Why should a database be shared?

Within the overall cloud infrastructure, the SAP HANA Cloud is one of the most expensive and complex components. It is created in a subaccount and within a space of the Cloud Foundry environment. The following image schematically shows the infrastructure with a database:

If you now actively use several sub-accounts – each with several Spaces – and each with its own databases, this not only leads to a great deal of administrative effort, but also to a multiple of the license costs. The following image shows a negative example of the use of three databases. All three have to be created, maintained and paid for.

Dividing a database into other sub-accounts

To reduce the cost and effort of the infrastructure shown above to almost a third, you can use just one database instead, but you have to divide it into the other subaccounts and Spaces.

This means that one database is used by all sub-accounts. You only have to maintain and finance this one database. Scaling one database is significantly cheaper than creating several.

Note: One advantage of having a separate subaccount in which only the SAP HANA Cloud runs without applications is that this database can be used by several subaccounts belonging to individual plants or subgroups. This means that the costs of this one general subaccount can be allocated in equal parts to the individual plants / subgroups. More information on this can be found in the article What architectures are there in BTP? described.

The first step is to create a HANA database in a space. This will also be the only space in which the HANA database will be visible in the BTP interface. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the current SAP BTP version: it is difficult to recognize whether a HANA database is available in a space. How you can create the database is described in the article Setting up the HANA database article.

This space with the HANA database must be accessible to the administrators of the database.

Note: The data within SAP HANA is completely separate for the individual applications. An application can never access data from other applications unless you actively configure this.

Creating the instance mapping

To share the database with other Spaces or subaccounts, an instance mapping must be carried out. This is carried out in SAP HANA Cloud Central under Instances . You can find the link to SAP HANA Cloud Central in SAP BTP as follows:

1. navigate in the SAP BTP to the space in which you created the HANA database

2. click on the “SAP HANA Cloud” entry in the menu

3. click on the Actions item in the database instance and select the Open In SAP HANA Cloud Central item

In SAP HANA Cloud Central, you can now select the database instance that you want to share:

You can now create a new mapping using the Create Mapping button. To do this, select the Org ID (subaccount) and the corresponding space.

After clicking on Add, the database is now available in the selected subaccount / space.

Which services must be available in the subaccount?

To be able to create an HDI container, you must activate the SAP HANA Schemas & HDI Containers service with the hdi-shared service plan.