Solution Brief

We are at the precipice of the next big technology change, where everything is connected and your business operates in real time. Backward-looking batch queries must give way to instant analytics in order for your business to stay ahead of the competition. SAP HANA and in-memory computing enable enterprises to achieve this by eliminating the gap between when analytic data is captured and what is currently occurring.

Migration to SAP HANA brings new challenges for IT organizations and raises questions about data center infrastructure and operational standards: Do I have the right system and scale necessary to run SAP S/4HANA? Do I have the flexibility to leverage my existing storage resources and expertise? Will my data governance need to change?

That’s why SGI and NetApp have invested in SAP Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) Certification to help businesses to simplify and accelerate time to results. The SGI UV 300H server with NetApp® AFF/FAS systems has been comprehensively tested and documented by a team of engineers. Our step-by-step configuration guide and services offerings take the guesswork out of implementing SAP S/4HANA applications in your data center and chart a path to success.

Number One in Scale-Up Capacity for SAP HANASAP Business Suite on HANA, SAP Bank Analyzer, SAP S/4HANA Finance, and other SAP S/4HANA applications provide real-time analytics, which must run on a single-node system. Building on SGI’s proven in-memory computing technology and unique scale-up architecture, SGI UV 300H is an advanced SMP system in the SGI UV server line purpose-built for SAP HANA. Coupled with Intel Xeon E7 8890 v4 or v3 processors, the system leverages seventh-generation SGI technology and in-memory computing expertise spanning 20 years. The unique modular chassis architecture enables you to start small and scale up in four-socket increments. Currently, SGI UV 300H is SAP-certified under general availability from 4 to 20 sockets with up to 20TB of in-memory computing capacity as a single node, making it #1 in scale-up capacity for SAP HANA. Pending certification, UV 300H is designed to scale even further with up to 32 sockets and 32TB of shared memory.

Solution Flexibility with SAP Tailored Datacenter IntegrationTake advantage of the SAP HANA TDI program and achieve greater ROI by leveraging existing or new NetApp AFF/FAS systems to protect log files and data. With the flexibility of SAP HANA TDI, storage investments can be used for SAP HANA and non-HANA applications, for disaster tolerance, or for other production and nonproduction use cases.

You’ll never outgrow your SAP landscape or need to overprovision because both SGI UV 300H server and NetApp AFF/FAS storage components can scale seamlessly as data demands increase.

Key Benefits

Scale-Up Capability • Capitalize on scale-up capacity that

far outperforms all other single-node systems, a future-ready architecture, and highly advanced in-memory computing technology

• Deliver real-time analytics with SGI UV 300H server with NetApp AFF/FAS at near limitless scale and mission-critical reliability

High Application Availability • Maintain round-the-clock application

service levels and avoid costly down-time by delivering five nines application availability

• Deploy an SAP HANA solution that you’ll never outgrow, you do not need to overprovision, and for which you will not face forklift upgrades

Ability to Leverage Existing Infrastructure • Increase return on investment and

preserve existing data center standards by utilizing NetApp’s proven storage solutions and expertise

• Leverage existing storage investments, operational procedures, and staff experience

Technology and server partner for high-performance computing

Choosing the Right Architecture for SAP S/4HANA and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Mission-Critical Reliability SGI UV 300H utilizes a progression of resiliency methods that contribute to overall system availability through a number of resilient actions, redundancy, and careful monitoring to proactively address potential issues before they become critical. The SGI drive to achieve to maximize system performance and memory capacity and maintain high availability guides the design in many ways. Memory resiliency is a key example and among several principal advantages of an SGI system.

Because SAP HANA is an in-memory computing system, the level of resiliency of the memory has to be extremely high. DRAM full-device ECC, retried transactions, background memory scrubbing, device failure mechanisms, and autocorrection form the base layer of memory resilience. These mechanisms are built upon with continual and extensive DRAM failure analysis, of which a key component is SGI’s MEMlog software utility. Corrected memory errors are logged and analyzed. If a DIMM page (4k bytes in size) is deemed defective, an attempt is made to transparently relocate data to a new page and retire the old page, enabling applications to continue running without interruption and reducing exposure and uncorrectable errors. Administrators are also alerted to failing DIMMs in need of replacement during planned maintenance windows.

99.999% Application Availability DependabilityIt’s essential in the new digital economy, in which downtime equates to lost revenue, that there be no interruptions to business- critical systems. To protect SAP HANA against local system and site failures, a three-tier HA/DR configuration is utilized. This configuration commonly features local primary and secondary nodes (tier 1 and 2) configured with synchronous system repli-cation and a third node (tier 3) configured with asynchronous storage replication. The third node would be at an alternate site to take over operation if both the primary and secondary nodes go offline.

NetApp AFF/FAS NetApp AFF/FAS systems are enterprise-proven, feature-rich, multiprotocol storage platforms that significantly add value in the domain of SAP applications. Software integrations between SAP software and the storage platform simplify and accelerate development of SAP applications and make their operation simpler. The storage platform is fully scalable and can rebalance workloads transparently without downtime.

Scalability without disruptionsNetApp ONTAP® is built from the ground up for massive scalabil-ity. The storage layout chosen within this solution leverages the scalability needs of such a flexible compute platform and allows for the rebalancing of existing workloads without the need for

Figure 1) SGIUV 300H and NetApp AFF/FAS storage 3-tier HA/DR implementation.

expensive or disruptive downtime. Multiple data partitions are created and together form the data and log volume used for SAP HANA by means of an LVM. Those partitions are created upfront and can be distributed within the clustered storage system when more throughput is needed.

Simplifying and accelerating data protectionNetApp AFF/FAS includes built-in backup integration for SAP HANA. The traditional backup approach of continuously backing up huge quantities of in-memory data is a mammoth and expensive challenge. The larger the SAP HANA database, the greater the duration of backup operations, which can put data protection SLAs at risk and result in losing control over the business RTO and RPOs when recovery from backup is needed. NetApp completely breaks this traditional equation by using a different approach to data protection. NetApp maintains control over data protection SLAs by compressing a several-hour backup window to a few seconds.

NetApp storage Snapshot copies to the rescueNetApp FAS and AFF platforms provide a persistent data storage area for SAP HANA in-memory databases. These storage systems are aware of the fine granular data changes. They can create and save multiple versions of data in a way that makes efficient use of time and space and that avoids performance impact regardless of scale. They enable backups with a fraction of the traditional space requirements and in seconds rather than hours.

The result is that the database data is regularly preserved with-out burdening the SAP HANA servers with the task of handling and transporting data elsewhere. A storage backup based on Snapshot® copies does not affect the performance of the SAP HANA server, and the backup is completed almost instantly on the storage controllers. Because NetApp AFF/FAS systems are aware of these internal data changes, the storage system is able to transport only the changes between the primary and the secondary (long-term) backup stores.

Storage backups created by NetApp Snapshot are fully supported by SAP, and this functionality is fully integrated into SAP HANA Studio. Recovery occurs at similar speeds, and these Snapshot copies are readily available to the SAP HANA database administrator without the need for storage admins. To recover a backup, the administrator first shuts down SAP HANA, selects the backup of choice, restores the corresponding storage Snapshot copy, and completes the procedure by restarting SAP HANA. Having these backups stored directly on the storage con-troller makes the restore process much faster and more efficient because data does not have to be physically moved.

Evaluation of our customer data indicates a dramatic acceleration of their backup, with an average backup time of around 19 seconds compared to hours with the classic backup approach. A customer no longer has compromise on data protection SLAs and maintenance windows for SAP HANA. With storage-based backups, a customer can increase backup frequency to meet the needs and business goals and minimize risk.

Figure 2 shows a quantitative distribution graph for SAP HANA backups on NetApp. The backup time is mainly influenced by SAP HANA reaching a synchronized backup save point rather than the actual time it takes to secure the data.

The NetApp solution detaches the creation of a backup and its transportation. Thus, significant work is offloaded from the SAP HANA server. This process is so fast that you can easily run multiple backups each day, which drastically reduces the number of logs that would need to be applied in the event of a disaster as well as the time needed to apply them. Ultimately, you can regain control of the RTO and the RPO when recovery from a backup is needed. In a worst case, in which a production site is completely affected, data is read from the NetApp AFF/FAS controller at the DR site into the DR failover node, and operations can continue.

The SAP HANA Administration Guide recommends the use of storage-based backup for SAP HANA.

Long-term archive and disaster recoveryFor long-term archival, the local backup copies are electronically transferred to a secondary or long-term archive array. The process of transporting data is space efficient and is based on the changed data areas within the primary storage system. Secondary or DR systems representing each individual backup as a usable copy of the real data make it an excellent vehicle for either testing or invoking DR without affecting business continuity. These copies also provide a good source for seeding test systems or quality assurance systems that require recent or up-to-date data.

Figure 2) SAP HANA backup time evaluation on NetApp AFF/FAS storage.

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About SGISGI is a global leader in high-performance solutions for compute, data analytics and data management that enable customers to accelerate time to discovery, innovation and profitability. www.sgi.com

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