Technical Articles
SAP HANA Cloud: What’s New (and Changed) – Database Backups
In the upcoming days and weeks, we will be publishing new tutorial videos about what’s new and changed for SAP HANA Cloud. The focus of this series is on system administration with SAP HANA cockpit.
For the overview blog about What’s New with SAP HANA Cloud Administration, see Questions? Post as comment. Useful? Give us a like and share on social media. Thanks! |
Video Tutorial
In this video tutorial about database backups for SAP HANA Cloud with SAP HANA cockpit, we take a look at the following card and apps
- Database Backups (card)
- Backup Catalog
- Backup Configuration
What’s New and Changed?
Compared to the SAP HANA cockpit for SAP HANA platform (on-premise) there are no changes for the Database Backup user interface (SAP HANA cockpit) but backup is configured as a restricted feature for the SAP HANA Cloud H00 tenant database and hence not configurable. It is part of the managed service.
SAP HANA Cloud – SAP HANA Cockpit: Sessions and Threads
Backup Service
Backup service conditions are documented in the Getting Started Guide.
- Backups are encrypted using the capabilities of the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider.
- Backups are replicated in additional availability zones in the same region.
- The recovery point objective (RPO) is no more than 15 minutes.
- The retention time for backups is 14 days.
- If you delete an instance, it can be recovered for 14 days.
- If a logical database error occurs, you can recover an SAP HANA database to a point in time before the error occurred. To initiate a recovery, open a service request, component HAN-CLS-HC)
For the documentation, see
Recommended KBA for general information about SAP HANA backup and recovery (but not specific and mostly not very relevant for SAP HANA Cloud)
Database Backups
System Overview
The Monitoring and Administration topic area in System Overview includes a card for Database Backups with the time stamp of the last full data backup, the status and a link to Backup Configuration.
When selected, the card opens the Backup Catalog.
For the documentation, see
System Overview
Backup Card
Backup Catalog
The Backup Catalog lists all backups taken (complete, log, catalog). The information can be displayed in table and graph format. When selected detailed information about the item is displayed.
SAP HANA Cloud backups use the BACKINT interface.
Backup Catalog
Backup Catalog – Graph
Backup Catalog – Details
Restricted Features
As covered in the blog Manage Services, the SAP HANA Cloud instance is a tenant database. The associated system database is managed by SAP and backups is one of the disabled features for the tenant. The system monitoring view M_CUSTOMIZABLE_FUNCTIONALITIES shows what functionality is enabled and disabled.
This overrules BACKUP ADMIN | OPERATOR system privileges.
For the documentation, see
- Disable Features on a Tenant Database, SAP HANA Administration Guide for SAP HANA Platform
Restricted Feature
As a consequence, executing the BACKUP command returns an error: feature ‘Backup’ is disabled.
Backup Disabled
System Privileges
SAP HANA Database Explorer
System Monitoring Views
The information displayed in the Backup Catalog and Backup Configuration apps comes from the M_BACKUP_* system monitoring views, which you can query in the SQL Console of the SAP HANA Database Explorer.
SQL Console
Although not specific to SAP HANA Cloud, the Statement Library of the SAP HANA Database Explorer also contains many statements and script that can be useful for backup monitoring.
For the documentation, see
- Use the Statement Library to Administer Your Database, SAP HANA Cloud
Recommended KBA
Statement Library
Share and Connect
Questions? Post as comment.
Useful? Give a like and share on social media. Thanks!
If you would like to receive updates, connect with me on
- LinkedIn > linkedin.com/in/dvankempen
- Twitter > @dvankempen
For the author page of SAP Press, visit
For the SAP HANA Cloud e-bite, see
Hello Denys,
Thanks for posting this blog. It's really informative.
Only a small feedback, However the link for documentation is not working in "SQL Console" section :
For the documentation, see
Can you please update the hyperlink for above page. 🙂
Thanks & Regards,
Vivek Sahu
Thanks Vivek, much appreciated. Not only does the link now point the right place (Statement Library) it also does so for the right service (SAP HANA Cloud). What else could you wish for. ?
Great article. This article helped my team alot. Told my team to bookmark your blog for accurate and applicable information beacause we were stuck in one of my client project and your blog saved us. We basically provide cloud data backup and recovery services. Hope to collab one day.
Thanks & Regards,
Muhammad Waqar Khan
From vCloud Tech.
Thank you for your comment, Muhammad. Good to hear. Let's connect on LinkedIn.
Sure