Hybrid-IT landscape – Seeming less integration Printing on printer in network from SAP instance in Azure Printing over TCP/IP in Hybrid-IT scenario Setting up your on premise TCP/IP network printers in an Azure VM's is overall the same as in your corporate network, assuming you do have a VPN Site-To-Site tunnel or ExpressRoute connection established. Figure 24: Network printing How To Some network printers came with a configuration wizard which makes it easy to set up your printer in an Azure VM. If no wizard software has been distributed with the printer the “manual” way to set up the printer is to create a new TCP/IP printer port. Open Control Panel -> Devices and Printers -> Add a printer Choose Add a printer using a TCP/IP address or hostname Type in the printers IP address Printer Port standard 9100 If necessary install the appropriate printer driver manually. Host-based printer over SMB (shared printer) in Hybrid-IT scenario Host-based printers are not network-compatible by design. But a host-based printer can be shared among computers on a network as long as the printer is connected to a powered-on computer. Connect your corporate network either Site-To-Site or ExpressRoute and share your local printer. The SMB protocol uses NetBIOS instead of DNS as name service. The NetBIOS host name can be different from the DNS host name. Standard case is that the NetBIOS host name and the DNS host name are identical. The DNS domain does not make sense in the NetBIOS name space. Accordingly the fully qualified DNS host name consisting of the DNS host name and DNS domain must not be used in the NetBIOS name space. The printer share is identified by a unique name in the network: Host name of the SMB host (always needed). Name of the share (always needed). Name of the domain if printer share is not in the same domain as SAP system. Additionally, a user name and a password may be required to access the printer How to: Share your local printer In the Azure VM open the Explorer and type in the printers share name
Specify the Domain Controller as target host (). The system is now waiting to be included in the transport domain. For security reasons you then have to go back to the domain controller to confirm your request. Choose System Overview and Approve of the waiting system. Then confirm the prompt and the configuration will be distributed. This SAP system now contains the necessary information about all the other SAP systems in the transport domain. At the same time, the address data of the new SAP system is sent to all the other SAP systems, and the SAP system is entered in the transport profile of the transport control program. Check whether RFCs and access to the transport directory of the domain work. Go on with the configuration of your transport system as as described in the documentation . How to: Make sure your STMS on premise is configured correctly. Make sure the hostname of the Transport Domain Controller can be resolved by your virtual machine on Azure and vice visa. Call transaction STMS -> Configuration -> Include System in Domain. Confirm the connection on the on premise TMS system. Configure transport routes, groups and layers as In site-to-site connected Hybrid-IT scenarios the latency between on-premise and Azure still can be substantial. If we follow the sequence of transporting objects through development and test systems to production or think about applying transports or support packages to the different systems, you realize that, dependent on the location of the central transport directory, a part of the systems will encounter high latency reading or writing data in the central transport directory. The situation is similar to SAP landscape configurations where the different systems are spread through different data centers with substantial distance between the data centers. In to work around such latency and have the systems work fast in reading or writing from or to the transport directory, you can setup two STMS transport domains (one for on-premise and one with the systems in Azure and link the transport domains. Please check this documentation which explains the principles behind this concept in the SAP TMS: . How To: Set up a transport domain on each location (on-premise and Azure) using transaction STMS Link the domains with a domain link and confirm the link between the two domains. Distribute the configuration to the linked system.