Keeping an eye on SAP HANA

During my SAP HANA classes I often get the question “How should I monitor the SAP HANA systems?” I think that is a good question and in this blog I want to explain how you can monitor your SAP HANA systems.

The monitoring options for SAP HANA systems

As an SAP System Administrator you need to keep your SAP HANA systems up and running. So what would be an good way of doing this? There are two options and depending on your needs and available infrastructure you should decide which option suits you best.

• You can monitor you SAP HANA systems using SAP HANA Studio
• You can monitor you SAP HANA systems using SAP Solution Manager

Monitoring SAP HANA systems using SAP HANA Studio

This solution is best for customers that have no SAP ABAP footprint. The monitoring can be done using the monitoring tools included in SAP HANA Studio. Using SAP HANA Studio you can monitor the following areas:

• Overall System Status using the System Monitor view
• Detailed System Status using the Default Administration view
• Memory usage per system or service using the Memory Overview view
• Resource usage using the Resource Utilization view
• System Alerts using the Alert view
• Disk Storage using the Volumes view
• Overall view using the SAP HANA Monitor Dashboard

Overall System Status using the System Monitor view

In the System Monitor you will find an status overview of all the SAP HANA systems connected to your SAP HANA Studio. As you can see in the screenshot below it shows the system status including some important metrics. With this monitor you can quickly see if all systems are functioning within normal specifications.

Detailed System Status using the Default Administration view

In the Detailed System Status view you get an detailed overview of the most important metrics from the selected SAP HANA system. With this information you can see if all the different areas (memory, CPU and disk) are running within the given thresholds. If not you can follow the links for an deeper investigation.

Memory usage per system or service using the Memory Overview view

I think that memory usage is one of the most important metrics in an SAP HANA system. That is why there are several nice views available to show the overall memory usage and the the usage per service. These views also give the option to look at the memory usage in an specified time period.  This can be very useful to investigate what happened last night.

Memory Overview per System

Memory Overview per Service

Resource usage using the Resource Utilization view

The resource monitor lets me look at CPU, memory and storage metrics in an combined view. It also show me the graph in an specified time period. Using this monitor give me the opportunity to find the root cause of the problem.

System Alerts using the Alert view

The System Alerts view show all the alerts that have been triggered in the system. I can specify my own thresholds values and for the alters that I think are important I can setup email notification. With is email notification I get informed on important alerts even when I’m looking after other systems.

Disk Storage using the Volumes view

Even in an In-Memory database disk storage is important, so using the Volumes view you can keep track of the filling level and the IO performance.

The SAP HANA Monitoring Dashboard

As of SAP HANA SPS08 the is also an Administration Dashboard available that show the most important metrics in a SAP Fiori Dashboard.

I have also recorded a video showing all the SAP HANA Studio monitoring features.

Monitoring SAP HANA systems using SAP Solution Manager

This solution is best for customers that use SAP Solution Manager already for managing and monitoring SAP systems. SAP HANA is added to SAP Solution Manager as a Managed System and from there you can setup Technical System monitoring. The Maintenance Optimizer (MOPZ) and DBACOCKPIT are also fully operational.

Using the transactions SM_WORKCENTER and DBACOCKPIT gives as many monitoring capabilities (maybe even more) than what is possible in SAP HANA Studio.

I have created a few video’s to demonstrate the transactions SM_WORKCENTER, the The Maintenance Optimizer (MOPZ) and DBACOCKPIT.

Monitoring SAP HANA using transactions SM_WORKCENTER

This video shows how you can monitor SAP HANA system using SAP Solution Manager 7.1 SP12

Monitoring SAP HANA using transaction DBACOCKPIT

This video shows the transaction DBACOCKPIT in a SAP Solution Manager 7.1 SP12 connected to a SAP HANA system.

Requesting an SAP HANA Support Package Stack using MOPZ

This video show how you can use SAP Solution Manager 7.1 sp12 to request and download an Support Package Stack for SAP HANA.

If you want to learn more on SAP HANA and SAP Solution Manager then visit the SAP Education website. There is a curriculum for SAP HANA Administration and SAP Solution Manager.

You can also visit the SAP Leaning Hub and have a look in my SAP Leaning Room “SAP HANA Administration and Operations”.

Have fun watching over SAP HANA