HPE IaaS reference architecture for SAP Business ... · HPE IaaS reference architecture for SAP...

HPE IaaS reference architecture for SAP Business Applications including SAP HANA platform

Technical white paper


Contents Executive summary .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3 Solution overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

HPE IaaS reference architecture blueprint................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Solution components ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 5

SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI) .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 SAP HANA – IaaS Cloud Infrastructure blueprint ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 HPE Compute ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 HPE Networking ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8 HPE Storage ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 SAP LVM and HPE storage integration...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Disaster recovery ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 HA concept ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 SAP HANA Multi-tenancy and Virtualization ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16

Management software....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 17 HPE OneView – Infrastructure lifecycle management .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 17 HPE Helion CloudSystem software ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 18 HPE Helion CloudSystem Enterprise components .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Capacity and sizing ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 22 Server sizing figures ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Analysis and recommendations ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24

Design, integration and support services ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 Overview: HPE Helion Professional Services to build the cloud platform .................................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Integration: HPE TDI (Tailored Data Center Integration) Services for SAP HANA ........................................................................................................................................................... 26

Standardized infrastructure building blocks ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 27 Interoperability and support of open standards ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 28

HPE Helion OpenStack ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 28 Bill of materials ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 29 Summary ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 31 Implementing a proof-of-concept ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31 Resources and additional links ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32


Executive summary The challenge facing today’s business environment is change. The business environment is evolving faster than ever, placing immense demands on IT to deliver the flexibility to address complex business requirements at the speed of change. Business-critical SAP® application landscapes call for the replacement of complex heterogeneous IT environments with fast and flexible service deployments that allow the company to start benefitting from SAP applications as soon as possible. Increasing needs for SAP HANA® In-Memory database computing and storage performance have made software and hardware vendors radically redesign new systems to meet and exceed current and future customer demands. SAP has released an in-memory database platform technology that shifts database storage to the server. This engine processes data in-memory continuously and relies on storage systems to permanently persist and protect data. Because of limited virtualization support for SAP HANA databases, bare metal deployment techniques also must be considered to support both physical and virtual workloads in a common Converged Infrastructure service offering.

The solution blueprint outlined in this paper provides an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud infrastructure for SAP Business Applications under both traditional and SAP HANA In-Memory databases as the Cloud service. The platform provides the ease of use and flexibility needed to minimize the effort to bring legacy platforms to SAP HANA performance levels and addresses future needs coming with SAP’s newest software generation S/4HANA. The configurations are based on Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers, storage, networking and software. For customers that need maximum and dedicated database performance, this white paper describes a high performance configuration optimized for SAP HANA bare metal deployments and SAP Business Applications based on virtualization layers. The configuration is designed to provide flexibility, consolidation and administrative simplicity in a mixed application environment. This design provides a tiered performance configuration that can host multiple workloads of varying needs in a single environment, thereby reducing server and storage sprawl. The tiered approach provides a configuration that can easily be set up to manage complex workload mixes, keeping critical applications unaffected from random secondary workload surges or heavy report generation. HPE Installation, Startup and Support Service provides the right support on the journey to the Cloud.

There are several benefits inherent in the solution reference architecture described in this white paper. This solution improves time-to-market through flexible and reliable Cloud services for complex SAP application landscapes; it saves money because of intelligent consolidation and automation techniques which allow for dynamically managing changes in the landscape, all while keeping a close eye on the bottom line. Because of the broadest infrastructure portfolio in the market, HPE is able to deliver all infrastructure components necessary to build a holistic IaaS Cloud solution including services and support on a worldwide basis.

Target audience: Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), IT directors, data center managers, and customers wishing to learn more about this solution from HPE. This document assumes the reader has a basic understanding of several key data center technologies including, but not limited to: SAP basis knowledge, servers, storage, networking, solution management, virtualization, and hypervisors.

Document purpose: The purpose of this document is to describe a reference architecture, best practices and design considerations for creating an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution to provide SAP Business Applications based on SAP HANA In-Memory engines as a Cloud service.

Introduction The described solution blueprint addresses typical use-cases that customers face when providing SAP applications and HANA databases as an IaaS model. This document is focused on IaaS, and HPE has identified common use-cases when provisioning IaaS for installing SAP Business Applications.

The following use-cases would benefit from adopting the described cloud model:

• Build SAP environment – The provisioning of a full set of infrastructure (compute/storage/network) for a new SAP instance is usually a time consuming process that, in most organizations, involves numerous manual steps to accomplish. This process can be standardized and automated in order to increase the agility of IT and, eventually, the business.

• SAP System Copy – This common task usually requires full attention and resources by both the administrator of the SAP environment and the consumer of the DEV/QA systems. The potential savings in standardization and automation of this process, together with the agility it brings, makes it an important use-case for running SAP in a cloud.

• Automatic scale-out/in for performance – The application tier of an SAP instance can be scaled-out or scaled-in according to the workload. Automation, based on triggered events, can be defined for increasing / decreasing allocation of resources for the application and database tier. By doing this the performance KPIs can be kept.


Solution overview HPE IaaS reference architecture blueprint The architecture outlined in this paper is capable of providing an IaaS Cloud infrastructure solution to provide a platform for complex SAP Business Applications under both traditional and SAP HANA in-memory databases as a Cloud service. To address specific technical needs of in-memory databases versus classical SAP Business Applications, different infrastructure concepts regarding physical versus virtualized server pools are necessary. While high performance configurations optimized for SAP HANA databases are typically bare metal deployments, SAP Business Applications are ready for virtualized resource pools. The HPE Converged Infrastructure concept is the ideal foundation to bring both of these workloads together. Figure 1 shows an overall architecture blueprint for Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and how they rely on each other.

Figure 1. HPE IaaS and PaaS solution architecture blueprint

PaaS (highlighted in dark gray color, interface to IaaS level in gray/green) typically functions by providing a platform upon which software like SAP Business Applications can be developed and deployed. As with most cloud services, PaaS is built on top of IaaS virtualization technology. Businesses can requisition resources as they need them, scaling as demand grows, rather than investing in hardware with redundant resources. A detailed description of how HPE Software products and solutions support PaaS environments can be found in the upcoming white paper “HPE PaaS IT4IT based Reference Architecture for SAP Business Applications including SAP HANA platform.”

IaaS (highlighted in green color) provides fundamental building blocks for cloud services and is comprised of highly automated and scalable compute resources, complemented by cloud storage and network capability which can be self-provisioned, metered, and available on-demand. IaaS allows for automated deployment of servers, processing power, storage, and networking as described in this white paper.

SAP HANA databases – The configuration design is aimed at high performance workload environments. In these types of environments, there are no lower priority workloads and the system is dedicated to serve only workloads with very high performance and availability requirements such as millisecond storage latencies and high storage throughput capabilities. Only SAP certified and tested infrastructure components are supported to be used in a pooled architecture following the SAP Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI) approach. To comply with SAP KPI requirements, we recommend using HPE ProLiant DL580 compute nodes connected via SAN infrastructure to HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage systems. Refer to the “Capacity and sizing” section in this paper for more details. This connection enables small to large scale-up SAP HANA database installations as well as large scale-out installations. For large scale-up, SAP Suite on HANA (SoH) applications or large scale-out SAP


Business Warehouse on HANA (BWoH) configurations, we recommend using HPE Integrity Superdome X servers with the highest standards for x86 availability, scalability and performance.

SAP Business Applications – The configuration design is aimed at mixed workload environments where performance and response time requirements are variable. In this configuration, lower priority workloads can be resource-controlled to ensure there is no impact on higher priority workloads. Non- or small production SAP HANA databases, SAP Business Applications, non-HANA databases and other applications are ready to be virtualized and consolidated on a fully virtualized server pool. To provide the best tradeoff between compute costs and performance, HPE recommends an HPE ProLiant BL460c server blade-based compute pool. Refer to the “Capacity and sizing” section of this paper for more details. This type of server concept delivers an outstanding performance value on lowest infrastructure costs like power and cooling and is well-suited for hypervisor usage.

HPE management software – HPE recommends HPE OneView as a comprehensive, single platform designed from the ground up for converged infrastructure management. It is an integrated platform to manage servers, storage, networking, and power and cooling resources through their full lifecycle. It collapses infrastructure management tools into a single resource-oriented architecture that provides direct access to all logical and physical resources.

HPE Cloud software – To unify the control and delivery of cloud services, HPE recommends HPE Helion CloudSystem software as an integrated system that provides intelligent automation and lifecycle management from application-to-infrastructure for combinations of SAP HANA database and SAP Business Application architectures. It supports multi-hypervisor, multi-OS and heterogeneous infrastructures and utilizes different resource providers such as OpenStack Technology or various hypervisor layers. Because of HPE open software standards, the concept allows the integration of existing non-HPE infrastructure components as well as newer upcoming server, storage and networking components.

Solution components The reference architecture core is based on a flexible pooled resources architecture of compute and storage systems connected via HPE networking techniques. Sharing resources saves money and increases flexibility to react quickly to changing demands. The proposed servers and storage systems are SAP certified to address SAP workloads, including SAP HANA high performance in-memory databases. For SAP HANA database workloads the concept follows the SAP TDI approach. By initially identifying the largest drivers of TCO reduction (operating system, RAM and processors), this concept counts on open source and industry standards as the core platform.

SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI) SAP and HPE started HANA as a standardized and highly optimized appliance delivery. This approach offers well-defined hardware designed for the performance needs of an in-memory technology solution out of the box. The appliance delivery is the first choice while looking for a preconfigured hardware setup and a preinstalled software package for a fast implementation done by a chosen hardware partner fully supported by SAP and HPE.

With SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI), SAP has to narrow the specifications of the hardware to ensure the performance and stability. In that case, the supported SAP HANA servers are the certified appliance servers having the same bill of material as the certified SAP HANA appliance but without storage. With TDI, the change is related to the storage configuration. With enterprise storage, it is possible to combine storage and servers from different vendors for a single HANA instance. It is also possible to use one enterprise storage array for multiple independent SAP HANA systems.

The key design objectives of the IaaS Reference Architecture for SAP applications are:

• Follow the Tailored Data Center Integration requirements from SAP and align with the HPE individual support model for the configuration of the SAP HANA components. The restrictions involved in utilizing the Tailored Data Center Integration approach are as follows:

– The server is listed in the Certified SAP HANA Hardware Directory at http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/appliances.html

– The storage solution has successfully passed SAP HANA hardware certification and is listed in the Certified SAP HANA Hardware Directory.

• Take advantage of HPE converged infrastructure servers, storage and networking.

• Exceed SAP Certification Requirements for best performance.

• Configure redundant components to address high availability.

• Design a flexible environment to grow on demand.

http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/appliances.html


SAP HANA – IaaS Cloud Infrastructure blueprint The technical infrastructure blueprint for HPE IaaS recommended configuration is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. SAP HANA – IaaS Cloud Infrastructure blueprint

HPE Compute HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 (4 CPU) server for small to large SAP HANA database instances and SAP Business Applications The four socket HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 server shown in Figure 3 can be used for small (virtualized) and midsize to large (physical) SAP HANA database installations following a scale-up or scale-out approach. Hypervisor virtualization enables consolidation of small SAP HANA and non-HANA databases, SAP application instances and non-SAP applications.

Figure 3. Four-socket HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 server

The HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 Server is an enterprise-grade four socket (4S) x86 server offering breakthrough performance, rock-solid reliability, and compelling consolidation and manageability efficiencies. It is ideal for SAP HANA in-memory computing, SAP Business Applications and virtualization. Especially in a pooled architecture approach, it offers the right flexibility and performance to run SAP workloads physically or virtualized.

Featuring Intel® Xeon® E7-8800 v3 processors, the HPE DL580 Gen9 has security and data protection features for system resiliency that enterprise businesses can depend on. With intelligent manageability through HPE OneView, HPE Integrated Lights-Out 4 (iLO 4), and user-inspired features, it enables faster infrastructure management at lower cost.


HPE Integrity Superdome X (16 CPU) server for large SAP HANA database instances The HPE Integrity Superdome X shown in Figure 4 sets new high standards for x86 availability, scalability and performance; and it is the ideal platform for large-scale SAP HANA In-Memory computing to run huge Suite on HANA (SoH) applications or large scale-out SAP BW on HANA configurations. Breakthrough scalability of up to 16 sockets supports 12 TB SAP HANA databases for Suite on HANA (SoH) in a single system. HPE partitioning technology (HPE nPars technology) enables large scale-out configurations based on 8-CPU partitions for SAP BW on HANA workloads.

Figure 4. HPE Integrity Superdome X server

The HPE Integrity Superdome X blends x86 efficiencies with proven HPE mission-critical innovations for a superior uptime experience and groundbreaking performance. Through unique HPE nPars partitioning technology, Superdome X delivers 20x greater reliability than platforms relying on soft partitions alone.

Transforming mission-critical environments The HPE BladeSystem Superdome Enclosure is the building block for Superdome X. Each compute enclosure supports 15 fans, 12 power supplies, associated power cords and four HPE Crossbar Fabric Modules (XFMs). Configurations of one-to-eight mission-critical, scalable x86 blades can be populated in an enclosure with support for hard partitions (HPE nPartitions or nPars) containing one, two, three, four, or eight blades. Multiple HPE nPars of different sizes are supported within a single enclosure.

With breakthrough innovations such as the fault-tolerant Crossbar Fabric and Error Analysis Engine coupled with hard partitioning capabilities, Superdome X sets the standard for mission-critical x86 computing. It offers scalability that surpasses the market, flexibility through HPE nPars, and mission critical RAS functionality. Uptime of critical Linux® applications is improved with up to 20x greater reliability from HPE nPars, when compared with platforms that rely on software virtualization alone. Users experience zero planned downtime when performing maintenance and updates by using HPE Serviceguard for Linux to create highly available server clusters and benefit from up to 95 percent reduction in memory outages over standard x86 with HPE “Firmware First” architecture and memory RAS improvements over Intel base code.


HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 (2 CPU) server blades for virtualized SAP applications and small SAP HANA database instances In the reference architecture, the two socket HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 server shown in Figure 5 can be used to virtualize and consolidate SAP application instances and databases, non-SAP applications as well as small production SAP HANA database installations.

Figure 5. HPE ProLiant BL460c server blades for virtualized SAP applications (showing 16 blades in an HPE BladeSystem c7000 enclosure)

The HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 is a dual-socket server blade engineered for unprecedented performance, enhanced flexibility and simplified management which makes it the standard for data center computing. It packs in more memory capacity and performance compared to the previous Gen8 model through a combination of DDR4 RAM (64GB DIMMs supported), Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors, and an enhanced Smart Array Controller that ships with 1GB Flash Backed Write Cache standard.

The BladeSystem c7000 enclosure provides all the power, cooling, and I/O infrastructure needed to support modular server, interconnect, and storage components today and throughout the next several years. The enclosure is 10U high and holds up to 16 server and/or storage blades plus optional redundant network and storage interconnect modules.

It includes a shared 7.1 Tbps high-speed NonStop mid-plane for wire-once connectivity of server blades to network and shared storage. Power is delivered through a pooled-power backplane, and power input flexibility is provided with choices of single-phase AC input, 3-phase AC input, -48V DC input, and high voltage DC input. The universal high voltage power solution helps to reduce data center CAPEX and OPEX.

HPE Networking HPE is a leading network infrastructure supplier with solutions for all kinds of customer scenarios.

The product portfolio is classified by FlexFabric, FlexCampus and FlexBranch solutions. FlexFabric products are mainly used for the data center.

Key features for the SAP HANA network are:

• Low latency

• High availability

• High speed non-blocking architecture

• Support for all overlay tunnels like VXLAN or NVGRE

• Software-defined Network (SDN) enhanced capabilities

• Seamless integration into all management tools


Network structure for SAP HANA node connectivity The network structure for SAP HANA node connectivity is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Network structure for SAP HANA node connectivity

HPE FlexFabric 5930 Switch Series – Top of Rack (ToR) The HPE FlexFabric 5930 Switch Series shown in Figure 7 is a family of high-density, ultra-low-latency, top-of-rack switches that is part of the HPE FlexNetwork architecture's solution. The 5930 series comes in three flavors, 1U fixed configuration with 32 10G ports or as either 2-slot or 4-slot modular ToR solution.

Figure 7. HPE FlexFabric 5930 2QSFP+ 2-slot switch

Ideally suited for deployment at the aggregation or server access layer of large enterprise data centers, the HPE 5930 Switch Series is also powerful enough for deployment at the data center core layer of medium-sized enterprises.

With the increase in virtualized applications and server-to-server traffic, customers now require spine and ToR switch innovations that will meet their needs for higher-performance server connectivity, convergence of Ethernet and storage traffic, the capability to handle virtual environments, and ultra-low-latency. The HPE FlexFabric 5930 Switch Series provides all of these benefits in a single device with the following features.

• Cut-through with ultra-low-latency and wire speed

• VXLAN and NVGRE hardware support for virtualized environments

• Bare-metal integration for virtualized environments (VTEP Gateway)

• High-density 40GbE spine/ToR connectivity

• IPv6 support with full L2 and L3 features

• Convergence-ready with DCB, FCoE, and TRILL

• 2-slot (1U) or 4-slot (2U) modular chassis with 10/40G copper/fiber module options

• Modules MACSEC enabled


HPE 5130 El Switch Series – management switch The HPE 5130 EI Switch series shown in Figure 8 delivers flexibility, scalability and low TCO at the access layer of medium and large enterprise campus networks. Offering enterprise class QoS and security, HPE Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) stacking, static Layer 3 routing and RIP, convenient fixed 10GbE uplink ports, PoE+, ACLs, IPv6 and delivers energy savings with Energy Efficient Ethernet. The HPE 5130 EI Switch Series is SDN ready with OpenFlow 1.3 support; it can be managed with HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC) for a single view of your entire network

Figure 8. HPE FlexFabric 5130 Switch series

HPE FlexFabric 7900 Switch Series Modular Core for smaller networks HPE FlexFabric 7900 Modular Core Switch shown in Figure 9 is a compact modular data center core switch supporting virtualized data centers and evolutionary needs of private and public cloud deployments. Delivering unprecedented levels of performance, buffering, scale, and availability with high density 10GbE, 40GbE and 100GbE interfaces at a lower cost than larger chassis such as the 12900 series, using only a fraction of the footprint used by traditional chassis.

The switch supports full Layer 2 and 3 features, including advanced features such as TRILL and HPE Intelligent Resilient Fabric (IRF), which enable scale-out, two-tier leaf-spine architecture.

Figure 9. HPE FlexFabric 7900 Switch series

HPE FlexFabric 12900 Series Data Center Core for larger networks The HPE FlexFabric 12900 Switch Series shown in Figure 10 is a next-generation modular data center core switch designed to support virtualized data centers and the evolving needs of private and public cloud deployments. It delivers unprecedented levels of performance, buffering, scale, and availability with high density 10GbE, 40GbE and 100GbE connectivity.

The switch series includes 4-slot; 8-slot; 10-slot and 16-slot chassis. Ready for Software-defined Networking (SDN), the FlexFabric 12900 Switch supports full Layer 2 and 3 features and advanced data center features to build resilient scalable fabric and achieve convergence.


Figure 10. HPE FlexFabric 12908E Switch Chassis

HPE Software-defined networking HPE Software-defined Networking (SDN) provides an end-to-end solution to automate the network from data center to campus and branch. Expanding the innovation of SDN, HPE SDN ecosystem delivers resources to develop and create a market place for SDN applications. The HPE SDN ecosystem delivers the following benefits:

• Simple – programmable network with open standards infrastructure

• Agile – dynamically change how your network responds to business needs

• Automated – rapid deployment of applications

Data Center Software-defined Networking (SDN) Most cloud operating systems use virtual overlay networks to automate the network in a cloud operating system.

HPE offers with Distributed Cloud Networking (DCN) a solution that connects all major cloud operating systems like Microsoft Azure, VMware vCloud or OpenStack with a common network layer that enables communication between services running in these different setups. Furthermore, DCN can extend the locally used virtual network over WAN connections to enable seamless automation in a multi data center setup.

DCN uses SDN to automate the network layer to provide:

• Application-driven automated instantiation of network services

• SDN-based unified physical and virtual network configuration across data center networking

• Seamless data center interconnect for both virtual and physical compute environment

• Large-scale tenant support across multiple private, hybrid, and public clouds

• Unified policy server build to align with data center application needs

Intelligent Management Center – smart management that goes beyond the network Business requirements are changing at a much faster pace than before and networks need to adapt and match pace. Network management needs to ensure continuous uptime, reduce operational burden and deliver services and applications when the businesses expect them.

Intelligent Management Center (IMC) unifies and simplifies network monitoring and configuration management to promote continuous network uptime while allowing administrator’s to deliver new services via orchestration and automation, secure network access and ensure application performance for end users, all through single pane-of-glass network management.


Networking key features To create a high-availability network, HPE IRF (Intelligent Resilient Framework) is a key component. IRF virtualizes up to nine individual network devices into one single managed device. Extremely fast failover guarantees best service availability.

Together with multiple device context (MDC), which completely separates physical or logical devices into individual customer segments, the SAP HANA solution can be divided into many customer solutions. Network policy deployment is done using the HPE SDN controller contained in the HPE Helion OpenStack distribution. The neutron network stack enhancements are available separately as well as within the VCN (Virtual Cloud Networking Product) for customers deploying standard OpenStack.

HPE Storage HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage shown in Figure 11 is a modern, tier-1 storage. It provides a single product family from midrange to high-end, including All-flash. All current 3PAR StoreServ array models are certified for SAP HANA TDI and can therefore be used in an IaaS offering. HPE 3PAR capabilities for SAP HANA TDI are unparalleled, including performance, availability, and a single interoperable set of tier-1 data services. These services are implemented whether it is an HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8200 or a multi-petabyte HPE 3PAR StoreServ 20800. In this reference architecture design HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 systems are described.

Figure 11. HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage

HPE 3PAR StoreServ availability SAP HANA is considered mission-critical. HPE 3PAR StoreServ meets the High Availability (HA) and resiliency demands of SAP HANA and cloud offerings. High availability is built into the HPE 3PAR StoreServ architecture through full hardware redundancy. HPE 3PAR StoreServ scales to more than two controllers to offer increased resilience versus standard two controller arrays. As a truly active/active technology, all controllers share the workload among them offering predictable performance with no management overhead. Controller node pairs are connected to dual-ported drive enclosures owned by that pair. In addition, unlike other approaches, the system offers both hardware and software fault tolerance by running a separate instance of the HPE 3PAR operating system on each controller node, thus enhancing the availability of customer data. With this design, software and firmware failures – a significant cause of unplanned downtime in other architectures – are greatly reduced. Planned resilience minimizes the impact of unplanned failures which can be especially harmful if storage is shared between SAP HANA and other applications.


HPE 3PAR StoreServ offers a number of operating advantages to run SAP HANA and other SAP environments:

• Reduce capacity requirements

Thin technologies help to reduce capacity requirements and extend SSD life span without forcing performance trade-offs.

• Move and convert storage volumes

HPE 3PAR Dynamic Optimization Software allows storage administrators to move volumes to different RAID levels and/or drive types and can convert any Virtual Volume or Thin Provisioned Virtual Volume to a different service level with a single command. It works transparently, non-disruptively and makes it easy to alter storage decisions, particularly where SAP HANA is part of a mixed application environment.

• Define service levels for SAP applications to match business requirements

HPE 3PAR Priority Optimization Software enables the selection of service levels for applications and virtual domains to match business requirements for performance. It protects mission-critical applications such as SAP based on HANA by specifying service-level objectives and service-level caps for I/Os per second and bandwidth.

• Extend an existing environment with HPE 3PAR arrays

HPE 3PAR Peer Motion allows the addition of HPE 3PAR arrays to an existing environment, which is the first non-disruptive, do-it-yourself data migration tool for enterprise block storage. It enables online storage volume migration between HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems non-disruptively and without complex planning or dependency on extra tools.

• Easy storage management for SAP Basis administrators

3PAR StoreServ autonomic storage management allows SAP Basis administrators to manage storage without assistance from storage administrators and helps to simplify, automate, and expedite storage management by handling provisioning, tiering, and change management autonomically and intelligently, at a subsystem level, and without administrator intervention. In addition, it allows an administrator to create and manage physical and logical resources without requiring any overt action. To avoid any pre-planning for provisioning tasks, the system constructs volumes intelligently based on available resources.

• Unified storage system for file and block

The HPE 3PAR File Persona Suite unlocks the native file and object access capabilities within HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage array. This allows HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage to be used in SAP HANA for both data storage and NFS access for shared volumes such as SAP HANA binaries and configuration files.

• Online recovery of Microsoft® SQL Server databases

HPE 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for Microsoft SQL Server eases costs and administration by providing rapid, affordable online recovery of Microsoft SQL Server databases from multiple, highly granular point-in-time snapshots. It helps to recover a SQL server database quickly to a known point-in-time, speeding up a variety of operations including rapid recovery of the production SQL server.

• Online recovery of Oracle databases

HPE 3PAR Recovery Manager Software for Oracle is a highly efficient solution for automatically creating and managing hundreds of application-consistent, reservationless, point-in-time snapshots of Oracle and Oracle RAC databases for rapid online recovery. These snapshot images are then presentable to other Oracle database instances and managed from an easy-to-use graphical user interface on the host. It helps administrators to recover a database to a known point in time quickly and simply, speeding up a variety of operations including the rapid recovery of the Oracle production server. The integration with Oracle Active Data Guard enables snapshots to be taken on standby databases, thus minimizing impact to the production database.

• HPE 3PAR Remote Copy Software

HPE 3PAR Remote Copy is a unique replication technology that makes it possible to protect and share data from any application more simply, efficiently, and affordably. Remote Copy reduces the cost of remote data replication and disaster recovery (DR) dramatically by leveraging HPE 3PAR’s unique thin copy technologies. This enables the use of both mid-range and high-end arrays and eliminates the need for professional services. In addition, HPE 3PAR offers autonomic DR configurations that enable setting up and testing the entire DR deployment in just minutes from a single window. This includes multisite replication, using both mid-range and high-end arrays.


• HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence Software

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence Software allows federation of HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems across geographically separated data centers. This intersite federation of storage uses data centers more effectively by allowing applications to move from one site to another without application downtime. Peer Persistence leverages the high availability solutions on HPE 3PAR StoreServ systems, and extends it even further by enabling a peer relationship between two HPE 3PAR StoreServ Storage systems located at geographically separated sites. Peer Persistence also enables failover/failback between two sites/data centers to be transparent to hosts and without any disruption to applications running on them. Peer Persistence is deployed with Remote Copy without the need for any additional hardware or appliance.

SAP LVM and HPE storage integration SAP NetWeaver Landscape Virtualization Manager (LVM) enables automation to sync data in development, training and test environments with the production environment. It provides a complete solution for administrators to make clones, copies and refresh the SAP system/landscapes. SAP applications can also be migrated across physical and virtual infrastructures. This reduces the administrative effort to manage SAP landscapes and improves productivity. This software can be used with HPE Storage solutions in HP-UX, Microsoft® Windows® and Linux environments. HPE Storage plug-in for SAP LVM is a high-performance and easy-to-use software to manage SAP landscapes in physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Key benefits of using SAP LVM with HPE storage solutions • Simplifies management of SAP systems and landscapes (traditional and virtualized) on HPE Storage

– Enables automation for system copy, clone and refresh of SAP systems/landscapes

– Reduces cost, time and effort to operate SAP systems thereby improving productivity

• Improves operational continuity and data consistency

– Enables quick disaster recovery by taking a group snapshot and clone of the entire Virtual Volume set

– Enhances flexibility in making development and test data consistent with production data

– Reduces downtime of SAP systems in production

• Enables monitoring of SAP systems, infrastructure metrics and status in real time

– Single visualization view to monitor and manage SAP systems

– Enables task scheduling and mass operations to meet service level agreement (SLA) levels

– End-to-end visibility, monitoring, and management of SAP and non-SAP applications in virtual infrastructures

Disaster recovery Protect SAP databases (database backup) A complete data backup or storage snapshot is required to protect against data loss resulting from corrupt storage. A data backup writes the payload (that is the actual data and not unused space) in the data area and log area to different backup destinations. A storage snapshot captures the whole content of the data area. Data backups and storage snapshots are created while the SAP database is running. While a backup is being created, the impact on system performance is negligible, and users can continue to work normally.

HPE has certified its backup solution, HPE Data Protector, for SAP applications including SAP HANA. This solution can be used with HPE StoreEver tape libraries as well as HPE StoreOnce products. The benefit of StoreOnce is the deduplication of data which can be either source or target based.

Use of a file system as backup target An external shared file system can be used as the backup target for all nodes of an SAP HANA installation, and is the easiest way to implement a backup solution within an SAP HANA solution. It is recommended by SAP that the shared file system for the backup should not use the same storage as the database. This solution can be used for log and data backups.

HPE has its own deduplication technology within the HPE StoreOnce D2D Backup products. These products can be used as NFS backup targets and are offered with up to 1.7 PB usable storage capacity. HPE uses this solution for its own internal IT backup implementation with SAP HANA.


SAP backup interface “Backint” An Enterprise Backup Solution (EBS) can be used via the BACKINT interface of SAP HANA. This EBS needs to be certified with SAP HANA. All backups are transferred to a third party application, which transports the data and log backups to another location, e.g., tape or virtual tape library. The benefit of the Backint approach is the fact that all backup jobs are monitored in the EBS.

Storage snapshot based backup SAP HANA can use storage snapshots since Service Pack 07. The SAP HANA database will be put into a backup mode to create storage snapshots. A snapshot has the benefit that it can be created with minimal impact to the SAP HANA system. Additionally a restore from a snapshot is faster than a recovery via file/Backint. The Backint interface cannot trigger a storage snapshot.

SAP additionally recommends to implement a backup via File/Backint on a regular base as the integrity of the database is not checked when a snapshot is created.

SAP HANA database copy All backup methods can be used to create a homogenous copy from the source system for test, training or development purposes. The target system can have the same number, fewer or more hosts than the source system. A restore can either be a point in time restore using the logs and a complete data backup or a complete data backup only.

HA concept HA solution for SAP Business Applications To protect business critical SAP applications HPE recommends HPE Serviceguard Extension for SAP (SGeSAP). It detects installed SAP components and proposes best-practice re-configurations for instant creation of High Availability clusters. It is also possible to let Serviceguard regularly verify whether the cluster configuration and the SAP configuration are still in sync.

HPE Serviceguard monitors the availability and accessibility of your critical IT services, such as SAP applications, SAP databases including SAP HANA, or even custom applications. Those applications – and everything that they rely upon to do their job – are meticulously monitored for any fault in hardware, software, operating system, virtualization, storage, or the network. When a failure or threshold violation is detected, Serviceguard for Linux automatically and transparently resumes normal operations in mere seconds by restarting the service in the right way and in the right place to enable improved performance. Sophisticated multi-tier applications typically rely on a number of cooperative application services. Serviceguard also includes the framework for building these and having the correct start/stop sequencing built right in. HPE also considers manageability and simplicity of paramount importance in clustered environments, and therefore we continually enhance Serviceguard for Linux to make it easier to maintain and configure, reducing planned downtime across the entire environment.

HPE Serviceguard Manager for Linux: Included at no charge with Serviceguard for Linux, HPE Serviceguard Manager for Linux gives a simple visual overview of the environment with full control from a single console. It is an intuitive graphical interface with effortless wizards to reduce both the need for expertise and the potential for human error by automating cluster setup and configuration to enhance efficiency and improve productivity. HPE Serviceguard Manager for Linux also includes many features that ease the configuration of clusters, including integration with the HPE Serviceguard for Linux Toolkits and Extensions. This greatly simplifies configuration, administration, and monitoring of SAP Business Applications. The graphical map helps even novice administrators to visualize the cluster topology and dependencies among applications easily.

High Availability concept for SAP HANA HPE Serviceguard software provides a clustering solution for SAP HANA scale-up and scale-out instances. The solution leverages the SAP system replication software mirroring and automates the required steps to bring HANA back to operation after any component failure. This includes HANA memory reconfigurations, secondary HANA instance takeovers and primary HANA instance demotions, virtual IP address moves and dual purpose instance handling. The scale-out cluster solution implements a many-to-many failover of all HANA nodes of the instance. It aims to cover Disaster Recovery scenarios and complements the host auto-failover HA solution that is built into HANA by SAP to protect against single node outages.

File Access and Fencing: The enterprise storage system can connect to the SAP HANA server using a SAN (for example, by Fibre Channel). To enable host auto-failover for scale-out systems, SAP HANA comes with a Storage Connector implementation for Fibre Channel. HPE provides an implementation of the Storage Connector API for host auto-failover. HPE recommends the block storage approach as this implies the SAP standard implementation of the SAP Storage Connector API without any additional software and maintenance needed.


SAP HANA Multi-tenancy and Virtualization In addition to the standard installation option for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA where one application runs on one SAP HANA instance, which in turn exclusively runs on one server, SAP provides several SAP HANA platform built-in capabilities to run multiple SAP HANA workloads in single, multi-tenant environments (MCOD, MCOS and MDC). Furthermore, SAP HANA platform currently supports software / firmware based hypervisors (including logical partitions). All available virtualization techniques for SAP HANA data bases are supported and ready to integrate with HPE CloudSystem software stack.

Figure 12. SAP HANA Multi-tenancy and Virtualization

MCOD Installation Option – Multiple applications (or scenarios) running on one production SAP HANA database (SAP note: 1661202)

Multiple Components One Database (MCOD) allows the deployment of certain white-listed applications together on the same SAP HANA database but in different schemas. This option allows you to perform common cross-schema reporting on the data of these applications. This described scenario has also been called MCOD in regards to other SAP applications. SAP supports deploying and running multiple applications on a single SAP HANA production database only for packaged applications and scenarios listed on a “White List”. For the current status for multiple applications (or scenarios) running on one production SAP HANA appliance where SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA (ERP on HANA, CRM on HANA or SCM on HANA) is installed, see note 1826100.

MCOS Installation Option – Multiple Components One System for multiple SAP HANA databases on a single SAP HANA system (SAP note: 1681092)

SAP does support running multiple SAP HANA database instances (Multi-SID) on a single SAP HANA hardware installation, restricted to single host / scale-up scenarios for production systems. Non-production systems may be either scale-up or scale-out. Multi-SID requires significant attention to various detailed tasks related to system administration and performance management. SAP provides lifecycle management tools that can be used to deploy additional DBs on existing SAP HANA hardware units.


MDC Installation Option – SAP HANA multitenant database containers (SAP note: 2096000)

The concept is based on having one single system with a system database that keeps the system-wide landscape information and which allows configuration and monitoring of the overall system. In addition there will be 0 to n tenant databases that are, with regards to application data and user management, strictly isolated from each other (except running on the same hardware in the same instance). Users of one tenant database cannot connect to other tenant databases or access application data there (unless the system is enabled for cross database access). All tenant databases can be backed up and recovered independently from one another and are running with the same SAP HANA software version and the same HA/DR method.

Focus: Cloud Scenarios (SAP internal): SAP HANA Cloud Platform; SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

On-Premise Scenarios: Replace MCOS deployments (Multiple components one system), install MDC instead of MCOS where it fits; featuring several tenant databases; address common MCOD scenarios (e.g., ERP-CRM-BW, QA/DEV, Data Marts)

Hypervisor installation Option – SAP HANA virtualized / partitioned environments (SAP note: 1788665)

A viable alternative to SAP HANA data base built-in capabilities is the use of virtualization technology to host multiple isolated SAP HANA instances on one or more servers, enabling each database instance to appear to run on a separate machine. A hypervisor specific validation process has been established by SAP to determine all necessary constraints and best practices and to ensure supportability and minimum performance requirements for running SAP HANA in virtualized environments.

SAP Cloud installations can also benefit from SDN network automation as described in the “Data Center Software-defined Networking (SDN)” section of this white paper.

Management software HPE OneView – Infrastructure lifecycle management HPE OneView is a comprehensive, single platform designed from the ground up for converged infrastructure management. As an integrated platform, it increases the productivity of every member of the team, across servers, storage, and networking. By streamlining processes, incorporating best practices, and creating a new, holistic way to work, HPE OneView provides a more efficient way to work. It is designed for open integration with existing tools and processes to extend these efficiencies.

As shown in Figure 13, HPE OneView is delivered as an appliance to make it easy to deploy. When it is fully implemented, the HPE OneView appliance manages servers, storage, networking, and power and cooling resources through their full lifecycle. It collapses infrastructure management tools into a single resource-oriented architecture that provides direct access to all logical and physical resources. Logical resources include server profiles and server profile templates, storage volumes and storage volume templates, enclosures and enclosure groups, logical interconnects and logical interconnect groups, and network connections and storage volume attachments that can be provisioned as a service. Physical resources include server hardware blades and rack servers, networking interconnects, storage systems, disks, and compute enclosures.

Figure 13. HPE OneView


HPE OneView also streamlines the process of bringing the enclosures, interconnects, and server hardware under management. When adding a device, HPE OneView automatically detects all the hardware and prepares it for monitoring and management. HPE has taken the approach in HPE OneView that server hardware either has a server profile and is allocated and fully configured, or it has no server profile and is available as raw hardware in a pool awaiting a new configuration. This supports the most dynamic reconfiguration of hardware possible, while preserving the simplicity of provisioning a new server profile just like the last one. It guarantees the server profile will successfully deploy to the allocated hardware based on deep knowledge of the server hardware type and enclosure group.

HPE OneView for VMware vCenter seamlessly integrates the manageability features of virtualized HPE Converged Infrastructure environments with VMware solutions to gain deep insight and control reducing the time it takes to make important changes, increase capacity or manage planned and unplanned downtime.

HPE Helion CloudSystem software HPE Helion CloudSystem is an integrated system that unifies the control and delivery of cloud services. With HPE Helion CloudSystem, a secure, scalable cloud solution can be build that includes:

• Industry’s most complete, integrated system to build and manage cloud services

• Single services view across private, public, and hybrid cloud

• Multi-hypervisor, multi-OS, heterogeneous infrastructure

• Intelligent automation and lifecycle management; application-to-infrastructure

• Scalability and elasticity

• Pre-packaged service design tools

HPE Helion CloudSystem is built on proven HPE Cloud Service Automation and HPE Converged Infrastructure as shown in Figure 14; CloudSystem manages private or hybrid clouds with an open, heterogeneous architecture.

Figure 14. HPE Helion CloudSystem

HPE Helion CloudSystem Enterprise utilizes different resource providers such as OpenStack Technology or various hypervisor technologies. HPE Helion CloudSystem can be managed from an administrative console, self-service portal, CLIs, and OpenStack APIs. It provides an appliance-based deployment console to simplify installation and maintenance.


HPE Helion CloudSystem Enterprise components CloudSystem includes the following components, which run on virtual machine appliances on the management cluster or hypervisor:

• HPE Cloud Service Automation (HPE CSA) is a unique platform that orchestrates the deployment of compute and infrastructure resources and of complex multi-tier application architectures. As shown in Figure 15, HPE CSA integrates and leverages the strengths of several HPE data center management and automation products, adding resource management, service offering design and a customer portal to create a comprehensive service automation solution. The HPE CSA subscription, service design and resource utilization capabilities provide the following benefits.

– The HPE CSA Marketplace Portal provides a customer interface for requesting new cloud services and for monitoring and managing existing services, with subscription pricing to meet your business requirements.

– The HPE CSA graphical service design and content portability tools simplify developing, leveraging and sharing an array of service offerings that can be tailored to your customers’ needs.

– The HPE CSA lifecycle framework and resource utilization features ease the complexity of mapping your cloud fulfilment infrastructure into reusable, automated resource offerings for on-time and on-budget delivery.

Figure 15. HPE Cloud Service Automation – tasks and role-based approach


• HPE Operations Orchestration (OO) – HPE Operations Orchestration software is the next-generation IT process automation solution that is supported across the entire IT environment from traditional data center to cloud. As shown in Figure 16, HPE OO is comprised of three basic components: Studio, Central, and Content (process automation libraries):

– HPE OO Studio provides an easy-to-use interface using an intuitive drag-and-wire design to create and customize new flows, debug flows, and generate documents.

– HPE OO Central includes the flow engine that executes the flows and provides an administrative interface to manage users and flows. It also provides dashboard and reporting for ROI and execution metrics for flows, and offers flexibility in flow execution to reduce administrative time and increase agility.

– HPE OO Content refers collectively to the integrations, operations and process automation libraries in HPE OO. It includes over 5000 out-of-the-box operations, flows, and integration adapters, offering you tremendous flexibility in terms of supporting many different platforms and management products.

Figure 16. HPE Operations Orchestration overview


• HPE Helion OpenStack (HPE HOS) – HPE Helion OpenStack is a commercial-grade distribution of OpenStack cloud software, the leading open source cloud computing platform. This HPE Helion distribution, backed by HPE lets you build, manage, and operate open source-based clouds on a resilient, maintainable platform. HPE Helion OpenStack enables cost-effective scalability of IT services and business agility and, as part of the HPE Helion portfolio, it is backed by a wide range of related cloud products, services, and professional support.

HPE Helion OpenStack contains features around cloud lifecycle management and hardened security as follows:

– Provisioning of new infrastructure is simpler. It also enables enterprises to repurpose existing infrastructure without having an impact on availability.

– Rolling upgrades across the entire cloud environment means software updates without the need for planned or unplanned downtime.

– Continuous patch management ensures security patches are deployed without interrupting the availability of applications.

– An easy-to-use administrator interface, as well as centralized logging and monitoring at scale across the cloud environment.

– Increased network configuration flexibility enables connectivity to existing IT environments.

– Strict OpenStack API adherence to enable cross-cloud compatibility and ability to leverage the upstream ecosystem of third party plug-ins.

• HPE Helion Eucalyptus – HPE Helion Eucalyptus is open source software for building Amazon Web Services (AWS)-compatible hybrid clouds using IT resources that you control. It gives service providers the ability to provide the same self-service capabilities users demand without sacrificing control over data security and while keeping cloud costs down. Compatibility with the AWS API enables agile development teams to programmatically self-provision resources using the same tools and processes used with the public cloud.

• HPE Helion Development Platform – HPE Helion Development Platform is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that helps developers build great cloud-native applications across private and public clouds. Based on Cloud Foundry® and fully integrated with HPE Helion OpenStack, the HPE Helion Development Platform is open and interoperable, ensuring that developers can focus on building the right app for any environment. The Helion Development Platform is a Cloud Foundry-based, managed runtime environment for applications.

– It supports Java, Node, PHP, .NET and other language runtimes.

– It provides easy access to services like MySQL, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, and Memcache.

– It allows Disk, Memory and Placement Zone constraints to be set per application.

– It provides auto-scaling and application log drains.

The HPE Helion Development Platform streamlines the movement of apps from dev to test, and to production by standardizing on Docker containers, enabling IT operations to bring their own containers, and adding a new continuous integration developer toolset, HPE Helion Code Engine.

HPE OneView driver for Ironic integration – HPE OneView supports scenarios such as deploying bare metal servers and hypervisor clusters from bare metal servers, for instance. In this context, the HPE OneView driver for Ironic integrates them both and enables the use of Ironic as a bare metal provider to manage physical hardware. The driver implements the core interfaces of an Ironic Driver and uses the OneView Rest API to provide communication between Ironic and OneView.

In order to provide a better user experience, the driver offers additional features when managing bare metal servers together with OneView:

• Automated Nova flavor creation based on OneView resources

• Automatic Ironic node inventory synchronization with OneView

• Handling of Ironic nodes that are in use by other OneView users

• Instance deployment using PXE

These features include external services that communicate with the HPE OneView driver and the OneView appliance in order to provide a synchronization mechanism to automatically synchronize Ironic nodes and OneView managed hardware.

http://cloudfoundry.org/

http://docs.hpcloud.com/#helion/index.html

https://docs.hpcloud.com/devplatform/2.0/devplatform.appdev.html#topic2457__java

https://docs.hpcloud.com/devplatform/2.0/devplatform.appdev.html#topic2457__node

https://docs.hpcloud.com/devplatform/2.0/devplatform.appdev.html#topic2457__PHP


HPE Helion CloudSystem benefits As a major contributor to the OpenStack community, HPE delivers innovation to each release of the architecture. In designing CloudSystem, HPE leveraged the OpenStack architecture, exposed the APIs, and then hardened them for enterprise use. The outcome: a computing platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively scalable.

• Services in minutes, managed for a lifetime with reduced complexity offers integration and support by a single vendor versus competitors who require complex partnerships and their inherent complexity.

• No vendor lock-in because CloudSystem is open and heterogeneous.

• Built to adapt with flexibility and supports all service models (infrastructure-as-a service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service).

• New administration console, aligned with HPE OneView – an infrastructure management tool including HPE ProLiant servers, powered by Intel Xeon processors.

• Fast and easy installation via software appliance delivery model.

* Add on products (Not included in HPE CloudSystem bundle)

Figure 17. HPE Helion CloudSystem solution for operational tasks and functionality

Capacity and sizing Server sizing figures The Certified SAP HANA Hardware Directory provides two lists of servers that are certified for use with SAP HANA. The servers listed as part of a certified appliance may be used for TDI as well as appliance implementations. Current models are based on the Intel Xeon E7 v3 (Haswell-EX) family of processors, although older models based on the Intel Xeon E7 v2 (Ivy Bridge-EX) family of processors are still being sold. They may be certified for scale-up (single-node) or scale-out (multi-node) implementations. The servers listed as supported entry level servers are also available for TDI implementations. Current models are based on the Intel Xeon E5 v3 (Haswell-EP) processors, although older models based on the Intel Xeon E5 v2 (Ivy Bridge-EP) processors are still being sold. These servers may be used for production or non-production systems, but they may only be used for scale up implementations.

For production systems, SAP limits the allowable memory depending upon the desired use case. SAP HANA supports three use cases: sidecar, SAP Business Warehouse on HANA (BWoH) and SAP Suite on HANA (SoH). SoH includes the newest SAP software offering, S/4HANA, which is a version of SAP Business Suite that has been optimized for the SAP HANA database.

http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/appliances.html

http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/entry-level-systems.html


The sidecar and BWoH use cases tend to be CPU-intensive, so SAP limits the allowable memory to 384 GB per socket for Haswell-based systems and 256 GB per socket for Ivy Bridge-based systems. If the memory requirement exceeds the maximum allowed for a single server, then multiple servers may be clustered together to form a scale out system.

The SoH use case is less CPU-intensive. As well, it is currently restricted to scale-up (single-node) implementations except for customers who have been accepted into SAP’s controlled availability program for SoH scale-out. For these reasons, SAP allows memory configurations up to 768 GB per socket. There is also a controlled availability program that permits selected use cases with the HPE Integrity Superdome X server configured with up to sixteen CPUs and 24 TB RAM.

There are a number of tools available to determine the memory requirements for any given use case. For new implementations, the most popular method is the SAP Quick Sizer. This is an interactive, web-based tool available to anyone with an SAP user account. It provides user-based and transactional sizing tools for a wide variety of application scenarios. Among other things, it provides an estimate of the total amount of RAM needed, based on the number of users and transactions and the amount of time that data will remain in the database before it is archived. By performing iterative sizing exercises, it is possible to anticipate growth over time.

Generally, the end state sizing will dictate the desired platform. For example, a customer needing a 10 TB SoH system may wish to use the HPE Integrity Superdome X server, since this is the only server that is currently certified for scale-up implementations larger than 8 TB. Alternately, a customer needing a 20 TB BWoH system may wish to implement a scale-out system using the HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 server, which is certified up to 24 TB for TDI implementations.

The following list of servers gives an example of SAP certified systems with an excellent price/performance ratio. Newer server generations can be used as soon as certified.

HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 (4 CPU) Server for small to large SAP HANA database instances and SAP Business Applications:

• 4 socket/1.5TB for BW on HANA (OLAP) – 4 Intel Xeon E7-8880 v3 2.3GHz Processors (18-core) Processor

• 4 socket/3TB for Suite on HANA (OLTP) – 4 Intel Xeon E7-8880 v3 2.3GHz Processors (18-core) Processor

HPE Superdome X Server for large SAP HANA Scale-up (OLTP) and Scale-out (OLAP) database installations. (For price sensitive configurations the Intel Xeon Processor E7-2880 v2 can be used.)

• 8 socket/3TB for BW on HANA (OLAP) – 8 Intel Xeon E7-8880 v3 2.3GHz Processors (18-core) Processor



• 16 socket/24TB for Suite on HANA (OLTP) – Requires agreement with SAP on project basis

HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 (2 CPU) Server Blades for virtualized SAP applications and small production SAP HANA database instances.

• 2 socket/512GB – 2 Intel Xeon E5-2698 v3 (2.3GHz/16-core/40MB/135W)

http://service.sap.com/quicksizing


Storage sizing figures The HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 sizing is based on the official HPE 3PAR StoreServ for SAP HANA tailored data center integration (TDI) technical white paper (http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA6-3269ENW).

The Storage capacity sizing for SAP HANA TDI is based on the sizing rules given in the official SAP HANA Storage Requirements white paper. These sizing rules are for production systems only and should be verified based on the memory needed for the SAP HANA database. Additionally, storage for TDI systems must meet the performance requirements listed in sap note 1943937 (Hardware Configuration Check Tool - Central Note). Finally, the desired storage device must be listed on the Certified SAP HANA Hardware Directory for certified enterprise storage.

The HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage array is certified to support up to 20 SAP HANA nodes. Configured with 160 disk drives (1.2TB SAS 10K SFF) and RAID 50 data protection (highest usable capacity), it could handle the following example scenarios:

• Up to 20 HPE ProLiant DL580 (4 CPU) Servers with a single SAP Suite on HANA or SAP BW on HANA database

• Or up to 20 HPE Superdome X Server (8 CPU) partitions with one or more BW on HANA (OLAP) databases

• Up to 5 HPE Superdome X Server (16 CPU) partitions each with a single SAP Suite on HANA (OLTP) or BW on HANA (OLAP) database

• Or up to 20 virtualized logical SAP HANA databases (BW on HANA / SAP Suite on HANA)

Network sizing figures To create a high performance (low latency with high throughput) interconnect network for SAP HANA Scale-out solutions and fast interconnects for SAP applications and SAP HANA database communication, the following rules should be considered:

• The network should be aggregated at ToR level using two HPE FlexFabric 5930 ToR Switches per rack with 32 QSFP+ (40GbE or 4x10GbE) ports.

• Both ToR switches are virtualized using IRF so the server can utilize LACP to optimize the uplink bandwidth.

• A virtualized pair of either HPE FlexFabric 7900 or HPE FlexFabric 12900 switches, depending on the size of the SAP-HANA infrastructure installation, creates the core of the network. All links towards the core are 40GbE and due to the use of IRF, the total bandwidth is at least 80GbE when using LACP. There is no need for spanning-tree as all links are in use by LACP.

• All ports should be fiber optic ports as copper ports typically have a higher latency.

Automation is done using the HPE Intelligent Management Center (IMC) as an element manager together with the HPE SDN controller to dynamically assign network policies.

Analysis and recommendations The Reference Architecture presented in this paper provides an IaaS infrastructure that will support complex SAP Business Applications for traditional as well as SAP HANA in-memory databases as a Cloud service. We recommend using the following in your configuration:

• HPE ProLiant DL580 compute nodes connected via SAN to HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage systems

• HPE Integrity Superdome X servers for large scale-up or large scale-out due to their high standards of availability, scalability and performance

• HPE OneView as a comprehensive management software platform that is designed specifically for converged infrastructure management

• HPE Serviceguard Extension for SAP (SGeSAP) to protect your business critical SAP application

• HPE CloudSystem software for combinations of SAP HANA databases and SAP Business Applications in order to unify the control and delivery of cloud services

http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA6-3269ENW

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-62595

https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/sno/ui_entry/entry.htm?param=69765F6D6F64653D3030312669765F7361706E6F7465735F6E756D6265723D3139343339333726

https://websmp230.sap-ag.de/sap(bD1lbiZjPTAwMQ==)/bc/bsp/sno/ui_entry/entry.htm?param=69765F6D6F64653D3030312669765F7361706E6F7465735F6E756D6265723D3139343339333726

http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/enterprise-storage.html


Design, integration and support services The service description in this white paper is an exemplary choice out of HPE’s broad service portfolio to install, configure and support a holistic Cloud solution for SAP applications including SAP HANA. Additional and specifically architected services and support are provided by HPE.

Overview: HPE Helion Professional Services to build the cloud platform The HPE Helion Professional Services portfolio allows HPE experts to guide and advice customers on their way to building or using a cloud platform. HPE provides a series of Cloud Roadmap services based on real-life experience and a professional framework to deliver services for the complete lifecycle.

Figure 18. HPE Helion Professional Services

HPE experts work on a strong business case, reliable architecture and a defined service portfolio. The results lead to the design of a cloud solution that addresses the defined requirements of service providers and their customers. In addition to the experience in advisory services HPE experts support the implementation with HPE Solution Architects and Cloud Consultants that implement the CloudSystem solution based on customer needs. These services can inherit all parts of the implementation phase from project planning, over service creation, and portal customization up to designing and configuring compute, network and storage components as part of the overall solution. This allows for a smooth transformation when starting to consume the cloud services.


Integration: HPE TDI (Tailored Data Center Integration) Services for SAP HANA HPE provides a modular set of services for all phases of a project and for all layers of the solution stack.

With the SAP HANA TDI Services, HPE manages the entire TDI project from the Analysis & Strategy definition up to the transition into ongoing operations. If customer skills and resources are available to manage parts of such a project, HPE offers the flexibility to complement them with selected HPE modules for a successful project that meets all KPIs.

Figure 19. HPE TDI Services for SAP HANA

The TDI services build the foundation for your IaaS deployment. On top HPE offers Helion professional services and specific installation and startup services for the HPE Helion CloudSystem Enterprise Software. It is most effective and strongly recommended that these services are purchased and delivered together as there are a lot of dependencies between the solution layers that need to be addressed in a comprehensive approach.

Integration: HPE Helion CloudSystem Enterprise Software Installation and Startup Service HPE CloudSystem Enterprise Software Installation and Startup Service provides installation, configuration, testing, demonstration, and orientation of the CloudSystem Enterprise Software. Prior to service delivery, an HPE service specialist working remotely with the Customer’s designated point of contact, will plan all the necessary activities, including the identification of any prerequisites, verification that the pre-requisites have been met, and schedule the delivery of the service at a time mutually agreed upon by HPE and the Customer.


Support: HPE Data Center Care Service to support the holistic cloud solution based on HPE Helion and SAP HANA TDI HPE Data Center Care Service is HPE’s most flexible support service designed to help customers consistently meet their service-level targets and other business objectives. HPE Data Center Care Service can be tailored to specific requirements, from the support of a discrete IT environment to the support of an entire data center. IT Cloud environments for SAP are becoming increasingly diverse, combining low-cost virtualized technology deployed alongside more traditional high-end devices with different reactive support needs.

Figure 20. HPE Data Center Care Service

The HPE Data Center Care for SAP HANA TDI service provides context aware remote support services for eligible HPE and SAP products included in an HPE and SAP HANA TDI infrastructure. This service grants access to HPE Center of Excellence (CoE) for SAP HANA that supports the customer’s IT teams with problem diagnosis and help towards resolution of incidents. It provides assistance in troubleshooting problems and identifying potential configuration and hardware related issues.

The collaborative engagement with SAP includes HPE opening a call on the customer’s behalf with SAP, utilizing the SAP workflow call management system. HPE will engage SAP and provide information about the issue. If the call is transitioned to SAP, the call will be subject to the support service level experience or attributes of the agreement between the customer and SAP.

HPE Data Center for SAP HANA TDI service can help to improve SAP HANA system performance and reduce downtime on covered HPE hardware or software. Data Center onboarding processes ensure success and accelerate time-to-value. The assigned account team provides personalized technical and operational advice, pre- and post-onboarding activities.

HPE service experts are available to explore ways to do more with the technology investments and move the business forward. Further details are available at: hp.com/go/tsconnect

Standardized infrastructure building blocks Setting up the necessary infrastructure components (servers, network, storage) for a HANA system is a complex and time-consuming task, even for a single instance. The system further needs to meet pre-defined performance requirements by SAP. For this reason, only certified HANA appliances or certified infrastructure components can be used.

To handle the complexity of SAP HANA – IaaS Cloud Infrastructure cells one needs to break down this complexity into smaller parts. By creating building blocks for the various components of a Cloud cell-like Compute, Storage, and Control (including the underlying interconnects), one can overcome this complexity. HPE offers standardized infrastructure building blocks that rely on the same technology HPE uses for its HANA appliances like HPE DL580, HPE Superdome X, HPE 3PAR and others.

http://www.hp.com/go/tsconnect/

http://www.hp.com/go/tsconnect/


An infrastructure building block is a pre-loaded and pre-configured rack with either server- or storage-components or management systems to operate the cell. Each rack consists of switches for network and SAN running both the internal and external communication. These building blocks just need to be interconnected to form an SAP HANA - IaaS Cloud Infrastructure cell.

With these infrastructure building blocks the overall time to market and the quality of service will be improved dramatically. An example of a building block design is shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21. Example building block design

Cloud Control – As a control hub this building block provides the Cloud control functionality via HPE CloudSystem software which is an integrated system that unifies the control and delivery of cloud services. It also hosts infrastructure management nodes (e.g., for storage management), network core switches and the NAS storage server to provide shared file system functionality for, e.g., SAP HANA scale-out solutions. This building block is needed once and connects to multiple SAP HANA and SAP applications building blocks.

SAP Applications – This building block should be designed to create a large virtualized scale-out architecture for SAP Business Applications, SAP databases like SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise (SAP Sybase ASE), non-SAP applications, non-productive SAP HANA databases and small entry level productive SAP HANA databases. This building block can be configured individually to address specific demands. As an alternate, HPE ConvergedSystem 700 is a ready to order solution which fits perfectly for this type of environment. It is flexible in its configuration, based on a common, scale-out architecture that includes from 1 to multiple racks, 4-64 server blades, 0-8 rack servers and multiple HPE 3PAR storage options. Selection of server and storage components is made at the time of ordering from a number of controlled choices based on validated configurations of HPE Converged Infrastructure that can be sized and optimized for physical or virtualized application workloads.

SAP HANA – To address highest performance needs regarding latency and throughput for productive SAP HANA database systems these building blocks should be designed to run physical HANA instances connected to shared storage systems. To meet the performance requirements, 20 production SAP HANA instances can be connected to one HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage array as described in the “Capacity and sizing” section of this white paper. The storage rack contains up to 2 HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage systems and connects via Storage SAN to the DL580 compute nodes or Superdome X partitions.

Interoperability and support of open standards HPE Helion OpenStack Helion Ready Program – HPE Helion appeals to enterprises and service providers looking to obtain real value from hybrid IT. The HPE Helion Ready program gives you the opportunity to certify once, and then sell solutions to an enterprise customer base across all cloud distribution models. Customers want to be sure that if they consume enterprise-class services from a service provider, these services are tested and supported top-to-bottom. Service Providers would like to use HPE Helion OpenStack on their hardware of choice and expect that it will run and be fully supported by the vendor and HPE. The HPE Helion Ready certification process ensures that this is the case.


For more information, please check the Helion Ready Program: http://helionready.hpcloud.com/ihv/

Support of Docker technology Docker provides light weight self-sufficient portable containers that can run virtually anywhere. They are built on top of Linux LXC containers and each container runs in its own isolated process space.

In the enterprise and SAP landscape, more and more applications will be able to leverage containers and micro-services. Those applications architectures will contain traditional and containers constructs, e.g., the customer package could have SAP application components such as the Docker container.

HPE is able to help enterprise customers transform their application architectures and deployment constructs to containers and hybrid architecture models.

Typical tasks to be completed:

• Package a container automatically e.g., Docker files and Docker Images as contents – Project HPE Codar and OO content packs

• Test your container content (HPE ALM with SAP suite of products)

• Run a container: docker run

• Make changes to running container (OO content packs)

• Save container state as image: docker commit

• Push to repository: docker push

• Other docker image commands

• Image history: docker history

• Pipeline management of Containerized applications

• Same content deployed to multiple environments

• Manage containers (HPE IT operations management suite with SAP integrations)

• Expose Docker applications to LOB users through catalogs (CSA)

Multi-vendor consulting and support services HPE Technology Services Consulting uses proven methodologies and expert consultants who are trained in state of the art technologies. The implementation methodologies applied are industry standard and vendor agnostic. While a special focus is on HPE products, they are equally prepared to manage implementation projects that comprise solutions from multiple vendors.

HPE Technology Services Support provides lifecycle support for solutions built with HPE products as well as for Multivendor environments. Data Center Care for Multivendor environments includes service levels that are able to fulfill the required uptime commitments for mission critical environments.

Given the breadth of products on the market, it is obvious that not all of the multivendor products can be supported at the same level, In case of plans to build a multivendor solution, the supportability should be checked in advance.

Bill of materials This section lists key hardware elements of the described standardized infrastructure building blocks shown in Figure 21 that are required to configure Factory Integrated Solutions. To ensure only valid configurations are ordered, HPE recommends using an HPE approved configurator. Contact your local sales representative for information on configurable product offerings and requirements.

Note Part numbers are at time of publication and subject to change. The bill of materials does not include complete support options or other rack and power requirements. If you have questions regarding ordering, please consult with your HPE Reseller or HPE Sales Representative for more details. hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html

http://helionready.hpcloud.com/ihv/

http://www.hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html


Table 1. Bill of materials

QTY PART NUMBER DESCRIPTION

Cloud control rack

1

3

1

1

2

1

1

1

2

F9D55A

719064-B21

H6Y95A

BD441A

JG726A

JG934A

JG682A

JG619A

QW938A

HPE CloudSystem Enterprise w/OneView 3yr 24x7 Support 10 OS Instances LTU

HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 8SFF Configure-to-order Server1

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 2-node Storage Base

HPE 3PAR File Persona Software Suite for HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400

HPE FlexFabric 5930 Network Switch

HPE 5130-48G-4SFP+ EI Network Switch

HPE FF 7904 Core Switch Chassis (for small Core configurations)

HPE FF 12910 Core Switch AC Chassis (alternate for large Core configurations)

HPE SN3000B 16Gb 24-port/24-port Active Fibre Channel Switch

SAP HANA compute rack

1 to 9

1 to 9

2

1

2

793161-B21

OR

M0R96A

JG726A

JG934A

QW938A

HPE ProLiant DL580 Gen9 Configure to Order Server1

HPE SAP HANA Compute Node1




SAP HANA compute rack HPE Superdome X

1 or 2

1 or 2

1 to 16

1 to 16

2 to 16

2 to 16

2

1

2

AT147A

OR

M0S36A

A0R98A

OR

H7B40A

OR

M0S18A

OR

M0S17A

JG726A

JG934A

QW938A

HPE Superdome X Base Enclosure

HPE ConvergedSystem Superdome X Base Enclosure

HPE BL920s Gen9 2.5GHz 36c Server Blade2

HPE BL920s Gen9 2.3GHz 36c Server Blade2

HPE BL920s Gen9 2.5GHz 36c Server Blade2 (HPE Solutions for SAP HANA TDI)

HPE BL920s Gen9 2.3GHz 36c Server Blade2 (HPE Solutions for SAP HANA TDI)




SAP HANA storage rack

1 to 2

2

1

2

H6Z01A

JG726A

JG934A

QR481B

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 4-node Storage Base



HPE SN6000B 16Gb 48-port/48-port Active Power Pack+ Fibre Channel Switch

SAP applications ConvergedSystem 700

1

2

1

2

K9T74A

JG726A

JG934A

QW938A

HPE CS700 Virt 2.0 Fnd Kit (includes BL460c server blades and 3PAR StoreServ storage)




1 Add processors, memory and I/O as needed in accordance with SAP guidelines 2 Add memory and I/O as needed in accordance with SAP guidelines


Summary Today’s business environment dictates fast and flexible service deployments to keep pace with ever-increasing information requirements. To meet this challenge, companies must employ a common converged infrastructure supporting bare metal deployments and virtual workloads, e.g., SAP HANA databases and SAP applications.

The reference architecture presented here described the solution to this business challenge using HPE Infrastructure as a Service Cloud for SAP applications powered by SAP HANA In-Memory engines. This solution improves time-to-market through flexible and reliable Cloud service for SAP Business Applications, saves money for the enterprise with intelligent consolidation that manages change dynamically and also addresses future needs inherent in the next generation of SAP (S/4HANA).

This paper discussed the solution components, software, capacity and sizing, and integration and support services used to implement the reference architecture. In Figure 21, the infrastructure building block design blueprints that may be tailored to the needs of each company are presented along with an upper level Bill of Materials for the design blueprint. For more information on configurable product offerings and requirements, please refer to the “Resources and additional links” page at the end of this paper or contact any of our worldwide sales offices.

Implementing a proof-of-concept As a matter of best practice for all deployments, HPE recommends implementing a proof-of-concept using a test environment that matches as closely as possible the planned production environment. In this way, appropriate performance and scalability characterizations can be obtained. For help with a proof-of-concept, contact an HPE Services representative (hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html) or your HPE partner.

http://www.hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html


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© Copyright 2015-2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HPE products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HPE shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

SAP and SAP HANA are registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and in several other countries. Microsoft, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Intel and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Cloud Foundry is a trademark and/or registered trademark of Pivotal Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

4AA5-7645ENW, February 2016, Rev. 1

Resources and additional links For more information on configurable product offerings and requirements, contact any of our worldwide sales offices or visit one of the following websites. HPE services HPE Services overview, hpe.com/services HPE support services, hpe.com/services/support HPE Helion CloudSystem and Management software HPE Helion CloudSystem information, hpe.com/info/cloudsystem HPE OneView, hpe.com/info/HPEOV HPE Converged Infrastructure technologies HPE Servers, hpe.com/servers HPE BladeSystem, hpe.com/servers/bladesystem HPE Storage, hpe.com/storage HPE Networking, hpe.com/networking HPE ConvergedSystem, hpe.com/info/convergedsystem HPE Factory Express Integration HPE Factory Express, hpe.com/info/factoryexpress HPE servers certified for SAP HANA Certified Appliances, http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/appliances.html#categories=Hewlett-Packard Company Entry-level servers, http://global.sap.com/community/ebook/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/entry-level-systems.html#categories=Hewlett-Packard Company HPE Software with SAP Automation HPE Operations Orchestration (OO) and SAP Landscape Virtualization Management (LVM) Content, https://hpln.hpe.com/contentoffering/sap-landscape-virtualization-management-lvm-content-hp-operations-orchestration HPE Live Network IT4IT Request to Fulfill for SAP content pack, https://hpln.hpe.com/ search for “IT4IT SAP content packs” or direct link to https://hpln.hpe.com/node/17187/otherfiles?dir=26278

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