring an SAP CAL subscription license (requires a valid SAP S/4HANA license as well), see here for more details

If you are new to the SAP Cloud Appliance Library, there’s a detailed ‘Quick Start Guide’ on the SAP S/4HANA trial page to get started. This video playlist for SAP CAL will also help to get into the topic.

Details for option 2 (on-premise installation):If you prefer to install the appliance on your own hardware, you can also receive it via download or Blu-Ray disks.The shipment is free of charge, however, corresponding SAP licenses need to be in place (trial licenses are sufficient for delivery). The installation of an appliance differs from a “regular” SAP installation, we therefore recommend to have this done by SAP Consulting or an experienced SAP partner, however, customers can also do it on their own and will receive support from SAP.Ordering by a partner on behalf of a customer and deploying it on the customer hardware afterwards is not allowed.The following SAP note contains more information on the ordering process (it is valid for customers and partners):
Ordering process for on-premise installation of SAP software appliances (2041140)

[Fig 2]: SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance – Consumption Methods SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

What is the content & scope ?

The scope of the appliance centers around the SAP Best Practices content for SAP S/4HANA and is enhanced by further scenarios. The below walk-through scenarios have been described in detail (see here) but of course you’re free to explore and adapt the system as needed since you have full administrative rights and even access to the Linux operating system.

Overview Pages 
Sell from stock / outbound delivery processing
Accounting & Financial Close
Lease-in accounting
Investments
Universal Allocation
Treasury and bank account management
Overdue receivables
Group Reporting
Plan-to-produce & Demand-driven replenishment
Predictive Material & Resource Planning
Advanced Variant Configuration
Warehouse Inbound From Supplier
Plant Maintenance / Quality Mgmt.
Advanced ATP
Advanced Intercompany Sales
Service / Maintenance / Inhouse Repair
Portolio & Project Management
SAP Master Data Governance
Human Capital Management
Application Interface Framework
Analytics (Smart Business, BI, SAC)
Predictive Analytics
Data Migration
SAP Fiori Rapid Activation
Fiori Situation Handling
Key User & Developer Extensibility
Custom Print Forms
SAP Screen Personas

[Fig. 3] Pre-configured walkthrough scenarios in the appliance

What is technically contained in the appliance ?

The appliance consists of four virtual machines that are automatically bundled into one solution instance:

1. SAP S/4HANA (the core ABAP backend incl. the SAP HANA database)
2. SAP NW JAVA with Adobe Document Services (for forms and output management)
3. An SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform
4. MS Windows remote desktop for easy access to the solution

The BI platform and the remote desktop are optional components in SAP CAL (you can opt in/out of the deployment in the advanced mode of the SAP CAL instance creation) and are also not shipped to customers for the on-premise installation.

[Fig. 4] Technical components of the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance

More information & known issues

These blogs (2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020) summarize the known issues and provide fixing hints where available. They will be continuously updated.

One important note at the end:
Once you have created an appliance instance (be it hosted or on-premise), it behaves like a regular on-premise system. And this means that SAP cannot access or patch your appliance instance, thus any system tasks (be it basis or functional) need to be done by you.

Best and have fun with the SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance,
Joerg

Appendix: Link collection

Direct links to start an SAP S/4 S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance instance in SAP CAL, requires a cloud provider account:

• 2023 FPS01
• cal.sap.com to browse for other releases and solutions (see also the CAL documentation)

Blogs with known issues (2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020)

Suggested demo walkthroughs

30-day trial: SAP S/4HANA trial landing page (incl. a quick start guide)

Video tutorials (create cloud provider account and launch the appliance in SAP CAL)

SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA (detailed configuration guides, test scripts, …)

On-premise download / Blu-Ray shipment process (SAP Note 2041140)

[JoergWolf]

Hello Mahmoud,

if you have the S/4 license, you can extend (= unlock) the S/4 system by purchasing a CAL subscription (via SAP Store: https://www.sapstore.com/solutions/99007/SAP-Cloud-Appliance-Library).

Documentation in detail: https://calstatic.hana.ondemand.com/res/docEN/96d12c4fb8ff4fd4a61e5dcc55cd16c4.html

Best, Joerg

[S0021072915]

Dear Wolf,

Thank you for your kind reply.

I have  checked this and found it little bit expensive from your opinion, downloading best practice through the solution manager and build three systems development and quality and production system can work exactly similar to the fully activated appliance on cal?

Thank you for your kind feedback

Mahmoud

 

 

[former_member513955]

no at all .. this solution is a clean copy of IDES concept ..but it has some advantage more than IDES

just you have to review new update of snote https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2041140

you can consume it as  a replace of ides with 256 GB ram server .

[former_member674909]

Hi Joerg,

Thanks for the blog

it's posible use string saprouter to connect via SAP GUI in a local PC?

 

Best Regards

Wilfredo

[JoergWolf]

Hi Wilfredo,

if the appliance is created in a standard cloud provider setup (i.e. Internet), you won't need SAPRouter to connect via SAP GUI. Just click the Connect button in the CAL console and choose the SAP GUI option.

Best,

Joerg

[former_member674909]

Hi Joerg, thanks for the answer,

but the question is more focused on the following: We need a consultants team able to access simultaneously via SAP GUI, how could they do it? Without using the remote desktop option

Best Regards

Wilfredo

[marian_harris]

Check out the Quick Start Guide in the "Appendix: Link Collection" above. On slide 25 - 30, you'll see Connection option 2, which is the direct connection. This includes the steps so they can connect via both FLP and by SAP GUI.  If they only need SAP GUI connection, that's very easy - slide 30.

[former_member674909]

Hi Marian, thanks for the answer,

 

Best Regards,

Wilfredo

[former_member661968]

Hi Joerg,

do you have a recommendation how to set this up as a living company? Is there any preferred way to do this?

Thanks
Frank

[abk07]

Hi Joerg,

Thanks for this excellent blog. I currently have installed SAP S/4 HANA 1909 FPS01 Fully Activated Appliance on premise and would like to try the latest one SAP S/4 HANA 1909 FPS02 Fully Activated Appliance on premise.

As per the SAP Note:2041140, I have to create a ticket under the component XX-SER-SWFL-SHIP to get the required media.

The ticket requires me to mention the Material Number for SAP S/4 HANA 1909 FPS02. As per the note: 2041140, the material numbers should have been mentioned in the note attachment (Available_Software_Appliances_2020_04.pdf), but I don’t find it in Available_Software_Appliances_2020_04.pdf. Do you know where I could get the material numbers required for SAP S/4 HANA 1909 FPS02?

Best Regards,
AK

[JoergWolf]

Hi AK,

the on-premise installation shipment of SAP Note 2041140 is in process (this takes some additional steps), should be available in the next days.

Best, Joerg

[alacruz]

Hi Joerg,

 

I would like to know if option 1 also allows us to add aditional configuration.

Mainly we like the idea of having a preconfigured system to do demos, but also we would like to add aditional configuration to that system so it can also behave as a Sandbox system.

I we select option 1 (Hosted) solution, can we also do aditional configuration?

 

Kind regards,

Alex

[JoergWolf]

Hi Alex,

yes, this is possible there as well (you "own" the system in your cloud provider/hyperscaler account and have full admin/configuration access to it).

The on-prem option (#2 above) is superior if you e.g. want to connect other inhouse systems (that run on your internal corporate network only) to the S/4HANA system, or there are concerns in your company/industry with data privacy/security ... when using a hyperscaler even with a sandbox only.

Best, Joerg

[SamueleBarzaghi]

Hi,

The appliance has the profile parameter "abap/force_local_update_task" set to 1.

Do you know why all the update tasks are forced to local update?

 

Thank you for all these rapid appliances and demo guides!

Best Regards,

Sam

[JoergWolf]

Hi Sam, please see here ;-): https://answers.sap.com/questions/13111309/s4h-appliance-and-profile-parameter-abapforce-loca.html

Best,

Joerg

[ihsan_d_hall]

Hi Joerg,

We also installed SAP S/4 HANA 1909 FPS01 Fully Activated Appliance on premise and would like to explore FPS02. However we would prefer not to restart the process with a new appliance download. Do you foresee any issues with us following the standard upgrade process from FPS01 to FPS02 on our existing appliance build ( https://help.sap.com/doc/760ce610a2af4174a329d2d8315378e2/1909/en-US/UPGR_OP1909_latest.pdf)? Are there any demo scenarios that we will be missing by following the upgrade path?

Thanks,

Ihsan

[JoergWolf]

Hi Ihsan,

you can upgrade the appliance on a project-base (i.e. there's no dedicated support for it since the appliance is considerered to be your own on-prem based system).

The main effort will be the technical upgrade of the stack (register your system and check if you're set to go in MP).

You might experience smaller issues here & there for the demo scenarios and might need to adjust configuration or apply a note but there's no "master list" for this.

Best, Joerg

[former_member510732]

Hi Joerg,

 

Does this 1909 instance have PP/DS & aATP functionalities enabled?

 

Thanks,
HAN

[SUDHAKARPV]

Hi

Thanks for the detailed Blog. Can you please let us know, whether the Industry specific solutions Like IS -OIL is availble in this Fully activated version.

Also please let us know, how to get this for a newly licensed S/4 HANA customer, who is yet deploy thier systems?

 

Regards

Sudhakar P Venkatesan

[JoergWolf]

Hi Sudhakar,

IS-OIL and other industry scenarios are not specifically configured in the appliance, however, e.g. the IS-OIL addon (version 804 in the S/4 1909 releases) are installed if this helps for manually configuring your scenarios.

Best,

Joerg

[former_member713993]

Hi Joerg,

 

I activated my 30 day free-trial of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud. It is running on my AWS instance.

I am trying to integrate SAP S/4 HANA with a 3rd party app using the ODATA APIs given in SAP BUSINESS HUB.
However before i do that, i need to set up a communication user. And to have access to the Maintain communication user app, I need to initially have access to Identity & Access management app on Fiori.

For the trial instance which users credentials can I use to log in onto Fiori Launchpad that has all Global Administrator access and have access to IAM. I would want to then grant access to other users already created in the trial instance.

 

Can you please help me here as the success of this trial relies heavily on integration with SAP S/4 HANA.

 

Thanks,
Sagar

[former_member713993]

Any help here by any of the SAP community members would be highly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Sagar

[marian_harris]

You can try the user BPINST, note that this user has many roles assigned, so the FLP will load slowly. Better is to log into the back end and create your own user with the correct authorizations and roles assigned that you are looking for.

Please refer to the Demo Guides, quick guide or getting started guide to get more details on the available users.

[former_member713993]

Hi Marian,

 

Thank you so much for you reply.

I did try the user BPINST & I did not see Identity & Access Managment App with BPINST user. That was my guess as well but it did not work.

 

Can you quickly explain how to log into the backend & create an user by myself? That would be really helpful.

At this point I am quite clear of what the next steps are in order to create a communication user but I am not able to find the right user which has the correct permissions to do this with.

Is there a guide or an article I can refer on creating the users by logging into the backend?

 

Thanks,

Sagar

[JoergWolf]

Hi Sagar,

the Identity Mgmt. apps that you are apparently looking for exist only in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud product.

You seem to have created an instance of the SAP S/4HANA on-premise product via SAP CAL.

For creating / administering users, you can access the backend via SAP GUI - either with a local SAP GUI installation or with the SAP GUI on the included remote desktop (click Connect in the CAL console of your instance and choose the SAP GUI option).

The Getting Started Guide has more information.

For future questions, please use the SAP CAL community and open up a new thread since this is easier to support and search for.

Best, Joerg

[former_member713993]

Hi Joerg,

 

I really appreciate your feedback and linking me back to the "Getting Started Guide". I have posted my question on SAP CAL Community as well which is here

My goal is to integrate my SAP S/4 HANA Instance which has been created via CAL & running on AWS. I am trying to integrate this instance over Odata API with a third party service.
In-order to write back to the API, i need to create a communication user.
Would you know how I can have access to the app in Fiori that lets me create this user from the launchpad?

Or even that app is not available in SAP S/4HANA via CAL?
I can create a role as you rightly explained using SAP GUI, but in order to create a communication user, can that be also done via SAP GUI.

 

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sagar

[Apetitti]

Hi,
we have installed via SAP CAL an istance of SAP S/4HANA 1909 FPS02 (also licensed) and now we need to download/install some OSS notes, but when we try to do this via transaction SNOTE we receive a dump related to error: XML_FORMAT_ERROR
I've found oss note 2836005 which is related to this error message and seems that the error is due to missing password in RFC destinations created in transaction SM59 for SAP Digital notes management.

Checking further informations on SAP Digital OSS notes managment, it seems that some implementation is missing on S/4HANA 1909 FPS02 deployed via SAP CAL.

 

Best Regards

Alessandro

[JoergWolf]

Answered in https://answers.sap.com/questions/13192793/unable-to-download-oss-notes-on-cal-sap-s4hana-190.html

[wenjie_he]

Hi expert,

I want to know when   SAP S/4HANA Fully-Activated Appliance for s/4hana 2020 will be released?Thanks very much.

[JoergWolf]

Hi Wenjie,

we plan to release it over the course of week 51 (as from Dec 14th).

Best,

Joerg

[FlavioMolina1]

The blog is really useful, thanks joerg.wolf

 

Can you please let me know the Scope Items list available at Client 400?

 

Best

Molina

[JoergWolf]

Hi Molina,

in essence, it's the Best Practices for 2020 (https://rapid.sap.com/bp/BP_OP_ENTPR) for all localizations. There are a few scope items with an either/or choice but that's the exception.

Best, Joerg

[schulte-bahrenberg]

Hi Joerg,

thanks first of all for the content that you publish here to help us using the appliance. We have everything installed not but are not sure about the purpose of each client.

I see that 100 does already have transaction data. 400 is 'empty' but has lots of different warehouses on top (but is missing 0001 template).

100 vs. 400:

 

200 has neither master data, nor any config/customizing.

Questions

• Is there any difference (especially in master data & customizing) between 100 and 400 apart from the fact that 400 does not have any transaction data?


• If the answer is no, may I assume that 400 is the most appropriate way to make a client copy in order to create new 'clean' clients for internal testing/training?


• Do all those additional warehouses in client 400 have the same master data and configurations?


• What is the purpose of client 200

 

Thanks a lot in advance and sorry if those questions have been raised somewhere already and I was not able to find it!

Hendrik

[JoergWolf]

Hi Hendrik,

an overview of the clients can be found in chapter 1.4 in the Getting Started guide of the appliance (see link in the CAL console).

And please see Setting Up a New Best Practices Client - Client Setup Alternatives - SAP Help Portal for some background on the different client copy alternatives.

400 was created as "Best Practice" client, that's why the client-000 customizing & master data is not entirely in 400 (eg. the 0001 warehouse). The different warehouse IDs above are for the country localizations, see Best Practice master&organizational data overview on https://rapid.sap.com/bp/BP_OP_ENTPR.

So, in that respect a copy from 400 would be clean but you might be missing some client-000 customizing where no Best Practices exist.
100 was created as a merged client (ie. full 000 copy) but went through several upgrades since, so that would be rather a brownfield.

200 can be used to try out your own BP activation.

Best, Joerg

[schulte-bahrenberg]

Thanks a lot for your response. This answers my questions. Sorry for having missed those guides!

[nnaik]

Hi joerg.wolf, Currently we have SAP S/4HANA 1909 Fully-Activated Appliance installed in our on-premise environment. Can we upgrade the same fully-activated appliance to 2020 version?

[JoergWolf]

Hi Naveen,

during an upgrade attempt, you will almost certainly hit roadblocks e.g. with assembling the upgrade stack under your S-user ID, SPAM/SPAU resolution, etc. , and there is no dedicated upgrade support for the appliance (it will be treated like a customer-owned brownfield system).

I would therefore rather recommend to create a new instance of the 2020 fully-activated appliance (SP 00 is here, FPS01 still in the works) and tranport / copy the needed objects from your existing 1909 instance into it.

Best, Joerg

[Former Member]

Hi joerg.wolf ,

A big thanks for a really detailed and preciously informative blog post. I am  new to the SAP domain. This is what i have been looking for very long time and my search ended here. We are a team of 10 students from India and want a  personal sap system for practice, i understand that this fully activated appliance offers 30 day trial free of cost but hosting costs seems to be high, at least > 150$ monthly. So Could you please tell me weather multiple logon is possible for this appliance? Means we want to share costs and same SAP System. Is that Possible? Can you please suggest budget friendly method for us?

Thank you

--Adithya

[JoergWolf]

Hi Adithya,

in general, the usage of the appliance is determined by your relationship / contract with SAP.

Within the first 30 days, you can anyway do whatever you like with the system, including creating additional users. After 30 days, you will need to have at least a longer lasting trial license for S/4HANA, plus the subscription for the SAP CAL.

The hosting fees will apply throughout the usage.

For a university / student context, it might also be worth to check with the University Alliance team of SAP, some intro is here: https://www.sap.com/about/company/innovation/next-gen-innovation-platform/university-alliances.html

Best, Joerg

[Former Member]

joerg.wolf Thanks for a quick and informative reply. So I understand that I can host this S4 appliance on cloud and can later add users (My friends), so that all my friends can have access to the same system for practice. (Please correct me if I am wrong).

Thank You so Much for your time and information.

--Adithya

[JoergWolf]

Hi Adithya,

for the first 30 days yes, afterwards an S/4HANA license will need to kick in.

Best,

Joerg

[former_member750745]

Hello,

thank you for all the details. It is really helpful.

We want to use Best Practices as basis for fit-gap analysis.

Is it also possible to use Best Practices as basis for solution development?

Is it possible to copy Best Practices into real organizational elements (plants, cc etc.)?

Or do you recommend to manually take over all customizings and settings from Best Practices into your development systems?

Thanks in advance,

Olaf

[JoergWolf]

Hi Olaf,

Best Practices are a combination of customizing settings and meta data (and optionally demo data such as sample customers, etc. which typically is not useful in an implementation situation), and they can be activated in a freshly installed system.

Please see this guide for more information: https://help.sap.com/viewer/S4HANA2020_AdminGuide/17d958a88d244ee293aed687f9bfe37f.html.

Best, Joerg

[deanleishman2]

Hi

Two clarification questions please ...

1. The scope of the appliance follows the Best Practice solution, but I cannot determine if it is the full BP solution or just partial. I need to stand up a proof of concept for a client and will need full Best Practice functionality for Finance, and most of the Procurement functionality. Can you confirm please if the full best practice solution is deployed with the CAL


2. Is there an option to deploy the localised regional version of the Best Practice library - our client is based in Australia and is needing to see the Best Practice template solution for Australia. Is this available to be deployed as an appliance?

Best regards, and thanks

Dean

[JoergWolf]

Hi Dean,

the main demo client (100) of the appliance follows the US Best Practices as baseline but it has gone through some release upgrades and was manually enhanced with features that are not part of Best Practices, so this clearly has a "brownfield" state compared with a clean Best Practice configuration.

Client 400 contains the standard SAP Best Practices scope for 43 countries (also AU) based on the Best Practices client copy approach (see https://help.sap.com/viewer/S4HANA2020_AdminGuide/8a5680cd5c2045d3b461bc7f35b25a64.html).
Note:
For the activation of some scope items, there's some customer-specific input/decision needed or some manual follow-up actions (eg. for intergration), so we kept this to "as much standard as possible".
Other option especially if you have prior expertise with BPs): copy your own client and install the Australia BPs with all customer-specific requirements in this client.

Best, Joerg

[deanleishman2]

Hi Joerg - thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I appreciate the clarity.

Regards

Dean

[guido_karl]

Hi Jörg,

I have aquestion about the "Demo21" System in comparison to the "Fully Activated Appliance".

Assuming that we compare both "On Prem Solutions operated by the Partner", were are the main differences in terms of?

1. Predefined Business Cases; Best Practices (Customized Processes)


2. Predefined Master Data


3. Functional Scope of the total S/4 System


4. Extension to other partner invironment like SAC, etc.

Actually we want to set up a new Demo and Test Invironment, but do not really knowing in which direction we should move forward.

Best Rrgards

Guido

[JoergWolf]

Hi Guido,

the DEMO21 initiative is using the Fully-Activated Appliance as foundation and puts a few additional features in it.

This could be some SAP notes or software component updates e.g. if a new HANA revision was released meanwhile.
Also, some additional business scenarios might be highlighted in DEMO21 eg. currently (2020 FPS01 / 02), Field Service Management is such an example where additional demo customizing is done for DEMO21. 

In essence I would say: if you participate in DEMO21 anyway, use that system and potentially have an early look into the future new releases of the FAA.

Best, Joerg

[former_member741]

Thanks Jörg!

[AlexShipilov]

Hi Jörg,

Do you know when the Fully-Activated Appliance will be available for SAP S/4HANA 2021 FPS0?

Thank you,

Alexander