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SAP HANA platform lifecycle management – by the SAP HANA Academy

dvankempen
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎01-30-2018 4:00 PM

Introduction


Recently, we have updated a number of SAP HANA Academy tutorial videos for the playlist

In this blog, I will provide some references and background information about using SAP HANA platform lifecycle management tools.

This blog is part of a series:

 



SAP HANA Academy - SAP HANA Installation and Update (YouTube Playlist)

 

Tutorial Video




SAP HANA Academy - SAP HANA Installation and Update: Lifecycle Management Tools

 

Overview


SAP HANA provides tools for both Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) for everything that is 'powered by HANA' - running on the SAP HANA platform, that is - and for Platform Lifecycle Management (PLM), to manage the installation and update for the SAP HANA platform itself, the topic of this blog. ALM will be addressed in another blog in this series.

I have written about PLM on two earlier occasions: for the SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 09 release in 2014, when the new tool was introduced, and for the SPS 12 release in 2016, when some significant enhancements were added:

The latest three SPS releases (SAP HANA 2.0 00, 01 and 02) only introduced minor changes.



 

1001 Tasks


Platform lifecycle management for SAP HANA covers all tasks and activities affecting the SAP HANA platform and its constituent components (client, options, plug-ins, etc.). There is a single tool for both installations, updates and post-installation configuration tasks: the SAP HANA database lifecycle management tool, abbreviated to hdblcm, the name of the executable.

The LCM tool is included with the installation media - the 'DVD' or full download of the SAP HANA Support Package Stack (SPS) main release - and you run this tool to install the SAP HANA (database) server plus additional components, like the SAP HANA client, the SAP HANA studio, the Application Function Library (AFL) component for the Predictive Application Library (PAL) or Extended Machine Learning (EML), but also options like Dynamic Tiering, Streaming Analytics, or the Accelerator for Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE).

Apart from providing a single installation experience for the installation of all SAP HANA components, it also makes no difference whether you are installing SAP HANA on a single-host system or on a distributed (multiple-host) system. The same is true for when you are creating a failover cluster with standby hosts.

When you install (or update) the SAP HANA server, a local (resident) version of the installation tool is installed and this resident hdblcm we will then use to perform the post-installation administration tasks. Examples are - but the list is long - adding or removing hosts, renaming the system identifier, configuring the internal network, or registering the SAP HANA server for the System Landscape Directory of SAP NetWeaver (SLD).


Same Interface


The LCM tool is available as a command-line tool and with a graphical interface for X-Windows and web. You can only use the web version for the resident (administration tasks) as it gets deployed, in fact, to the SAP host agent. Both the graphical X-Windows version and the command-line tool accept call options (parameter on the command line), including the parameter to use a response file for automated installations. Typically, you would use the X-Windows (and web) version for one-off actions: perform a single task once.

Commands to launch the SAP HANA Lifecycle Management tool:
# LCM from installation media

/install/51052325/DATA_UNITS/HDB_LCM_LINUX_X86_64/hdblcmgui



# resident LCM

/hana/shared/T01/hdblcm/hdblcmgui

The resident LCM is included in the path of the system /<sapmnt>/<SID> and is kept synchronized with the HANA server with each update.

 



SAP HANA Lifecycle Management - Install or Update

The resident hdblcm version can be executed with the permissions of the SAP HANA operating system administration account <sid>adm but for some activities, like rename or uninstall the system, root privileges are required (as indicated on the screen).



SAP HANA Lifecycle Management - Administration (X-Windows)

From the Web


The web version provides the same functionality as the X-Windows version plus a link to the documentation (Help) and the option to download components from the SAP ONE Support Portal Downloads location and also to upload components to the HANA server.

The URL connects to the SAP Host Agent included with the SAP HANA server installation. In the default configuration, each server has a single host agent with a fixed port for HTTP (1128) and HTTPS (1129). To indicate which system we want to perform lifecycle management software logistics, the SID is added to the URL.
https://<hostname>:1129/lmsl/HDBLCM/<SID>/index.html

To access the web interface for SAP HANA Platform Lifecycle Management, shortcuts (menu) are provided in SAP HANA studio and the SAP HANA cockpit. Both will open the same URL in a new browser window.



SAP HANA Platform Lifecycle Management - Administration (web)



SAP HANA Studio - Platform Lifecycle Management 



SAP HANA Cockpit - Platform Lifecycle Management 

From the Console


The command-line version also provides the same functionality as the X-Windows and web version.



SAP HANA Platform Lifecycle Management - Administration (command-line)

Although the parameters are extensively documented in the SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide [Parameter Reference], you can also get the 'man' (well, it's equivalent) from the command line itself, as you would expect.

Below a print screen from the resident hdblcm and the one from the installation media (note the different action= parameters.

Additional (and quite extensive) help is provided once you have selected the action.

To automate installations, you would first generate a template response file with the
--dump_configfile_template=<filename> parameter and subsequently run the installer with the
--configfile=<filename>option. Automated installations will be the topic of another blog in this series.



hdblcm -h (resident) 



hdblcm -h (installation media) 



hdblcm -h --action=install

 

More LCM Tools


In the very early days of SAP HANA, you had to run a different tool for each of the actions mentioned above: hdbaddhost to add a host, hdbrename to rename the system and hdbuninst to uninstall.

As you can from the listing below, these tools still exist and are, in fact, still performing all of the hard work as they are called by the platform lifecycle management tool, hdblcm.

Running the tools directly on the command-line yourself is not recommended and without the proper parameters may have undesired consequences. However, the log files generated by the tools may return relevant information when troubleshooting.

The exception is when you want to install stand-alone components like the SAP HANA client or SAP HANA studio as the installation media for these components do not include the platform lifecycle management tool (hdblcm) but only the 'worker' tools. Run hdbinst (or hdbuninst) on the command line for automated installations and hdbsetup for a one-off installation using the graphical installer.



Note that hdblcm is included both stand-alone and bundled with the SAP HANA server on the installation media. You can run either. The outcome will be the same.

On the first screen, hdblcm will display the detected components for you to install, update, or extract.



hdblcm - Detected Components

 

Please Note


SAP Support has published a number of Knowledge Bases Articles (KBA's) on the SAP ONE Support portal about SAP HANA platform lifecycle management (component HAN-LM-PLT). Below two notes that provide a good starting point:

 

References


For more information see:

SAP HANA Academy Playlists



SAP Community Blogs



SAP Documentation



Notes



 

Thank you for watching


The SAP HANA Academy provides technical enablement, implementation and adoption support for customers and partners with 1000’s of free tutorial videos.

For the full library, see SAP HANA Academy Library - by the SAP HANA Academy

For the full list of blogs, see Blog Posts – by the SAP HANA Academy

 



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