Overview of Automating Cost-Optimized SAP HANA Scale-Up System Replication using the RHEL HA Add-On

A/N: This article was modified on 2 March 2022 to include an updated version of the architecture used for this solution.

The Automated Cost-Optimized HANA System Replication solution with Scale-Up in a Pacemaker Cluster is currently available on supported RHEL releases. A Cost-Optimized configuration refers to a setup in which a Development/Quality Assurance (DEV/QA) test system runs on the standby/secondary side during normal operation. When an error occurs which causes the production side to failover, the DEV/QA Instance must be stopped automatically before the second side takes over production.

The goal is to automate the management of a SAP HANA Scale-Up system Replication environment using the RHEL HA Pacemaker cluster stack provided by Red Hat, while focusing on a “cost-optimized” scenario, specifically where a separate DEV/QA HANA instance is running on the secondary node. For further information about performance optimized scenarios, refer to this link. For more information on different supported HA scenarios on RHEL, refer to this link.

The diagram below depicts the solution architecture used for this particular scenario:

For more details on various different architecture setups see Supported HA Scenarios for SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP NetWeaver.

This cost optimised solution is supported with RHEL 8.2 and higher releases for SAP HANA. SAP HANA 2.0 and all SPSs compatible with RHEL 8.2 are supported, as well.
For more details see Support Policies for RHEL High Availability Clusters – Management of SAP HANA in a Cluster.

Note that the following repos are required for RHEL 8.x:

• RHEL BaseOS: provides the RHEL kernel packages
• RHEL AppStream: provides all the applications needed to run in a given user space
• RHEL High Availability: provides the Pacemaker framework
• RHEL for SAP Solutions: provides the resource agents for the automation of HANA System Replication in Scale-Up

For on-premise or Bring Your Own Subscription (BYOS) through Red Hat Cloud Access, a RHEL for SAP Solutions is necessary. Here is a list of the repos needed for RHEL 8.x x86_64:

# yum repolist
repo id                                                  repo name                                    status
rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms        Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - AppStream (RPMs)       8,603
rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms           Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - BaseOS (RPMs)          3,690
rhel-8-for-x86_64-highavailability-rpms Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - High Availability (RPM   156
rhel-8-for-x86_64-sap-solutions-rpms    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - SAP Solutions (RPMs)      10

For Power 9 the following repos apply:

# yum repolist
repo id                                       repo name                                                                                                         status
rhel-8-for-ppc64le-appstream-e4s-rpms         Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for Power, little endian - AppStream - Update Services for SAP Solutions (RPMs)         4,949
rhel-8-for-ppc64le-baseos-e4s-rpms            Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for Power, little endian - BaseOS - Update Services for SAP Solutions (RPMs)            1,766
rhel-8-for-ppc64le-highavailability-e4s-rpms  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for Power, little endian - High Availability - Update Services for SAP Solutions (RPMs)    71
rhel-8-for-ppc64le-sap-solutions-e4s-rpms     Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for Power, little endian - SAP Solutions - Update Services for SAP Solutions (RPMs)         4

For deployment with on-demand images on a public cloud, the software packages are delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP with High Availability and Update Services. This particular subscription is a variant of RHEL for SAP Solutions which is customized for public clouds, and is available through RHUI.

Further reading: Automating Cost-Optimized SAP HANA Scale-Up System Replication using the RHEL HA Add-On

Amir Memon is currently a Senior Software Quality Engineer for the Red Hat SAP Tech Alliance team.
Vivien Wang is currently an Ecosystem Partner Manager for the Red Hat Partner Engineering Ecosystem.