1.
Can Business Suite on HANA (SoH) run in an
infrastructure implemented as Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI)?
2.
What are the storage sizing guidelines for
Business Suite on HANA in a TDI configuration?
Today’s reality for SoH on TDI infrastructure
Let me be very direct and give a very short answer to these
questions, and then explain why these questions are coming up, and what the
source of confusion is.
1.
YES !!! Business Suite on HANA can run on
a Tailored Datacenter Integration infrastructure. You can confirm this by
reading "Question 5" of the "General Information" Chapter
in the SAP HANA TDI FAQ available at: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-3634
(note that this document is regularly
updated, so make sure to check for the latest version online. My comments are
based on the August 8th 2014 version). There is written: "SAP HANA
Tailored Data Center Integration can be used for both scale-up (single-node)
and scale-out scenarios. For scale-out scenarios, SAP HANA TDI is limited to 16
nodes."
2.
The storage KPIs that need to be fulfilled by
TDI configurations, both in the case of BW and Suite on HANA are the same, as
defined by SAP on note 1943937. So, the
EMC storage best practices for SAP HANA TDI apply in the same way both for
Suite on HANA and BW. Nevertheless, as Suite on HANA may involve higher space
requirements, there is always the need to confirm whether the "minimum
requirements" provided on the EMC Best Practices Whitepaper provide enough
usable space for the node size being connected to the TDI storage. In case of
need for additional space, disk count should be incremented.
Reasons for customers and consultants being confused
So, why are these questions coming up?
The explanation for these questions comes from the SAP FAQ
available at http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-3634
and in particular what is written in "Question 11" of the "SAP
HANA TAILORED DATA CENTER INTEGRATION WITH ENTERPRISE STORAGE " chapter.
There is written:
Q: Why are there different KPIs
for SAP HANA appliances and for SAP HANA TDI with Enterprise Storage?
A: SAP considers appliances as
the hardware offering providing highest quality and highest performance for SAP
HANA systems. In SAP HANA appliances, the hardware components are solely used
for the SAP HANA systems running on it; there is no sharing of hardware with
other systems. Therefore, SAP’s requirements for SAP HANA appliances are higher
than for SAP HANA TDI infrastructures...
This has led for many people to raise questions on whether
Suite on HANA could be ran on a TDI setup, and also for lots of people to ask
what are "our special recommendations to configure storage for Suite on
HANA KPIs".
As you can clearly understand, there are in fact more demanding
KPIs for Suite on HANA dedicated appliances, and some customers start to think:
“I'm buying HANA to speed up my processes, and then going on TDI makes it
slower”.
I have to say that some consultants have also contributed to
build confusion on this topic.
Running SoH in TDI does not mean running
slower!!!
This reasoning is not completely true, because the fact that
SAP's requirements for TDI are lower than for appliances does not mean that
special TDI "shared" configurations of enterprise storage systems
cannot meet them.
In fact EMC, together with Cisco, has just certified a 3TB
Suite on HANA special configuration using external storage. This certification
submitted the system to the most demanding “SAP Business Suite on HANA” storage
KPIs, and can be found at: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52522#jive_content_id_SAP_HANA_SoH_optimized_hardware_SLES_configurations
This proves that external storage can fulfill the most
demanding SAP HANA Appliance KPIs, and that EMC has both the technology and
knowledge to do it.
Again, it’s all about the TCO.
But, from reading the full SAP HANA TDI Q&A SAP has
published at http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-3634
in "Question 6" of the "SAP HANA TAILORED DATA CENTER
INTEGRATION WITH ENTERPRISE STORAGE " chapter you can realize that
depending on your specific application workload profile, it may happen that not
meeting a single KPI may not have any impact on the observed performance of the
system.
So, if you want to run SAP Business Suite on HANA on a
shared infrastructure ensuring that the system meets the most demanding KPIs,
stay tuned as EMC’s recommendations will be coming soon in the future!
EMC engineering is continuously working on improving their
recommendations for SAP HANA storage integration, and I’m sure more openness
and simplification will come in the future alongside with more options for
customers, even those requiring the most demanding performance numbers in a
shared infrastructure.
Be aware though, that it may happen that current TDI
recommendations are already delivering most of these more demanding KPIs, and
that this solution should be enough for the majority of the situations.
It’s important to realize this, because often we forget that
improving a few micro-seconds in latency, or a few MB in throughput may imply a
larger HW investment, as resources that otherwise would be shared, to guarantee
such demanding requirements will need to be dedicated.
So, think well on how these small improvements are important
to you before making the decision to go for “the best of the best of the best”,
because that has a cost (being on CAPEX or on OPEX, as if you save in one, will
most likely be more hit on the other). Meaning, maybe for your specific
business case having just 100 times improvement instead of 110 times
improvement is good enough, and at a much lower cost! Just think about it.
The facts as of September 2014
(yes, all things HANA are evolving very fast!)
In summary:
·
YES, suite on HANA can run with TDI
infrastructures
·
Today, SAP HANA Storage KPIs for TDI do not take
into consideration what is the application (BW or Suite) neither the node size.
So, our recommendations ensure that those KPIs are always met.
·
The fact that SAP's required KPIs for TDI are
less demanding than the appliance KPIs for Suite on HANA, doesn't mean that
EMC's configurations for enterprise storage cannot fulfill many of them.
o
In fact, in some real world examples I saw, when
measuring the KPIs in a VBlock 700 configured under the “current standard TDI
guidelines”, we achieved more than 90% of the most demanding Suite on HANA
KPIs, and on the ones failed we were very close. Meaning, very close to maximum
performance KPIs asked for SAP HANA SoH optimized appliances!
·
If you want maximum performance on a shared
storage infrastructure, for example to take advantage of HANA HA, or disk based
system copy, backup or DR, for a started EMC just got the first evidence of our
capabilities published. Find the Cisco 3TB SoH optimized appliance with VNX5400
external storage at: http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-52522#jive_content_id_SAP_HANA_SoH_optimized_hardware_SLES_configurations
o
But remember, the things in the certification
matrix are just a starting evidence of what can be done. Do not hesitate to ask
more questions and find YOUR desired SoH config.
o
Out of the learnings from this certification, EMC
is still working on providing concrete guidelines on how to configure external
shared storage in a way that the appliance KPIs are met. So, despite the facts
today about SAP HANA TDI KPIs being the same for SoH and BW, as this is a
question coming around quite often, for those customers that want the best
performance in a shared infrastructure, EMC will be providing some further info
in the future. Stay tuned.
·
If you want to get a better understanding of the
impact of the various HANA storage KPIs and the potential performance impact of
not meeting some of them, I advise the reading of:
o
"Question 6" of the "SAP HANA
TAILORED DATA CENTER INTEGRATION WITH ENTERPRISE STORAGE " chapter in the
SAP HANA TDI FAQ, that you can find here: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-3634
o
Read the SAP HANA Storage requirements
whitepaper, where SAP explains the IO profile of HANA, and what each IO KPI
means so that you can evaluate its potencial impact on the performance of a
specific SAP HANA System. This whitepaper also covers storage sizing. You can
find it here: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-4071
If at the end of this discussion you still have questions on
whether running Business Suite on HANA with a Shared Storage TDI infrastructure
is a good idea, make sure to read in detail the "IT Management Fact Book
for Business Suite on HANA", that you can find here: http://www.saphana.com/docs/DOC-4223
For me, this document makes it clear that TDI is the future
for HANA Datacenter Integration, simplifying HANA operation's practices.
Final thoughts
If you watched Bill McDermott’s
(SAP’s CEO) keynote at this year’s SAPPHIRE, for sure you remember the
title: Simplify Everything, Do Anything.
Well, it’s more than appropriate.
SAP is full steam on simplifying SAP HANA adoption for its
customers. I’m interpreting that in the way it will mean also opening further
the datacenter integration options of SAP HANA, and providing more choice to
customers.
So, I stick to the conclusions I wrote on my
blog on TDI from January this year, where I made an analysis of SAP HANA
evolution.
My advice here when making a choice would be: if any provider
or consultant comes to you saying that SAP HANA is very complex and very
restricted in options, take a second guess. As either he is trying to corner
you to his proprietary solutions or has no real clue on how much HANA has
evolved in this last year.
SAP HANA is in fact becoming a normal application in the
datacenter, with its unique workload pattern, of course. But its datacenter
integration practices are everyday further aligning to what is normal for IT
operations in most datacenters around the world.
And these are good news!
·
Good news for customers in the first place, as
it will be simpler, faster and cheaper to implement SAP HANA (big example here
is the support
for HANA on VMware).
·
And good news as well for SAP, and this will
enable an increased pace of HANA adoption.
