SAP helps customers migrate from traditional relational databases to their in-memory SAP HANA database to gain more agility in their business processes. Many SAP customers are searching for ways to deploy SAP HANA in an efficient, simple way that minimizes risk while preserving the benefits of an agile platform. Nutanix provides such an option.
The native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV, and Nutanix enterprise cloud OS software are certified for production SAP HANA deployments.
HCI for SAP HANA Certification
The certification has two primary segments.
1. As the first step, a platform vendor (Nutanix, in this case) must validate their platform, which consists of a hypervisor and an HCI component.
2. In a second step, the hardware OEM must certify a suggested configuration through some additional HCI-related tests.
When both parts of the validation are complete, the solution is certified and listed in the HCI for SAP HANA category on the SAP website. The hardware OEM is then responsible for selling and supporting the certified solution for the customer.
Link for HCI for SAP HANA category:
https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/#/solutions?filters=hci;v:deCertified
SAP HANA Deployment Recommendations
Our best practices are grouped in four main categories:
• Prerequisites.
• Design considerations and caveats.
• Hardware and hypervisor.
• VM and application.
Prerequisites:
• Ensure that you’re using a supported operating system for your VM, as per the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) (SAP account required).
• Red Hat does not currently support running SAP workloads with AHV as the hypervisor. If you plan to use Red Hat distributions on Nutanix AHV, contact Red Hat directly.
• Ensure that your version of Nutanix AHV is AHV-20170830.nnn and supported by the compatible AOS versions listed in the next bullet point.
• Ensure that your version of Nutanix AOS is either 5.10.nn or 5.15.nn. These versions are Long Term Support (LTS) releases that ensure long support cycles. Nutanix only qualifies AOS LTS releases for SAP HANA. Review our Support Policies and FAQs for more detailed information about Nutanix product releases and support cycles.
• Ensure that you’re using a supported version of SAP HANA; both SAP HANA version 1 and version 2 are supported.
• SAP HANA on HCI is only supported on Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors of the Intel Skylake and Intel Cascade Lake microarchitectures (including the refresh versions).
• Check the SAP HANA HCI Hardware directory for supported and certified solutions from Nutanix OEMs.
Review the appendix of this document for guidance on how to verify your current version.
Design Considerations and Caveats:
When designing your environment, keep the following caveats in mind for production SAP HANA database systems:
• The maximum memory size of a single production SAP HANA VM is 4.5 TB.
• The maximum number of virtual CPUs for a single production SAP HANA VM is 168 vCPU. This maximum assumes the VM has hyperthreading enabled.
• Do not place the SAP HANA production database on the same socket as the CVM.
• Resource sharing between production SAP HANA VMs and any other VMs is not allowed.
• Live migration of an SAP HANA VM is currently not supported on Nutanix AHV.
• For production SAP HANA database VMs, ensure that you adhere to the resource combinations outlined in the table below.
• Memory configuration for SAP HANA production VMs must follow these mandatory rules:
• Each SAP HANA production VM must be assigned the full memory amount of its assigned socket(s).
• Reserve some memory for hypervisor overhead. The amount of memory depends on several different configuration specifics, such as the number of vCPUs, the number of disk devices, and so on, but plan for approximately 3–6 percent of the available memory.
Hardware and hypervisor:
SAP maintains the list of supported systems available from different OEMs on its Certified HCI Solutions page. We recommend that you check this page regularly for newly certified systems and OEMs. For your SAP HANA on Nutanix deployment to be supported, you must select a system listed on this page.
When you choose and set up your hardware, follow the SAP HANA networking recommendations described in SAP HANA Network Requirements to ensure the availability of enough physical and virtual network interfaces.
Note: It is mandatory to separate HANA network traffic (for example, database access and HANA replication) from all other types
VM and application:
Note the following sizing limitations when creating your SAP HANA production VMs:
• On dual-socket hardware:
• An SAP HANA production VM can’t have more than 56 vCPU. This maximum assumes the VM has hyperthreading enabled.
• A VM can’t have more than 1.5 TB RAM.
• On quad-socket hardware:
• A VM can’t have more than 168 vCPU. This maximum assumes the VM has hyperthreading enabled.
• A VM can’t have more than 4.5 TB RAM. There is some overhead, which varies depending on the hardware platform configuration. To avoid VM startup issues, we recommend staying below 4,500 GB. The overhead is specific to the system and VM configuration; it varies across setups.
Conclusion:
When you choose Nutanix for your SAP HANA implementation you benefit from reduced complexity and improved agility. Following the recommendations provided in this document can help ensure successful implementation and operation of SAP HANA on Nutanix.
For details on this topic, please refer our Portal Documentation:
Portal Documentation: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/solutions/details?targetId=BP-2097-SAP-HANA:BP-2097-SAP-HANA