Purpose
The described aims to enlighten the audience about the Real-time Monitoring capabilities exposed by the SAP HANA Platform. System Administrators maintain the integrity and consistency of the SAP HANA platform by performing regular system monitoring which helps with identifying system behavioral patterns. A combination of monitoring tools and checks provides a detailed technical overall system health check and helps with identifying and forecast requirements against possible Data & Hardware bottlenecks.
Administrative Tasks
According to Benjamin Franklin “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. Hence why every System administrator takes pride in proper preparation and plaining to prevent a poor performing SAP HANA DB Platform. The below administrative actives assist in maintaining and safe guiding the wellbeing of the database which ensure the database being rapidly available:
The statistics service which is responsible for handling monitoring and alerting is derived from a set of tables and SQLScript procedures within the DB.
When an alert condition is fulfilled, a corresponding alert is written to the alert tables from which the alert can be viewed using the desired monitoring tool e.g. SAP HANA cockpit:
When the database is operating as expected, data is automatically saved from memory to disk at regular savepoints. Additionally, all data changes are recorded in the redo log. The redo log is saved from memory to disk with each committed database transaction.
The SAP HANA database maintains optimal performance by holding most of its data in memory. Nevertheless, it still uses persistent storage it be a file system or third-party backup servers to provide a fallback in case of failure:
SAP HANA supports the following backup types:
Daily Monitoring Tasks
An adequate System monitoring exercise involves continuous monitoring of the following but not limited to these environmental components:
Monitoring Reports
For monitoring purposes and troubleshooting complex anomalies outside the scope of standard functions, SAP provide SAP HANA Mini checks, which are a collection of useful SQL statements /SQL Scripts addressing but not limited to the below environmental components:
Thank you all for taking a glimpse into the above Content. Please don’t for get to like, comment and share.
Yours Truly,
Abbreviations:
DB: Database
Email: Electronic mail
SQL: Structured Query Language
Reference:
The described aims to enlighten the audience about the Real-time Monitoring capabilities exposed by the SAP HANA Platform. System Administrators maintain the integrity and consistency of the SAP HANA platform by performing regular system monitoring which helps with identifying system behavioral patterns. A combination of monitoring tools and checks provides a detailed technical overall system health check and helps with identifying and forecast requirements against possible Data & Hardware bottlenecks.
Administrative Tasks
According to Benjamin Franklin “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”. Hence why every System administrator takes pride in proper preparation and plaining to prevent a poor performing SAP HANA DB Platform. The below administrative actives assist in maintaining and safe guiding the wellbeing of the database which ensure the database being rapidly available:
- SAP HANA Alerts From inception the HANA DB collects and analysis the below information regarding its components:
- Status
- Performance
- Resource usage
The statistics service which is responsible for handling monitoring and alerting is derived from a set of tables and SQLScript procedures within the DB.
When an alert condition is fulfilled, a corresponding alert is written to the alert tables from which the alert can be viewed using the desired monitoring tool e.g. SAP HANA cockpit:
Figure 1: Alert overview
- Alert definitions: There are various alert definitions provided by the SAP HANA DB for the system administrator to leverage off in maintaining a healthy running DB e.g.:
- Inactive services - Identifies inactive services.
- Long-running statements - Identifies long-running SQL statements.
- Status of most recent data backup - Determines whether the most recent data backup was successful.
Figure 2: Alert definitions
- Configure Alerts: The below steps are to be followed when configuring the desired alert:
- A - Schedule active set to True
- B - Threshold for prioritized alerting set the threshold values that trigger alert.
- C - Proposed solution recommendations by SAP on how to resolve the defined alert.
- D - Email recipient of alerts set up email notifications so that specific people are informed when alerts are issued.
Figure 3: Alert configuration
- SAP HANA DB Backup: Protecting the actual data and the logs which make up the SAP HANA database, backups are required to recover the database to a consistent.
When the database is operating as expected, data is automatically saved from memory to disk at regular savepoints. Additionally, all data changes are recorded in the redo log. The redo log is saved from memory to disk with each committed database transaction.
The SAP HANA database maintains optimal performance by holding most of its data in memory. Nevertheless, it still uses persistent storage it be a file system or third-party backup servers to provide a fallback in case of failure:
Source: SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company 2020, http://global12.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx
Figure 4: SAP HANA DB Persistence
SAP HANA supports the following backup types:
- Full backups:
- Complete data backups - All the data that is required to recover the database.
- Full backups:
- Data snapshots - Data persisted in the data area at a particular point in time.
- Delta backups:
- Incremental backups - Data that has been changed since the last full data backup or last delta backup.
- Delta backups:
- Differential backups - Incremental backups - Data that has been changed since the last full data backup.
- Redo log backups - All data changes persisted to the database.
- Native encryption of backups – Backup files are transferred encrypted to prevent unauthorized parties from reading the content.
- Backups created using third-party backup tools – Which enable you to perform backup and recovery operations.
- Backup Catalog: An overview of the backup history of an SAP HANA database backup catalog enables SAP HANA to determine the following:
- Whether a recovery is possible
- Which backups to use to recover a database
- Which backups are no longer needed for a recovery.
Figure 5: Backup catalog
- Backup Strategy: SAP recommends performing data and log backups at appropriate intervals:
- A full backup at least once a week or daily if possible.
- Delta data backup after more extensive system activities during the week
- Automatic log backups
Figure 6: Backup schedule
- Fault Tolerance Features & High Availability: Ensuring a rapidly available SAP landscape involves the eliminations of all possible points of failure within the environment. A failure in system availability is very costly and hampers the productivity of the organization, Please click on the link for a detailed explanation of the concept: SAP HANA Platform: Fault Tolerance Features & High Availability
Daily Monitoring Tasks
An adequate System monitoring exercise involves continuous monitoring of the following but not limited to these environmental components:
- Overall System status: Consolidated Health checks concerning the status, availability, performance, capacity, and alert counts of all resources within the SAP HANA landscape.
Figure 1: Overall system status
- Database Information: Provides the admin with General Platform information e.g., DB version, OS version, SAP HANA upgrade history along with all the installed SAP HANA plugins.
Figure 2: Database Information
- Manage Services: An overview of the statuses regarding the SAP HANA system services. The status can be, for example, running, running with issues, or stopped.
Figure 3: Manage Services
- Performance Monitor: A visual analyses of the historical performance data across a range of key performance indicators related to memory, disk and CPU usage.
Figure 4: Performance Monitor
- Table usage: The memory consumption of column tables is monitored to identify tables sizes and table operation for administrators to improve and fine tune performance and reduce memory utilization.
Figure 5: Table Usage
- Sessions: Identify all active sessions of both users and applications within the system landscape.
Figure 6: Sessions
- SQL Statement: Monitor and analyze statements overview, active statements and expensive statements.
Figure 7: SQL Statement
Monitoring Reports
For monitoring purposes and troubleshooting complex anomalies outside the scope of standard functions, SAP provide SAP HANA Mini checks, which are a collection of useful SQL statements /SQL Scripts addressing but not limited to the below environmental components:
- Security: SQL: “HANA_Security_MiniChecks” (SAP Note 1969700, 2159014)
- Database trace message: SQL “HANA_TraceFiles_MiniChecks” (SAP Note 1969700, 2380176)
- Thread call stack: SQL: “HANA_Threads_Callstacks_MiniChecks” (SAP Notes 1969700, 2313619)
- ABAP: SQL: “HANA_ABAP_MiniChecks” (SAP Note 1969700)
Figure 1:
Ad Hoc connection statistics report
Figure 1.1:
Connection statistics report exported to MS Excel for reporting purposes.
Thank you all for taking a glimpse into the above Content. Please don’t for get to like, comment and share.
Yours Truly,
Abbreviations:
DB: Database
Email: Electronic mail
SQL: Structured Query Language
Reference:
- SAP HANA 2.0 – Installation and Administration:
- SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company 2020,http://global12.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx
- SAP Managed Tags:
