SAP HANA Virtualization- Deployment Scenarios

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SAP HANA can be deployed in following scenarios.

SAP HANA - Classic Appliance Delivery

The SAP HANA appliance software from an installation point of view:

Enablement for factory pre-installation & on-site configuration

All in a box ready as a turnkey solution. Ready to ship.

• Preconfigured hardware set-up
• Preinstalled software
• Fast Implementation

Following the SAP appliance delivery model

– The HW vendor provides factory pre-installation for HW, OS and SAP software

– The HW vendor may add specific best-practices and SAP HANA software configuration

– The HW vendor finalize installation by an on-site setup and configuration of the HANA components

– Customer starts with establishment of replication / connectivity to data source systems and BI clients

Courtesy: SAP

Limitations:

1. Hardware flexibility
2. Need some adaptations in IT operation processes.

SAP HANA - Tailored Data Center Integration Approach VMware Owned Datacenter

The SAP HANA tailored data center integration approach is an additional option to the existing appliance delivery model.

It can reduce initial costs of hardware and operation by reusing existing hardware components and operation processes.

Running SAP HANA virtualized can  offer agility, HW consolidation and ease system provisioning.

Especially to those customer who already standardizing on VMware such a scenario may offers further TCO reductions and additional options for planning and managing of multiple systems landscapes  

Advantages:

It can reduce initial costs of hardware and operation by reusing existing hardware components and operation processes.

SAP HANA - Virtualized with VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere is the preferred way to virtualize SAP’s high performance SAP HANA database. Running SAP HANA virtualized can offer agility and hardware consolidation and ease system provisioning, reduce TCO and offer additional options for planning and managing multiple systems landscapes.

Vmware V Sphere 5.5/5.1 for SAP HANA Configuration-Current Supported Hypervisors

1. Prod-SAP HANA SP07 and above on VMware vSphere 5.5

• A single node SAP HANA virtual machine on a dedicated SAP HANA certified server is supported 
• The maximum size of a  on VMware vSphere 5.5 release is 64 vCPUs and 1 TB of memory.
• 2 or 4-socket SAP HANA certified Intel E7 Westmere EX or Intel E7 v2 Ivy Bridge EX processor based configurations in single-node.
• Only Scale up configurations are supported
• Besides 2 and 4-socket, also 8 socket single-node SAP HANA appliances or SAP HANA tailored data center integration, verified hardware configurations may be used. The Time Stamp Counter (TSC) must be synchronized between all sockets/cores.
• Multiple virtual machines may be deployed on a single SAP HANA server. Each SAP HANA database instance is to be sized the same as SAP HANA deployed on bare metal.

2. Non Prod-SAP HANA SPS 05 on VMware vSphere 5.1
3. Both SAP HANA appliance and SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) delivery methods are supported for SAP HANA on VMware vSphere.
4. VMware vMotion, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduled (DRS), as well as VMware HA capabilities can be used to achieve operational performance and availability between two or more SAP HANA single-node VMs.

SAP HANA Hardware Requirements

1. SAP only supports virtualization of SAP HANA on SAP HANA validated single-node
2. Through SAP HANA tailored data center integration verified hardware configurations.
3. The Time Stamp Counter (TSC) must be synchronized between all sockets/cores.

  SAP HANA Operating System Requirements 

1. SUSE Linux Operating System 11.X
2. One server subscription for virtual use covers all of the virtual images running on one

        physical server. SAP HANA on SLES on top of hypervisors like VMware. 

SAP HANA Storage Requirements

1. Partionining and sizing for data, log and binaries.
2. Virtual disks created for log volumes of SAP HANA will reside on local SSD or PCI adapter flash devices.
3. Central enterprise storage will be used in terms of the SAP HANA tailored data center integration approach.

  SAP HANA Virtual Machine Sizing  

1. SAP HANA virtualized with VMware vSphere is sized the same as non-virtualized SAP HANA deployments.
2. SAP Quicksizer, SAPS, CPU, V Sphere Host.
3. Enabling hyper-threading/ usually increases overall SAP HANA system performance by approximately 20 percent.
4. Underlying hypervisor requires some resources (CPU/memory) to operate, which must not be dedicated to one of the SAP HANA VMs.   

SAP HANA Operating Mixed VM Landscapes

1. There must be no memory or CPU overprovisioning configured between VMs.
2. Resources sized for dedicated use by SAP HANA must not be utilized by other VMs.
3. VMs running SAP HANA must be configured with HW resource scheduling priority.

  SAP HANA VM Cloning 

1. If VM is cloned. SAP HANA license is virtually cloned.
2. SAP HANA Prod and Non Prod licenses have to be validated after cloning.

  SAP HANA Use of VMware vMotion 

1. Classic VMware vMotion requires shared storage. Single Node SAP HANA does not apply for vMotion.
2. Non Prod-VMware vSphere 5.1 also offers VMware Enhanced vMotion capabilities which combine standard

       vMotion with Storage vMotion in a single migration step. 

SAP HANA High Availability Setups

1. SAP HANA system replication or VMware HA capabilities should be used to achieve highly available (HA) and/or disaster tolerant configurations between two or more single-node VMs.
2. Automated Distributed Resource Scheduled (DRS) rules are intent to prevent accidental vMotion migrations of SAP HANA VMs to non-certified hardware.
3. SAP does not support SAP HANA host auto-failover (scale-out with standby) for high availability within virtualized landscapes.

Why Virtualize for SAP HANA

SAP HANA on VMware