SAP TechEd 2015 Las Vegas – ITM228 – SAP HANA: Overview of On-Premise Deployment Options
Few months back I was offered opportunity to speak at SAP TechEd 2015 in Las Vegas. First thing that crossed my mind was the question on what is the right subject to cover. Since I did not want to present just for sake of presenting there I had to find some topic that will not be redundant to the presentations from SAP, that will address area that is not completely clear to everyone (where I can bring additional value), that will be within the scope of my expertise and that will be seen as attractive by SAP and AGUS sponsoring the event.
I was lucky to have opportunity to get my hands on SAP HANA technology no more than just few weeks after SAP HANA was released to the market in general availability. After initial period where I was experimenting with different job roles around SAP HANA (being responsible for installation and configuration, designing security concept, configuring data provisioning, doing modeling, etc.) I decided to settle down on subject that is probably closest to my heart – SAP HANA architecture, infrastructure and deployment options – and this is the topic that I selected for my presentation this year – to talk about on-premise deployment options for SAP HANA.
You might wonder if on-premise discussion is still relevant when we are able to host SAP HANA in cloud. Answer is yes. First reason is simple fact that there are still customers that are not yet fully embracing cloud and they are still looking at options how to deploy SAP HANA in their own data centers. Second reason is that cloud vendors need to follow same rules as everyone else to ensure that result will be SAP certified – this means that their cloud solutions are based on similar principles as on-premise deployment. Understanding advantages and disadvantages of individual on-premise deployment options can help you to understand the limitations of individual cloud offerings.
Topic of SAP HANA deployment options is already covered quite well by SAP – is there anything new to offer? I believe that yes. SAP is doing great job by opening SAP HANA options by introducing topics like TDI (Tailored Datacenter Integration) and virtualization – but since they do not wish to give up on their commitment to deliver only the best performance they always release new set of regulatory rules prescribing configuration details. Result is that today there are many different options how SAP HANA could be deployed – appliances, TDI, virtualization, application stacking (MCOD, MCOS, MDC) – but it is incredibly difficult to stay clear on what are the regulations (and limitations) and which options can be combined together.
And this is where I decided to approach the subject from different angle. SAP is typically focusing on individual options in detail usually covering one option at a time – looking at simplistic examples to illustrate the approach. Here I intend to do exactly the opposite – first to briefly look on individual options from extreme point of view (how far we could potentially go) and then to outline how all these options could be combined together.
As you can see the subject is quite huge – and since I was given only 1 hour (which is the standard time allocated for ASUG sessions) I had to make tough selection on what will be presented and what not. Therefore I decided to move SAP HANA Business Continuity to a separate session (EXP27127) and also to leave some topics like SAP HANA Dynamic Tiering for another time.
So what will be covered in the ITM228 session? We will start by looking at situation with appliances – providing basic overview on different models across all hardware vendors, then we will look at SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) with all phases and approved options, we will review SAP HANA virtualization options with focus on VMware, then we will mention ways how to stack data from multiple applications on single SAP HANA server or virtual machine (MCOD, MCOS, MDC) and at the end we will look on ways how to combine all these options together – what everything is supported versus what combinations should be avoided.
In SAP HANA Business Continuity session (EXP27127) we will take a closer look on two most typical options – SAP HANA Host Auto-Failover and SAP HANA System Replication. I prepared animation illustrating how the options are designed to work and how SAP HANA is behaving during take-over. At the end of the session we will outline most typical deployment scenarios for SAP HANA Business Continuity.
On the screenshots below you can find example of the content that will be presented during the sessions. By this I would like to invite you to my sessions (ITM228 and EXP27127) and I am looking forward to meet you in person at SAP TechEd 2015 Las Vegas. Have a safe travel.
Example 1: [ITM228] Overview of available appliance models and their usage.
Example 2: [ITM228] Visualization of SAP HANA stacking options and their approved usage for production.
Example 3: [EXP27127] Overview of typical single-node SAP HANA Business Continuity deployment options.
I would like to express big thanks to Jan Teichmann (SAP), Ralf Czekalla (SAP), Erik Rieger (VMware), John Appleby (Bluefin) for reviewing the slide deck and providing suggestions for improvement.
SAP shared in a presentation to our company that MCOD is not available for Production . Can you please confirm if MCOD is available for production systems?
Hello,
MCOD is available for production but only for specific product combinations that are mentioned in SAP Note 1661202 (general use cases) and in SAP Note 1826100 (Suite on HANA)..
However even for those "white listed" combinations customer must be aware of constrains that this deployment option is bringing (those are also described in the above mentioned SAP Notes)..
Also I would like to point out that although some combinations are supported by SAP it does not always mean this is smartest option to do.. I am personally trying to avoid MCOD as much as possible unless there are benefits from using that,,,
Tomas
Is it possible to combine the DBs of following three workloads (small footprint) in MDC on single HANA scale-up box in Production??
- ECC
- BW
- Portal.
Hello,
answer to this question is in SAP Note 2104291 - FAQ - SAP HANA multitenant database containers - scroll down to the very end and open attached PDF document
Tomas
Thanks Tomas.
Actually I was kind of aware about ECC+BW co-deployment on one appliance using MDC. Not sure about support of Netweaver Portal tenant DB put in the same MDC database as ECC+BW.
Mohsin
Hello,
I think answer to your question is covered by SAP Note 2096000 - SAP HANA multitenant database containers - Additional Information
This is saying that MCOD white list is still valid but only if you want to deploy two applications to share one tenant database.
This is saying everything is supported but use with caution, be aware of implications of using MDC and do very good testing.
This is saying that combining applications from MCOD while list in MDC is safe (as long as this is what you want).
Looking at SAP Note 1661202 - Support multiple applications one SAP HANA database / tenant DB I can see following:
So based on statement above BW and Portal is listed as suitable even for MCOD - so deploying in MDC should be no problem (should be safe)...
SAP Note 1849151 - SAP NetWeaver Java on HANA release information is saying that as long as you have Portal on NW 7.4 SP04 you should be supported for SAP HANA...
Then SAP Note 1666670 - SAP BW powered by SAP HANA - Landscape Deployment Planning says this:
Almost there - SAP Note 2121768 - Considerations with SAP HANA multitenant database containers and SAP BW (highlights):
Since you mentioned single box I did not include scale-out considerations - make sure the design is compliant with CPU/RAM requirements. Simplest option is to use BW compliant appliance (as this can be used for BW and ERP at the same time).
And finally 1600929 - SAP BW powered by SAP HANA DB: Information - not going to paste all the info here...
Summary: I do not see reason why you should not be able to run BW, ERP and Portal in same SAP HANA database...
Hope this helps..
Tomas
Thanks Tomas for such a detailed response.