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Update: 23/11/2017
Please ignore the blog below and check out this OSS Note:
2420699 - Release of SAP HANA Database 2.0 for older SAP Versions
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2420699
NW7.4 OSDB PAM -
https://support.sap.com/content/dam/launchpad/en_us/pam/pam-essentials/TIP/NW74xPAMDBOS.pdf
According to the OSS Note and PAM NW7.4 is supported by HANA 2.0
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Good Evening All,
there is an excellent blog introducing SAP HANA 2.0 SAP HANA 2.0 editions and options – by the SAP HANA Academy , and, if you're thinking to move an existing SAP System to HANA 2.0, or install a new SAP System on HANA 2.0, before going any further,
HANA 2.0 is not supported for NW7.4
There are no concrete plans from SAP side to support NW7.4 on HANA 2.0
This means, if you are running any SAP Applications on NW7.4, eg, BW NW 7.4 on HANA 1.0 you cannot upgrade your HANA to HANA 2.0 because the BW NW 7.4 will not run on HANA 2.0
If you are running BW NW 7.4 you cannot do an "in-place upgrade" from HANA 1.0 to HANA 2.0 because NW 7.4 is not going to be supported on HANA 2.0
HANA 2.0 is planned to be supported for NW7.5
SAP is planning to release a version of NW7.5 which will support HANA 2.0 - according to the PAM Q1 2017, see more details further down
Until the HANA 2.0 version of NW7.5 is released, NW7.5 systems will not run on HANA 2.0
What it means
Therefore, for the time being, in both cases, NW7.4 and NW7.5 do not upgrade your HANA 1.0 to HANA 2.0. For NW7.5 SAP will confirm in the PAM when it is supported by HANA 2.0 .
I must admit this all came as a surprise for me. I had assumed, when HANA 2.0 was announced that it would naturally be supporting all of the SAP Products and Versions that HANA 1.0 Supports.
Even the OSS Note "1948334 - SAP HANA Database Update Paths for Maintenance Revisions" discusses the pre-requisite HANA 1.0 versions required to move to HANA 2.0 - but the Note does not give any hints that the SAP Products which currently work with HANA 1.0 might not be supported on HANA 2.0 .
In our case we're affected by BW. All of our BW's on HANA are NW7.4 . We were hoping to take the HANA systems to HANA 2,0 this year and we assumed that since the BW's are supported by HANA 1.0 and the HANA Note shows that our HANA version meets the pre-requisites to upgrade to HANA 2.0 that it would be just that a straight upgrade of HANA and voila off we go.
Thankfully, we have been informed that the BW 7.4 is not supported on HANA 2.0 and therefore we avoid an unpleasant surprise and hence that's the reason for this blog, be warned if you run NW7.4 on HANA you cannot upgrade your HANA to 2.0
Thinking Philosophically
When I saw HANA 2.0 being released I assumed since it comes from SAP, it will be downwardly compatible and that everything which runs on HANA 1.0 will run on HANA 2.0 .
We're all familiar with installing SAP systems and when downloading the Installation Binaries choosing the NW version and then the Database (eg Oracle, DB2, SQL Server) and then receiving the Installation Binaries based upon the Software Version & Database combination.
So, it seems the same is true for HANA itself, the HANA 1.0 product and HANA 2.0 product must be so different that NW needs to be written to support either, eg when downloading NW we would choose which Database we intend to run NW on, either HANA 1.0 or HANA 2.0 .
This kind of now explains why HANA 1.0 SPS12 has such a long lifecycle, and will be supported until May 2019, this must be the grace period to enable Customers who have NW 7.4 on HANA 1.0 to
a) Upgrade NW to a version which supports HANA 2.0
and then
b) Upgrade HANA to HANA 2.0
I had also assumed when I started seeing that HANA 2.0 blogs and marketing information, that HANA 2.0 upon RTC would be supporting NW versions, but it's curious that HANA 2.0 is out there but currently there's not even a NW 7.5 which supports HANA 2.0 .
Next Steps
read these OSS Notes and do your homework:
2380229 - SAP HANA Platform 2.0 – Central Note
2378962 - SAP HANA 2.0 Revision and Maintenance Strategy
2399995 – Hardware requirement for SAP HANA 2.0
SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) for SAP NetWeaver 7.5
NW7.4 OS DB PAM
NW 7.5 OS DB PAM
According to the PAM for NW 7.5, we can expect probably after Q1/2017 support for SAP HANA 2.0 on NW 7.5 either with NW 7.5 SP07 or NW 7.5 SP08 (alternatively NW 7.51 SP02 or NW 7.51 SP03) – refer to the support package release schedule for planning your upgrade schedule
SAP Support Package Release Schedule
2405803 - SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 00 Database Revision 001
this last Note is really worth reading, in the Installation/Upgrade section it really goes into detail about the differences between HANA 1.0 and HANA 2.0 and reading this almost reminds me of how different R/3 ECC and S/4HANA are and why you cannot simply upgrade from the former to the latter. Reading this Note brings some light to the reasons why we cannot just upgrade an existing NW system to HANA 2.0
Wrap Up
To wrap up, curiosities aside, the goal of this blog is to help that none of us get trapped into upgrading our HANA system(s) to a HANA version which no longer supports the NW version we are running, as this would be a difficult situation to explain to the Business :-]
Until next time,
Andy.
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