2014-09-18

Running SAP Business Suite on HANA in a TDI Infrastructure? Yes you can.

Lots of discussion has been going around in regards to the following questions:

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.

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