Monitoring SAP with the ABAP sensor

You can monitor SAP by using an SAP Solution Manager or an ABAP sensor. To monitor SAP with the ABAP sensor, you need to install the Instana host agent. After you install the host agent, the ABAP sensor is automatically installed. You can view metrics that are related to SAP in the Instana UI after you configure the ABAP sensor.

Supported information

Supported OS

Instana supports the following operating systems that are supported by SAP Java Connector for local and remote monitoring:

  • For local monitoring (the Instana agent is installed on the same host as the ABAP server):

    • AIX
    • Linux (x86 and IBM PowerPC 64-bit LE)
    • Windows
  • For remote monitoring (the Instana agent is installed on a different host and connects remotely to the ABAP server):

    • AIX
    • Linux (x86 and IBM PowerPC 64-bit LE)
    • Windows
    • IBM i (OS/400 PASE)
    • Apple macOS (64 bit - Intel and Apple silicon)

    For remote monitoring, the SAP can run on any platform, including IBM i, and be remotely monitored by installing the Instana agent on these platforms.

For more information about the operating systems supported by SAP Java Connector, see Supported OS.

Supported versions

The ABAP sensor supports the following SAP versions:

  • SAP R/3 3.1
  • S/4 HANA and later
  • SAP Java Connector 3.1.9

Prerequisites

The ABAP sensor uses the SAP Java Connector (JCo) library to fetch metrics from the ABAP instances. With your SAP license, you can download the JCo library from Download SAP Java Connector 3.1 SDK without charge. For more information, see Add the SAP JCo library.

Important: The ABAP sensor supports only SAP JCo 3.1.9.

Configuring the ABAP sensor

To collect metrics from ABAP instances, you need to configure the ABAP sensor as follows:

The following information is applicable for both static and dynamic agents. For illustration purposes, a Linux-based deployment is used. You need to follow the same procedure for other operating systems like Windows, Mac, and other supported Unix systems.

Add the SAP JCo library

To add the SAP JCo library to a Linux-based system, complete the following steps:

  1. Locate the installed Instana agent in the /opt/instana/agent directory.

  2. In the Instana agent installation directory, create the system/com/sap/sapjco3/<Major>.<Minor>.<patch> directory

where in system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9 the Major is 3, Minor is 1, and patch is 9.

Update these values based on the JAR version that you use.

The following steps consider SAP JCo 3.1.9 as an example; modify the version based on the JAR version file that you use:

  1. Verify that you set up a directory structure, such as /opt/instana/agent/system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9.

  2. Download and extract the SAP JCo package, and follow the instructions that are mentioned in the Readme.txt file.

    The installation of JCo is platform-specific, and you must download the JCo version for the platform on which the Instana agent is run. The ABAP sensor gets deployed on the same computer as the Instana agent and communicates with the SAP system to fetch metrics.

  3. After you download and extract the .zip file, copy the sapjco3.jar file from the extracted folder and paste it to the /opt/instana/agent/system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9/ directory.

  4. In the /opt/instana/agent/system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9/ directory, rename the sapjco3.jar file to sapjco3-3.1.9.jar.Also, place the OS-specific library file in the /opt/instana/agent/system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9/ directory. The file extension is .dll or .so.

After you place the files in the directory, your directory must appear as follows. The following example shows a Linux-based installation directory after you place the file in it:

ls /opt/instana/agent/system/com/sap/sapjco3/3.1.9/
libsapjco3.so  sapjco3-3.1.9.jar

You must not rename files with the extension .dll or .so.

General ABAP sensor configuration

Instana supports both local and remote monitoring for the SAP ABAP sensor.

Add all the local monitoring configurations under the local tag.

In the configuration.yaml file, add the configurations (local or remote) and enter the appropriate values for the host, sysnr (instance ID), client, user, password, and libpath parameters. The default polling interval for metric is set to 60 seconds.

Configuration parameters

Parameters Description
host The IP address or qualified hostname of the SAP instance from which the ABAP sensor fetches the metrics.
sysnr The instance ID of the SAP ABAP instance, for example, 01.
client The client ID of the SAP ABAP instance, for example, 200.
user The username configured in the SAP instance.
password The password that is required to log in to the SAP system for the user.
libpath The folder where JCo is set up on your computer and has the OS-specific library files. For Linux-based systems, the directory must have a libsapjco3.so file. For Windows-based systems, the directory must have a sapjco3.dll file.
lang The SAP logon language. The default value is "en".
pool_capacity The maximum number of connections that ABAP sensors can make to the SAP instance.

Local

The configuration parameters for local monitoring are shown in the following example:

# SAP ABAP
com.instana.plugin.sap.abap:
  # local monitoring configuration
  local : #multiple configurations supported
    - sysnr: '72'
      client: '100'
      user: 'User1'
      password: 'password'
      lang: 'en'
      pool_capacity: '10'
      libpath: <INSERT_SAP_JCO_LIBRARY_LOCATION>
      # path to JCo drivers. For static agent configuration details, follow documentation.
      poll_rate: 60 # seconds

Remote

The configuration parameters for remote monitoring are shown in the following example:

# SAP ABAP
com.instana.plugin.sap.abap:
  # remote monitoring configuration
  remote : #multiple configurations supported
    - host: 'remote.host-1.com'
      sysnr: '72'
      client: '100'
      user: 'User1'
      password: 'password'
      lang: 'en'
      pool_capacity: '10'
      libpath: <INSERT_SAP_JCO_LIBRARY_LOCATION>
      # path to JCo drivers. For static agent configuration details, follow documentation.
      poll_rate: 60 # seconds
    - host: 'remote.host-2.com'
      sysnr: '01'
      client: '900'
      user: 'User2'
      password: 'password'
      lang: 'en'
      pool_capacity: '10'
      libpath: <INSERT_SAP_JCO_LIBRARY_LOCATION>
      # path to JCo drivers. For static agent configuration details, follow documentation.
      poll_rate: 60 # seconds

Make sure that the space formatting before each line is preserved as shown in the previous examples because it follows the YAML formatting syntax.

Verify user authorization to pull metrics

Make sure that the user specified in the ABAP sensor configuration in the YAML file is authorized to pull metrics from SAP JCo.

To pull metrics from SAP JCo, you need to provide the following Authorization Object parameters in the SAP user account:

Authorization Object: S_RFC
    RFC_TYPE: Function Module
    RFC_NAME: *
    Activity: Execute
 
Authorization Object: /SDF/E2E
    Activity: 03
 
Authorization Object: S_ADMI_FCD
    S_ADMI_FCD: ST0R
 
Authorization Object: S_RZL_ADM
    Activity: 03
 
Authorization Object: S_TABU_DIS
    DICBERCLS: &NC&,EDI0,SA,SC,SPWD
    Activity: 03

Viewing metrics

After you install the host agent and configure the ABAP sensor, you can view SAP metrics and alerts in the Instana UI.

Infrastructure view

To view the metrics, complete the following steps:

  1. In the sidebar of the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
  2. On the Map tab, click a tower specific to SAP.
  3. Click Open Dashboard.

You can see the SAP dashboard with all the collected metrics.

Platform view

To view the metrics on Platform, complete the following steps:

  1. Enable SAP platform dashboard, see, SAP.
  2. Enable the SAP monitoring feature, see, SAP monitoring feature flag.
  3. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Platform > SAP. You can view lists the SAP systems, instances, and databases on separate tabs.
  4. To view the SAP instance that is connected to the ABAP sensor, click the Instances tab. The sensor name is typically listed as AbapInstance@HostName_SID_InstanceID.

SAP dashboards

Metrics

The ABAP sensor collects the following metrics:

  • CPU
  • Memory
  • Work Process
  • Background Jobs
  • Database Connections
  • Request Queue
  • Disk Data
  • Errors and Dumps
  • User Statistics
  • Paging In and Out
  • Spool
  • RFC Connections
  • Database Hit List
  • Network
  • Gateway
  • ICM
  • SPOOL
  • Top Process
  • Gateway Error Logs
  • Lock Entry
  • Gateway Statistics
  • IDocs
  • Fiori Metrics
  • File System
  • Buffer Statistics
  • Lan Interface
  • Gateway Connections
  • System Log

Frequency of metric collection

The following table outlines the frequency of metric collection by the ABAP sensor:

Metric collected Collection frequency
Inbound IDoc 60 seconds
Outbound IDoc 60 seconds
HTTP Metrics 60 seconds
SPOOL 60 seconds
User List 60 seconds
DB Connection 60 seconds
Database Hit List 60 seconds
Fiori Metrics 60 seconds
RFC Calls 60 seconds
Memory Usage 60 seconds
Dialog Response Time 60 seconds
Server Status 90 seconds
ABAP Dumps 2 minutes
Lock Entry List 2 minutes
Work Process Status 2 minutes
Job Status 2 minutes
Background Jobs 2 minutes
Buffer Statistics 3 minutes
Short Dumps History 3 minutes
User Info 3 minutes
Top Process List 3 minutes
System Log 3 minutes
Paging In and Out 3 minutes
CPU Metrics 3 minutes
Lan Interface 4 minutes
Gateway Metrics 4 minutes
Gateway Errors 4 minutes
Work Process List 5 minutes
Request Queue 5 minutes
ICM 5 minutes
File System 7 minutes
Disk Data 10 minutes

SAP ABAP sensor generates build-in events for various scenarios. For more information, see Built-in Events Reference.