New Operating System Requirements for SAP HANA SPS 11

With the new SPS 11 release of SAP HANA, it’s a good time to start planning for upgrades.

As of SAP HANA revision 110 or higher, the database is built with a newer compiler version, than originally delivered with RHEL 6 and SLES 11. Therefore an additional runtime environment for GCC 4.8 needs to be installed before updating the SAP HANA database to SPS 11. We ask customers to update their operating systems in the following way:

• RHEL 6 – The GCC 4.8 runtime is available via the normal software update repositories.
• SLES
  • SLES 11 SP4 – The GCC 4.8 runtime is available via the normal software update repositories.
  • SLES 11 SP2 and SP3 – Update to SLES SP4 or manually download the required packages. See SAP Note 2228351 for more details.
  • SLES 11 SP1 (no longer supported) – The GCC 4.8 runtime is not available for SP1, therefore updating to SAP HANA SPS 11 is not possible. Update to SLES 11 SP2 or higher.

Please note: Systems running a HANA DB client only, e.g. SAP application servers, do not require an update of the libraries, as the client software is still built with the original GCC 4.3 compiler.

For more the most up-to-date information about these changes, refer to SAP Note 2228351.