Operations of SAP HANA (C_HANATEC_12) part 1 – by the SAP HANA Academy

Introduction

In the upcoming weeks, I will discuss the topics covered in the SAP Certified Technology Associate – SAP HANA certification exam.

This blog is part of a series about all the topics areas:

• Introduction
• Operations of SAP HANA, part 1 (this blog)
• Operations of SAP HANA, part 2
• Monitoring of SAP HANA
• System Architecture
• Users and Authorization
• Security
• Backup & Recovery
• Troubleshooting of SAP HANA
• SAP HANA Installation & Upgrade
• Database Migration of SAP HANA
• High Availability & Disaster Tolerance

Operations of SAP HANA

This topic is covered in the HA200 training, Unit 6: Admin Tools for SAP HANA and Unit 7: Operations and Troubleshooting.

In the 5 day training, a whole day is allocated to cover both units.

Note that Monitoring SAP HANA and Troubleshooting SAP HANA are two other topic areas, so together this unit is the source for about 30 percent of the 80 questions. It is important to study this topic thoroughly, in other words.

Admin Tools

This unit describes the different administration tools available:

• SAP HANA studio (lesson 2)
• SAP HANA cockpit (lesson 2)
• hdbsql (lesson 5)
• DBA cockpit (lesson 4)
• Solution Manager
• DB Control Center (DBCC)

For a brief overview of the different administration tools, you can watch the following video tutorial:

SAP HANA Academy – SAP HANA Administration: Administration Tools – Overview

DB Control Center

DBCC was introduced with SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 09 together with several other products using Sybase technology (Smart Data Streaming, Smart Data Access, Dynamic Tiering, etc.). The tool no longer exists in HANA 2.0; the technology has been integrated into the new SAP HANA 2.0 cockpit.

DBCC is not discussed in detail in this unit and, at least in my exam, was not a subject for questions.

SAP Solution Manager

Solution Manager is a Netweaver-based product that can be used to manage SAP HANA landscapes but was not original designed for this purpose. Typically, SolMan is used to manage Business Suite and Business Warehouse landscapes, often still running on “AnyDB”.

DBA Cockpit

Transaction dbacockpit is part of every NetWeaver-based system and this tool is often used together with Solution Manager. It is a database independent management tool, which makes it very convenient for SAP Basis administrators as it allows them to manage all SAP solutions, regardless what the database underneath is.

There is a whole lesson dedicated to DBA Cockpit, including an exercise where you learn how to create a connection to a HANA database, monitor the status of the services, view system parameter settings, table definitions, and execute some SQL.

In earlier editions of the HANATEC exam, there were multiple questions about both Solution Manager and DBA Cockpit but this appears no longer to be the case. There were zero questions about either topic in both the full and the delta exam I took, so you probably do not have to spend a lot of time on these topics. The only thing you should know is that in HANA 1.0, you cannot schedule backups with HANA studio. For this, you use DBA cockpit.

hdbsql

For both practical purposes and the exam, it is a good idea to familiarise yourself with the interactive terrminal tool hdbsql. Lesson 5 discusses this administration tool and includes an exercise where you learn how to connect to a HANA database with hdbsql, how to create a key in the hdbuserstore and how to connect with that key.

If you are not familiar with hdbsql, you can read my blog on the topic https://blogs.sap.com/2016/03/18/sap-hana-database-interactive-terminal-hdbsql-by-the-sap-hana-academy/ or watch videos number one and three from the SAP HANA studio playlist.

You can review the command line (batch) and interactive options in the command-line reference on the SAP Help Portal but you are not expected to know them all by heart.

I do remember, in the past, a question once what tool to use to get the kernel version of SAP HANA; for this you use the interactive option /s. Fortunately, obscure questions like these, at least to a large extend, now have been removed from the exam.

Getting Started

 Secure User Store

SAP HANA studio

From the early days until the last release of SAP HANA 1.0 and probably also for some time to come in HANA 2.0, the SAP HANA studio is by far the most commonly used tool to administer, model and develop on the SAP HANA platform. It makes sense to be very familiar with HANA studio but most of you probably already are.

In lesson 2 of unit 6, you learn the basics of the HANA studio: the different perspectives and screen areas, how to add a system and the resulting elements in the system navigator, and finally, connecting to HANA in diagnosis mode.

We have covered most of these topics in the following video tutorials:

SAP HANA studio overview

How to create a database connection in SAP HANA studio

How to create a multi tenant database container (MDC) connection in SAP HANA studio

Managing connections in SAP HANA studio

SAP HANA cockpit

SAP HANA cockpit was introduced with SAP HANA 1.0, SPS 09 and is positioned to become the standard administration tool for SAP HANA.

In HANA 2.0, cockpit is no longer included with a HANA system but runs on a separate and dedicated HANA system. However, for this exam, you need to focus on cockpit 1.0, which is hosted by the built-in application server SAP HANA XS, classic model, and installed as a delivery unit.

Because cockpit relies on XS, the SAP HANA system needs to be up and running before you can connect. There is, however, also a version of cockpit for offline administration, aptly called SAP HANA cockpit for offline administration.

Although both tools share the same ‘cockpit’ name, the offline tool is actually quite a bit different. It is hosted not by XS but by the SAP host agent. For this reason, the HTTP(S) port for the tool is not 80+<instance number> or 43+<instance number> but it is 1128/1129. Are you making notes?   😉

When you first connect to SAP HANA cockpit with the database superuser account SYSTEM, two roles are automatically granted to you:

• sap.hana.admin.roles::Administrator
• sap.hana.admin.roles::Monitoring

If you want to connect with any other database user to cockpit, you will need to explicitly grant these roles to the user.

To administer a multitenant database container system (MDC), an additional role is required:

• sap.hana.admin.cockpit.sysdb.roles::SysDBAdmin

The following video provides an overview of SAP HANA cockpit:

SAP HANA cockpit for offline administration

If you are new to the topic of MDC, you can get up to speed by reading my blog:

SAP HANA Multitenant (MDC) videos now available on the SAP HANA Academy

The next video provides an overview:

SAP HANA Academy – Multitenant Database Containers: Overview

SHINE – SAP HANA Interactive Education

Finally, lesson 3 is all about SAP HANA Interactive Education (SHINE), a demo application included to help you learn how to build native applications, similar to SFLIGHT for Netweaver and NorthWind for SQL Server. In the exercise for this lesson, you learn how to install the SHINE delivery unit using the SAP HANA lifecycle management tool (HALM).

The only thing you need to know about SHINE is that it exists and what it does but most of you probably are already quit familiar with this demo app, so we can mark this as done.

But if you are not all that familiar and if you want to learn more about SHINE, here are some resources:

• SHINE Reference for Native SAP HANA Application Development – openSAP course (4 hours)
• Getting Started Guide from SAP Help Portal

There is even a video on the Academy, albeit a bit old, recorded at the time SHINE was introduced with SPS 7 …

SAP HANA Academy – SHINE: Getting Started

To be continued

In part 2 of this blog, we will discuss the topics from Unit 7, Operations and Troubleshooting.

Thank you for watching

The SAP HANA Academy provides free online video tutorials for the developers, consultants, partners and customers of SAP HANA.

Topics range from practical how-to instructions on administration, data loading and modeling, and integration with other SAP solutions, to more conceptual projects to help build out new solutions using mobile applications or predictive analysis.

For the full library, see https://blogs.sap.com/2017/01/18/sap-hana-academy-library-by-the-sap-hana-academy/

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