Updated on 21 Apr 2020
1. Overview of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA on VMware vSphere:
SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA in production is supported on VMware vSphere 5.5, 6.0, 6.5 and 6.7, Please read the following materials for details:
2020657 - SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA on VMware vSphere (S-Number login required. Please read this note carefully first.)
SAP HANA on vSphere support notes:
Please kindly check the note below to identify the matched SAP HANA SP/VMWare vSphere versions and technical conditions.
More details about SAP HANA on VMWare vSPhere available in this wiki and note 1788665 (Disregard the other virtualisation options, HW partitioning technologies, Multiple Data Container and SAP BW section)
As mentioned in note 2020657 above, SAP extends support for SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA on VMware to the same degree as general applicable for SAP HANA on VMware. The use cases of B1H on VM could be:
- SAP supports multiple VMs, either SAP HANA or non-SAP HANA in non-production, for example a B1 client VM.
- SAP supports one single SAP HANA VM and other non-SAP HANA VMs in production,
as long the SAP HANA VM is configured with resource access priority other the other VMs and pinned to CPU socket. See SAP Note 1995460 for more details.
- SAP supports multiple SAP HANA VMs in production Follow the steps in note 2020657.
In addition, the following conditions do apply for SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA on VMware:
Important notes:
- Apart from B1H certified servers, you also can choose the SAP HANA certified server (see SAP HANA PAM) for B1H VM in production.
- Certified servers with full SSD hard disks are not mandatory anymore. SAS disks or a hybrid of SSD and SAS are also accepted for production environments on VMWare as long as they are part of the certified server (bill of material).
- B1H on VM may result in around 12% performance downgrade comparing with B1H on physical server.
2. Best Practice of SAP HANA on VMWare vSphere
Please read the following guide carefully about the best practice of SAP HANA on VMware vSphere from VMware Inc.
SAP HANA on VMware vSphere Best Practice Guide
SAP Notes about VMware vSphere configuration:
1122388 - Linux: VMware vSphere configuration guidelines
1943937 - Hardware Configuration Check Tool - Central Note
3. High-Level Guideline of Provisioning SAP Business One, Version on SAP HANA on VMWare vSphere
This section guides you through the high-level provision of B1H on VMware. Apply this provision guide according for vSphere installation and setup in next section.
BIOS settings of physical server:
Apply these BIOS settings in prior to vSphere 5.5 Installation.
1. Enable Intel VT technology
Enable all BIOS virtualisation technology settings
2. Enable CPU Intel Turbo Boost
Allow Intel automatic CPU core overclocking technology (P-≠-States)
3. Disable QPI Power Management
Static high power for QPI links
4. Enable hyper-threading
Double the logical CPU cores
5. Enable execute disable feature
Enable the Data Execution Prevention bit (NX-bit), required for vMotion
6. Disable node interleaving
7. Disable C1E Halt state
Disable Enhanced C-States in Bios
8. Set Power Management to High Performance
No power saving modus (C-States)
9. Disable all unused BIOS features like:
-Video BIOS Shadowable,
-Video RAM Cacheable,
-On-board audio,
-On-board modem,
-On-board serial ports,
-On-board parallel ports,
-On-board game port,
-Floppy drive, CD-ROM, USB
Important note about vSphere installation and configuration:
The following section about VMWare vSPhere installation is taking vSphere 5.5 for example, please find the relevant guide from VMWare website for your desired VMWare version. However, the configuration section is valid for all the VMWare vSPhere versions.
Installing and configuring vSphere 5.5
- vSphere ESXi 5.5 standard edition or higher: (Required) An overview introduction of ESXi available here. What is VMware ESXi?
- vSphere 5.5 Client or Web Client: (Required) Creating, configuring and managing virtual machine.
- vCenter: Optional if you only have one ESXi host(one physical server that you would like to host your VMs), recommended if you have multiple ESXi hosts. For more details about vSphere 5.5, please refer to section 4 about vSphere 5.5 material reference.
After creating the VM that you will run for HANA take the following steps:
- Shutdown the VM
- Go to vSphere Center -> Select your VM -> Edit Settings -> VM Options -> Advanced -> Configuration Parameters -> Edit Configuration -> Add Row
- Enter new parameter "Smbios.reflectHost" with value
"TRUE"
- Start the VM
This will pass the real vendor/model to the VM BIOS, and if it's a supported vendor/model, the installer will detect it properly. Please note that the installer expects the same number of disk as on the real hardware in this case. The installer referred to here is the Business One and HANA installation wizard that ships with the SUES for Business One ISO.
Please refer to the VMware official installation and setup guide below.
vSphere 5.5 Installation and Setup (html)
vSphere ESXi Host settings:
Apply this during installation of vSphere ESXi host
1. Networking
Use: Virtual Distributed Switches (vDS) to connect all hosts that work together
2. Configure NTP timeserver: To avoid the time/clock synchronisation problems between VM and host machine, please refer to the note 989963 - Linux: VMware timing problem
Creating and Configuring HANA Virtual Machine:
Create the HANA virtual machine with vSphere web client after vSphere installation. Applying the following settings for the HANA virtual machine.
Please refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration (html)
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration describes how to create, configure, and manage virtual machines in the VMware vSphere® environment.
Guideline of Virtual Machine Settings for SAP HANA:
In principle, VM resources(CPU, Memory, Disk) should be allocated pro rata.
Please read the note below for details:
1995460 - Single SAP HANA VM on VMware vSphere in production
2024433 - Multiple SAP HANA VMs on VMware vSphere in production (controlled availability)
For example, a host server with 4 CPU, 10 Core for each CPU and 512 G RAM, 2 TB hard disk
4 CPUs, 10 Cores per each CPU with hyper-threading enabled will be virtualised by vSphere as 4 CPU * 10 Core/CPU *2 (Hypered-Threading) = 80 vCPU (logical processors)
You would like to virtualise it into 4HANA VMs as below.
VMs |
vCPU |
Memory (GB) |
Virtual Disk (GB) |
|---|
VM#1 (Production) |
40 (Two dedicated CPUs) |
256 |
1024 |
VM#2 (Production) |
20 (One dedicate CPU) |
128 |
512 |
VM#3 (Test) |
10 (One Shared CPU) |
60 |
218 |
VM#4 (Dev) |
10 (One Shared CPU) |
60 |
218 |
Notes:
- Not more than 4 VM should be created for this host server, as only 4 CPU sockets available.
- For production usage, the CPU cores of a socket get exclusively used by only one single VM, in other words, no more than one VMs share one CPU.
- The sample of VM#3 and #4 sharing one CPU is used for Test or Development purpose.
- vSphere also take some memory
CPU Configuration:
1. Align virtual CPU VM configuration to actual server HW. Do not overcommit the CPU.
For production,the vCPUs of a single VM must be pinned to physical cores, so the CPU cores of a socket get exclusively used by only one single VM. A single VM may span more then one socket, however. CPU and Memory overcommitting must not be used.
In other words, the VM number should not be larger that the number of CPU sockets in the host server.
Example: A VM running on a 2-socket server with 10 core CPUs, could be configured with 10 cores per socket, like 2 CPU socket and 20 vCPUs, but should not configured as 2CPU socket and 16 CORE per each.(32 vCPU)
2.CPU and Memory resource should be allocated pro rata.
Memory Configuration:
1.The minimum Memory size as 64GB. The memory sizing of HANA VM for B1H is compliant with the same sizing guideline of HANA physical server for B1H, the sizing tool available here. Sizing tool for SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA
For instance, if the memory sizing result from the size tool above suggests an 128 G RAM server for a customer. The memory of physical server the customer purchases must not be less than 128 GB. The memory of HANA VM should not be less than 64 G RAM in provision.
2.Do Not over commit memory to the VM, though vSphere allow you to assign more virtual memory to VMs than the physical memory available in the host.
3.
Configure the Memory Reservation as the exact amount of memory allocated for the VM. This ensures that the VM always tohave the full amount of memory available when it is started.
Virtual Disk Configuration:
1. Configure the raid policy as RAID-5 all hard disks in the host machine
2. Use multiple virtual SCSI Controllers for the Database VM and VMs with high I/O load. The use of multiple virtual SCSI Controllers allows the execution of several parallel I/O operations inside the Guest OS. The Log I/O traffic from the Datafile I/O traffic through separate virtual SCSI Controllers. As a Best Practice, you can use one Controller for OS
and Swap, one Controller for DB Log, and one or more Controllers for DB Data files (depending on the amount and size of DB Data files). Please refer to the VMware Administration Guide on how to add additional virtual SCSI Controllers.
A general guidance of disk partition for SAP HANA:
Mount Point |
Description |
Size |
/ |
Root Directory |
50GB |
/usr/sap |
SAP System Instances |
50GB |
/hana/shared |
Installation Path |
>=1*RAM |
/hana/data |
Data Volume |
>=3*RAM |
/hana/log |
Log Volume |
>=1*RAM |
Note: If you are using the slesb1hana image from
https://www.suse.com/slesb1hana , please select to ignore to create the file systems during the installation process. As the disk partition should be created
manually as instruction above.
3. Virtual disks are created in "zeroedthick" format by default. This can lead to write performance degradation. Therefore, the format "eagerzeroedthick" should be chosen. See VMware KB 1022242 for details:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1022242. To determine which Format a virtual disk currently has, consult VMware KB 1011170:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011170
4.Use the paravirtual SCSI Controller (PVSCSI). Please make sure that you install the VMware Tools first. See VMware KB 1010398 for details:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010398
5. For performance reason, Do not using the snapshot on VM for HANA database on HDD configured server.
Please refer to VMware KB 1010398 for details:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/10103
Network Configuration:
1. VMXNET3
Use paravirtual VMXNET 3 virtual NICs for SAP HANA virtual machines
Disable virtual interrupt coalescing for VMXNET 3 virtual NICs
Alternative disable this setting on the host: CoalesceDefaultOn = 0
OS Configuration:
Please refer to
1954788 - SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS settings for SLES 11 / SLES for SAP Applications 11 SP3
4.vSphere 5.5 material reference
vSphere 5.5 documents:
VMware vSphere: Server Virtualization, Cloud Infrastructure (VMware Official website about VMware vSphere)
What is VMware ESXi?
vSphere 5.5 Installation and Setup (html)
VMwware Official installation and setup guide of vSphere 5.5, ESXi 5.5, vCenter Server 5.51
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration (html)
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration describes how to create, configure, and manage virtual machines in the VMware vSphere® environment.
vSphere Troubleshooting (html)
vSphere Troubleshooting guide.
The pdf format of documents listed above is available for download here
https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html
=>ESXi and vCenter Server Product Documentation
vSphere videos on youtube:
How To & Training: vSphere 5.5 by VMWareKB
vSphere 5.5 - How to install and configure VMware ESXi 5.5 by sysadmintutorials
5.SuSE Enterprise Linux Installation for SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA VM
1944415 - Configuration Guide for Hardware Platforms of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
This is a must read note with regard to SLES installation for SAP HANA.
Please follow the attachments in the note as below to install tailored slesb1 image, SAP HANA and SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA .
- How to Configure Hardware Platforms for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.pdf
Please skip this hardware configuration guide for HANA VM, which is designed for the physical server. For the provisioning of HANA virtual machine, please refer to section 3 about the high-level guideline of provisioning SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA on VMware vSphere.
- How to Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Business One Products on SAP HANA.pdf:
6.SAP HANA &B1H installation on SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA VM
For the installation process of SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, which is exactly the same as it is for physical server.
Beside the document about How to Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Business One Products on SAP HANA.pdf mentioned in last step, you can also refer to the following documents:
