SAP LaMa Archives » Musings of an IT Implementor

On the 9th of November 2020 SAP released support package 17 of SAP Landscape Management 3.0.
If you already run SAP LaMa 3.0 SP11 and above, then you can quite easily patch to SP17 by installing the 3 SCA files into your existing Netweaver 7.5 Java stack.

However, things are never so easy, as I will show.

Required Netweaver Stack

Before you can patch SAP LaMa you must always read the support package release note.
For SP17, it is SAP note 2908399 in component “BC-VCM-LVM”.

In the SAP note, it states that a minimum of Netweaver 7.5 SP15 is required for LaMa 3.0 SP17, with a recommendation of Netweaver 7.5 SP17.

That’s good for me, I have Netweaver 7.5 SP16, I should be good to patch with no issues. Right?
No, after applying the 3 SCA files for LaMa 3.0 SP17, the Netweaver stack starts and stops successfully, but when I try to log into LaMa I see the message on the screen “SAP Landscape Management is loading, please wait…“, but it does not progress any further.
When accessing Netweaver Administrator, it works perfectly.

The Error

For the sake of clarity, I also took a look at the Java stack log viewer and I could see an error:

“error binding ExecuteCustom/RMI …“, which didn’t mean a lot to me and produced no results in SAP notes.

The error record details mentioned: “com.sap.tc.vcm.engine.operation.handler.customop.CustomRMIOperationHandler.CustomRMIOperationProvider” in application: “sap.com/tc~vcm~engine~app“.

None of the above produced any SAP notes that looked vaguely related.

Let Groundhog Day Commence

I’ve been working with LVM and LaMa for a while now. When I actually started looking how long, I was surprised to see my knowledge went back to 2014.
I was sure at the back of my mind there was a slight recollection of this same issue.

I started searching the SAP notes and with this recollection of a problem in mind, I decided to search for the exact message that was staring at me on the LaMa post-login screen.
It was a direct hit on the SAP note search.
SAP note 2662354 “SAP Landscape Management is loading, please wait…” is an old SAP note for SAP LaMa 3.0 SP07, back in 2018.
The SAP note described the exact same symptoms, and the failure to progress into LaMa past the loading screen.

Inside SAP note 2662354, it referenced the support package release note 2542159 “SAP Landscape Management 3.0 SP07” which states: “Install at least SAP NetWeaver Application Server 7.5 for Java Support Package 11. If you use a lower Support Package, you have to update the SAPUI5 component“.

It was all coming back to me now. In the past, to apply LaMa 3.0 SP07, you needed to patch the NW stack, or an alternative was to simply apply a higher SAPUI5 software component (SCA).

SAP UI5 – Skipping Ahead

Once I understood the potential solution (apply a later SAPUI5 SCA), I needed to validate what I had already validated in the past.
Was it still supported to apply a later SAPUI5 software component to a SAP Netweaver 7.5 Java stack?

In SAP Note 2541677 “How to switch SAPUI5 versions in NW Java 7.50 SP07 and higher SPs“, it confirms that from SAPUI5 7.5 SP07, more than one version of the UI5 library will be included. The SCA effectively becomes cumulative as each SAPUI5 version is released.

More importantly the note says: “SAP recommends that you always implement the latest released Support Package. You are save to apply UI5 patches of higher SPs to your systems, as there as no direct dependencies.“.

That is exactly the confirmation I was looking for.

Patching SAPUI5

My Netweaver stack level is SP16. The recommended Netweaver stack level (based on that LaMa SP17 note) is SP17.
That left two options which could fix the problem:

The latest SCA patch level for SAPUI5 7.5 SP16
or
The latest SCA patch level for SAPUI5 7.5 SP17 (taken from the NW 7.5 SP17 stack).

I decided that I would take the “slowly, slowly” approach and patch to the latest SAPUI5 7.5 SP16 patch first.
After patching and restarting the Netweaver stack, I still had the exact same problem.

Moving onto the second option, I applied the latest SAPUI5 7.5 SP17 patch level (UISAPUI5JAVA17P_18-80000708.SCA).
After patching and restarting the Netweaver stack, the issue was finally fixed!

As of Nov 11th, there is still no official documentation for this process.

Improving the Patching Efficiency

During the above problem resolution, I did not use SUM to apply the patches.
When patching SAP LaMa we are talking (usually) of only 3 software component archives.
For this reason, I prefer to patch using the Telnet deployment method.

As the Linux <sid>adm user on the JPAS host, log into the NW Telnet server port:

telnet 127.0.0.1 5##08

[enter administrator user/pw]

deploy /<path-to>/<SCA-file>

The Telnet deployment order for SP17 is:

VCMCR4E17_0-70001063.SCA
VCM17_0-70001062.SCA
VCM_ENT17_0-70001064.SCA
[the SAPUI5 7.5 SP17 patch – if you are on NW SP16]

Once deployed, the NW stack needs a full restart.

Summary

Patching SAP LaMa should be simple, sometimes it has issues.
LaMa depends on the SAPUI5 component version.
You may need to patch SAPUI5 to make LaMa work.
SAPUI5 support packages include prior versions (after 7.5 SP07).
SAP permits you to use a higher SP of SAPUI5 compared to the NW stack SP level.
It is possible to use Telnet to deploy the patches, providing you follow the correct order of deployment.

Useful Links

SAP Note 2908399 “SAP Landscape Management 3.0 SP17” v7
SAP Note 2662354 “SAP Landscape Management is loading, please wait…” v1
SAP Note 2541677 “How to switch SAPUI5 versions in NW Java 7.50 SP07 and higher SPs” v7
SAP Note 2542159 “SAP Landscape Management 3.0 SP07” v6

How Does SAP LaMa Work In this Context?

With SAP LaMa, it has the ability to perform both steps #1 and #2 in the last list.
Here’s a diagrammatic overview that I hope shows accurately the interaction between the Azure, Linux and SAP layers:

In the above diagram we can see that SAP LaMa is “cloud aware” and uses the Azure APIs to start and stop Azure VMs.

Once the VM is started, the usual Linux-level startup process takes over to start the services.

There is one caveat with the above and that is regarding SUSE cloud-netconfig. Find out more here: SUSE Cloud-Netconfig and Azure VMs – Dynamic Network Configuration

Why the Hostagent is Critical for LaMa

The SAP Hostagent is used as the marker point in the VM start-up process, at which point SAP LaMa knows for sure that the VM is up and running.
Before the Hostagent responds, SAP LaMa can only query the status of the VM from the Azure APIs, which basically say “starting” or “running”.

There are a number of monitoring capabilities inside SAP LaMa, but the Hostagent is the critical one.
From the Hostagent, the SAP instance agents can be unregistered and re-registered.

When setting up your SAP LaMa landscape, the SAP Hostagent is critical. If you get it right, with automated deployment, SSL setup, common configuration, custom descriptors/operations, then you can automate almost anything in your SAP landscape.

You need to constantly patch the SAP Hostagent to ensure that it remains compatible with other elements of your SAP landscape. For example, to be able to patch the SAP ASE database, you need the Hostagent. It’s also used for the BALDR (metrics gathering) inside SAP ASE from ASE 16.3 onwards.

SAP LaMa & SAP Landscape Orchestration

The SAP LaMa tool is the nice front-end and scheduler onto which you can apply your automation requirements via the Hostagent and SAP instance agents.

Not only does it provide orchestration capability, but it can also validate your landscape according to predefined in-built checks (such as Kernel component version consistency) and even validate against custom validations built and defined by you.

Tag: SAP LaMa

Patching SAP LaMa 3.0 to SP17