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Connect on-premises SAP systems to Azure

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Many manufacturers use on-premises SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Often, manufacturers connect SAP systems to Industrial IoT solutions, and use the connected system to retrieve data for manufacturing processes, customer orders, and inventory status. This article describes how to connect these SAP-based ERP systems.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required to complete the SAP connection as described in this article.

IEC 62541 Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA)

This solution uses IEC 62541 Open Platform Communications (OPC) Unified Architecture (UA) for all Operational Technology (OT) data. This standard is described here.

Reference Solution Architecture

Diagram of a simple IIoT architecture that shows all components.

Components

For a list of components, refer to Azure Industrial IoT reference architecture.

Connect the reference solution to on-premises SAP Systems

The Azure services handling connectivity to your on-premises SAP systems is called Azure Logic Apps. Azure Logic Apps is a no-code Azure service to orchestrate workflows that can trigger actions.

Note

If you want to try out SAP connectivity before connecting your real SAP system, you can deploy an SAP S/4 HANA Fully-Activated Appliance to Azure from here and use that instead.

Configure Azure Logic Apps to receive data from on-premises SAP systems

The Azure Logic Apps workflow is from your on-premises SAP system to Azure Logic Apps. It also stores the data sent from SAP in your Azure Storage Account. To create a new Azure Logic Apps workflow, follow these steps:

  1. Deploy an instance of Azure Logic Apps in the same region you picked during deployment of this reference solution via the Azure portal. Select the consumption-based version.
  2. From the Azure Logic App Designer, select the trigger template When a HTTP request is received.
  3. Select + New step, select Azure File Storage, and select Create file. Give the connection a name and select the storage account name of the Azure Storage Account. For Folder path, enter sap, for File name enter IDoc.xml and for File content select Body from the dynamic content. In the Azure portal, navigate to your storage account, select Storage browser, select File shares > Add file share. Enter sap for the name and select Create.
  4. Hover over the arrow between your trigger and your create file action, select the + button, then select Add a parallel branch. Select Azure Data Explorer and add the action Run KQL query from the list of Azure Data Explorer (ADX) actions available. Specify the ADX instance (Cluster URL) name and database name of your Azure Data Explorer service instance. In the query field, enter .create table SAP (name:string, label:string).
  5. Save your workflow.
  6. Select Run Trigger and wait for the run to complete. Verify that there are green check marks on all three components of your workflow. If you see any red exclamation marks, select the component for more information regarding the error.

Copy the HTTP GET URL from your HTTP trigger in your workflow. You'll need it when configuring SAP in the next step.

Configure an on-premises SAP system to send data to Azure Logic Apps

  1. Sign in to the SAP Windows Virtual Machine

  2. Once at the Virtual Machine desktop, select on SAP Logon

  3. Select Log On in the top left corner of the app

    Screenshot that shows an SAP sign-in form.

  4. Sign in with the BPINST user name, and Welcome1 password

  5. In the top right corner, search for SM59. This should bring up the Configuration of RFC Connections screen.

    Screenshot that shows configuration of RFC connections and search for SM95.

  6. Select on Edit and Create at the top of the app.

  7. Enter LOGICAPP in the Destination field

  8. From the Connection Type dropdown, select HTTP Connection to external server

  9. Select The green check at the bottom of the window.

    Screenshot that shows the details of a connection logic app.

  10. In the Description 1 box, put LOGICAPP

  11. Select the Technical Settings tab and fill in the Host field with the HTTP GET URL from the logic app you copied (for example prod-51.northeurope.logic.azure.com). In Port put 443. And in Path Prefix enter the rest of the HTTP GET URL starting with /workflows/...

    Screenshot that shows how to add a get url.

  12. Select the Login & Security tab.

  13. Scroll down to Security Options and set SSL to Active

  14. Select Save

  15. In the main app from step 5, search for WE21. This brings up the Ports in IDoc processing.

  16. Select the XML HTTP folder and select Create.

  17. In the Port field, input LOGICAPP

  18. In the RFC destination, select LOGICAPP.

  19. Select Green Check to Save

    Screenshot that shows port selection for a Logic App.

  20. Create a partner profile for your Azure Logic App in your SAP system by entering WE20 from the SAP system's search box, which will bring up the Partner profiles screen.

  21. Expand the Partner Profiles folder and select the Partner Type LS (Logical System) folder.

  22. Select on the S4HCLNT100 partner profile.

  23. Select on the Create Outbound Parameter button below the Outbound table.

    Screenshot that shows creation of an outbound parameter.

  24. In the Partner Profiles: Outbound Parameters dialog, enter INTERNAL_ORDER for Message Type. In the Outbound Options tab, enter LOGICAPP for Receiver port. Select the Pass IDoc Immediately radio button. For Basic type enter INTERNAL_ORDER01. Select the Save button.

    Screenshot that shows outbound parameters.

Testing your SAP to Azure Logic App Workflow

To try out your SAP to Azure Logic App workflow, follow these steps:

  1. In the main app, search for WE19. This should bring up the Test Tool for IDoc Processing screen.

  2. Select Using message type and enter INTERNAL_ORDER

  3. Select Create at the top left corner of the screen.

  4. Select the EDICC field.

  5. A Edit Control Record Fields screen should open up.

  6. In the Receiver section: PORT enter LOGICAPP, Partner No. enter S4HCLNT100, Part. Type enter LS

  7. In the Sender section: PORT enter SAPS4H, Partner No. enter S4HCLNT100, Part. Type enter LS

  8. Select the green check at the bottom of the window.

    Screenshot that shows the test tool for IDoc processing.

  9. Select Standard Outbound Processing tab at the top of the screen.

  10. In the Outbound Processing of IDoc dialog, select the green check button to start the IDoc message processing.

  11. Open the Storage browser of your Azure Storage Account, select Files shares and check that a new IDoc.xml file was created in the sap folder.

    Note

    To check for IDoc message processing errors, entering WE09 from the SAP system's search box, select a time range and select the execute button. This brings up the IDoc Search for Business Content screen and you can select each IDoc for processing errors in the table displayed.

Microsoft on-premises Data Gateway

Microsoft provides an on-premises data gateway for sending data to on-premises SAP systems from Azure Logic Apps.

Note

To receive data from on-premises SAP systems to Azure Logic Apps in the cloud, the SAP connector and on-premises data gateway are not required.

To install the on-premises data gateway, complete the following steps:

  1. Download and install the on-premises data gateway from here. Pay special attention to the prerequisites! For example, if your Azure account has access to more than one Azure subscription, you need to use a different Azure account to install the gateway and to create the accompanying on-premises data gateway Azure resource. If so, create a new user in your Azure Active Directory.

  2. If not already installed, download and install the Visual Studio 2010 (Visual C++ 10.0) redistributable files from here.

  3. Download and install the SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET 3.0 for Windows x64 from here. SAP download access for the SAP portal is required. Contact SAP support if you don't have this.

  4. Copy the four libraries libicudecnumber.dll, rscp4n.dll, sapnco.dll, and sapnco_utils.dll from the SAP Connector's installation location (by default this is C:\Program Files\SAP\SAP_DotNetConnector3_Net40_x64) to the installation location of the data gateway (by default this is C:\Program Files\On-premises data gateway).

  5. Restart the data gateway through the On-premises data gateway configuration tool that came with the on-premises data gateway installer package installed earlier.

  6. Create the on-premises data gateway Azure resource in the same Azure region as selected during the data gateway installation in the previous step and select the name of your data gateway under Installation Name.

    You can access more details about the configuration steps here.

    Note

    If you run into errors with the Data Gateway or the SAP Connector, you can enable debug tracing by following these steps.