Dell EMC VxRail for SAP HANA
Elite Technology Based will Tell you all information about SAP HANA Hardware Requirements and the Providers like Dell and VMware and the hardware that will be able to support it like Dell EMC VxRail
What is SAP HANA Hardware Requirements ?
During the update and the installation of the SAP HANA database ( from the SAP HANA installation manager ), a hardware check is performed in order to ensure that problems do not arise due to wrong or unsupported hardware configurations in combination with the SAP HANA platform.
The check is a script that is automatically called by the SAP HANA installer and aborts the installation process if it doesn’t succeed.
It is not possible to disable the check because SAP HANA is highly optimized for specific hardware configurations which have been designed and tested together with our hardware partners.
Outside of these validated configurations, SAP HANA performance and stability cannot be guaranteed.
Before installing or updating SAP HANA, consult the SAP HANA Product Availability Matrix (search for HANA) to verify if the hardware you are planning to use is supported by SAP HANA.
If the hardware is not supported, the hardware check returns the results “not supported” in the system manufacturer, system product name, CPU model, OS, memory total, or core count check results.
The check is automatically delivered with the SAP HANA software and can be executed as a standalone check anytime.
Execute the check by going to the /usr/sap/<SID>/HDB<instance number>/exe/python support directory and running the Python script named HanaHwCheck.py.
Due to some dmide code commands in the check it has to be executed as root.
Benefits of running SAP HANA on VxRail Hardware
- Gain Hyperconverged efficiencies with SAP HANA on VxRail
- Unmatched performance and efficiency with kernel layer integration between VMware vSAN and the vSphere hypervisor
- Live migration of running SAP HANA instances, with VMware vSphere vMotion
- Standardized High Availability (HA), with VMware HA
- Two SAP HANA certified Hyperconverged Infrastructure solutions – The two-socket all-flash VxRail P570F and the four-socket all-NVMe VxRail P580N
VxRail delivers a turnkey experience for mission-critical SAP HANA environments
Complete with full stack lifecycle management, VxRail is the easiest and fastest way to simplify a VMware environment with seamless integration with existing VMware tools and operational transparency with VMware vCenter.
Powered by Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and VMware vSAN, VxRail integrates vSphere High Availability and Fault Tolerance with next generation technology such as SmartFabric Services supported by Dell EMC Networking switches to create an enterprise platform uniquely catered to performance-sensitive SAP HANA workloads.
VxRail is architected for in-memory database applications and combines operational simplicity and TCO savings with the future proofed, predictable performance necessary to support the most demanding SAP HANA environments.
Why EMC IT Virtualized SAP HANA with VMware ?
Many of the benefits of running SAP on a virtual platform apply to Virtualized HANA as well :
- Cost and resource management (CAPEX and OPEX), leading to increased ROI
- Increased flexibility and agility to quickly adjust to changing demands
- Embedded High Availability
- Efficiencies in automation
While we were certainly aware that there could be some minimal performance impacts of running Virtualized HANA versus a “traditional” physical appliance (yes, quotes are intentional), we felt that the operational and cost benefits far outweigh these impacts.
And as a service provider, does it matter?
The business users are abstracted from physical versus Virtualized HANA… and the advantages they’ve gained from a simple migration from a traditional RDBMS to Virtualized HANA have proven substantial.
Deployment
SAP’s Business Planning and Consolidations (BPC) application is an online analytical processing (OLAP) engine, running on the same technology stack as SAP’s more versed Business Warehouse (BW) solution.
In fact, some customers choose to run BPC as an ’embedded’ application within BW, providing a consolidated footprint.
Within EMC IT, we chose to run BPC as a standalone engine, allowing for more flexibility and agility around maintenance and automation, as well as better performance.
Being a relatively small database (approximately 300 GB) and an OLAP engine, SAP BPC was a logical first target for migrating to SAP HANA.
We had been actively running operational reports on a “traditional” HANA appliance for over 18 months, so we were familiar with the technology.
As we’ve eluded to at events like SAP Week and SAP TechEd, building skills is essential to realizing the benefit of SAP HANA, so we were ready to start expanding our HANA footprint.