updated date: 31.Oct.2023

This blog is part of the Business Continuity with RISE and BTP blog series:
part 1 – Concept Explained
part 2 – Technical Building Blocks in RISE
part 3 – Technical Building Blocks in BTP 👈

5. Key Technical Building Blocks in BTP

SAP BTP is a unified, business-centric, and open platform for the entire SAP ecosystem. As a PaaS solution, Networking, Storage, Servers, Virtualisation, O/S, Middleware, Runtime is managed by SAP. BTP is built on top of enterprise-level runtime framework such as Cloud Foundry, and Kyma, consuming hyperscaler-managed (AWS, Azure, GCP) native services (managed database services, managed message queue services, etc). BTP follows Cloud Native Concepts, that developers build components compatible with a particular abstraction layer and don’t have to worry about all underlying specifics that can be very heterogeneous.

In this section, we mainly focus on the dominant BTP runtime environment Cloud Foundry, and talk about the business continuity around it.

5.1. IaaS Level:

BTP is running on trustworthy infrastructure, and consumes hyperscaler-managed native database services, managed message queue services, etc. Endusers will designate which hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP) the BTP services will be running on when creating sub-accounts. Here is a portfolio of Regions and Service Portfolio and regions available (with corresponding underlying hyperscaler and region) for Cloud Foundry Environment .

Below are some examples of hyperscaler native services (with business continuity guaranteed by hyperscaler) been consumed when building BTP.

PostgresSQL	Azure Database for PostgreSQL (business continuity) Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL (SLA, RTO & RPO) GCP for PostgreSQL (SLA, RTO & RPO)
Redis	Azure Cache for Redis (SLA) Amazon Elasticache for Redis (SLA, RTO & RPO) Google Cloud Memorystore for Redis (SLA)
Object Store	Azure Blob Storage (SLA) Amazon Simple Storage Service (SLA, RTO & RPO) Google Cloud Storage (SLA)

5.2. Platform Level:

BTP Cloud Foundry environment inherits the High Availability mechanism of Cloud Foundry framework. In addition, SAP applies resilience principles when developing, updating, and deploying our SAP BTP applications and services. Moreover, SAP BTP Cloud Foundry environment has built-in mechanisms (auto-scaling, auto-failover, etc.) to ensure business continuity, and follows these recommendations to support high availability at the platform and application level.

5.3. Additional Business Continuity:

5.3.1. Service Plan

BTP provides different level of service plans for end users to choose: Free, Standard, Premium.

5.3.2. Additional Failover:

With hyperscaler (Azure, AWS, and GCP) DNS service, it is possible to build additional cross-region DR failover. The hyperscaler DNS service is doing BTP service health check, and service failover in case disaster happened in the primary region instance. Here is an tutorial. Below is a summary of verified hyperscaler DNS services.

AWS Route 53	Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service perform three main functions: domain registration, DNS routing, and health checking with Amazon Route 53 Application Recovery Controller, can do automate fail over between Availability Zones and even between Regions
Azure Traffic Manager	DNS-based traffic load balancer provides health monitoring for every endpoint

5.3.3 Additional Data Backup and Recovery:

It is possible to use hyperscaler object store to backup and make it regional redundant.

Below we list out some examples of SAP BTP solutions that endusers can do object export:

SAP Cloud Integration	Exporting Integration Packages
SAP Datasphere	Using Datasphere CLI to export objects

Then by storing the object export into hyperscaler object store, and make it zonal redundant or regional redundant.

BTP with Azure	Object Store in BTP on Azure can be used to make object export redundant within the region same as the sub-account designation Azure Blob Storage on customer’s own subscription with Object Replication feature, can make object export redundant cross region
BTP with AWS	Object Store in BTP on AWS can be used to make object export redundant within the region same as the sub-account designation Simple Storage Services (S3) on customer’s own subscription with S3 Replicating objects feature, can make object export redundant cross region
BTP with GCP	Object Store in BTP on GCP can be used to make object export redundant within the region same as the sub-account designation Google Cloud Storage on customer’s own subscription, with its built-in Data Availability can make DR backup be in one region, dual-regions, or multi-regions. This allows customer to obtain the desired level of availability at the lowest cost

5.4. IaC and CI/CD

IaC tool like Terraform can be used for setting BTP environments (for instance, sub accounts, directories, roles, service entitlements, etc.).

For application code change, CI/CD pipeline is recommended to automate and govern change management. This is especially necessary when doing side-by-side extensibility to keep the core clean. Below is a summary of available CI/CD pipeline services:

SAP Continuous Integration and Delivery (on SAP BTP)	native integration with SAP CAP, Fiori, Integration Suite
Azure DevOps	integration with SAP
AWS CodePipeline	integration with SAP (Cloud Foundry Apps, Fiori Apps)
Google Cloud Build	integration with SAP (tutorial)

Disclaimer

The blog content does not necessarily represent the official opinion of SAP, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud. The opinions appearing in this blog are backed by SAP, Azure, AWS, GCP documentation which can be revealed in the corresponding reference links.
The blog content is only focusing on technical discussion, hence can not be used as commercial basis, nor should be used as SAP official offering documentation.

Acknowledgment to contributors/reviewers/advisors:

Ke Ma (a.k.a. Mark), author, Senior Cloud Architect, RISE Cloud Advisory RA group

Special THANK YOU to RISE with SAP community members, who contributed to this blog:

Ferry Mulyadi, Partner Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services

Micah Waldman, Product Management Lead, Google Cloud Business Continuity

Thorsten Staerk, Customer Engineer, Google Cloud

Chun Yuan, DevOps Engineer, SAP BTP Cloud Foundry Platform

Zabala Silvestre, Product Owner, SAP BTP Cloud Foundry Platform

Sven Bedorf, Head of Cloud Architecture & Advisory, RISE Cloud Advisory, MEE

Kevin Flanagan, Head of Cloud Architecture & Advisory, RISE Cloud Advisory, EMEA North

Luc DUCOIN, Cloud Architect & Advisor Expert, RISE Cloud Advisory, EMEA North

Richard Traut, Head of Cloud Architecture & Advisory, RISE Cloud Advisory, EMEA North

Peter van den Berg, Cloud Architect & Advisor Expert, RISE Cloud Advisory, MEE

Extended Reading:
Announcement: Terraform provider for SAP BTP, by SAP colleague, Rui Nogueira 
Tutorial: Automating SAP BTP setup with Terraform, by SAP colleague, Mauricio Lauffer 
Tutorial: the new Terraform provider for SAP BTP, by SAP colleague, Mauricio Lauffer

Some more previous blogs:
DNS integration with SAP RISE in multi-cloud environment series guide – Azure
DNS integration with SAP RISE in multi-cloud environment series guide – AWS
DNS integration with SAP RISE in multi-cloud environment series guide – GCP
Harmonized Single Sign-On for SAP RISE Customers in Multi-Cloud Environment
Demystify Single Sign-On on Server Side for SAP RISE Customers
empower SAP RISE enterprise users with Azure OpenAI in multi-cloud environment
Unlock the Power of Business Data for SAP RISE Customers: Mastering Data Management and Cultivating Insights
Extend the Power of Data for SAP RISE Customers: data federation with SAP in multi-cloud GCP
Extend the Power of Data for SAP RISE Customers: data federation with SAP in multi-cloud AWS
Extend the Power of Data for SAP RISE Customers: data federation with SAP in multi-cloud Azure