How to update your sandbox HANA system to SPS 12

Since I have always been keeping a sandbox HANA system up-to-date with the latest Revision, I definitely wanted to upgrade it as soon as possible to the new stable SPS 12 as announced during SAPPHIRE NOW.

Please be aware, that there is no Revision as of Datacenter Service Point – DSP Revision (SAP production system verified SAP HANA Revision) for HANA SPS 12 yet, so this is only recommended to make yourself familiar with it in a sandbox environment!

There are many ways to check for HANA component updates, but I like the respective function of the HANA Studio:

This check can take a while:

But eventually the available component updates for download are displayed:

On next I can select where to store my downloads:

On finish the components are downloaded, which again could take a while:

Since it is always a good idea to work with the latest HOSTAGENT, I update this first, which is pretty straight forward (my HANA server runs on VMware, so your path to the downloaded archive and SAPCAR version might differ):

Then I initiate the automatic HOSTAGENT upgrade with rm .upgrading. This can take a few minutes, depending on your configuration.

Next, I start the graphical HANA Life Cycle Manager from the mounted upgrade volume:

I confirm SAP HANA Database 1.0 SPS 12 Revision 120 as the target:

And choose to update my system:

I choose the component to be updated:

And provide the required passwords:

I check and confirm the update summary:

And the update completes without any issues:

With a final success message:

In my next blog, I will go into more details of HANA SPS 12, especially around more SAP HANA XS Advanced features, but for now, I hope that this has done the trick for you: