SAP HANA on Power with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
Posted by Friedrich Krey in SAP on Linux (SCN) – View the full blog post
SAP HANA is available on IBM-Power8-based servers combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications.
This was SUSE’s message in August of last year, when it announced an important enhancement for IBM Power Systems for SAP HANA. The combination with SLES for SAP Applications offers valuable additional functions to SAP customers who rely on IBM Power8 processors when using SAP HANA.
SLES for SAP Applications is the leading Linux distribution for SAP solutions on Linux and the first operating system to support IBM Power Systems for SAP HANA. As part of longstanding cooperation, participating partners were able to realize IBM platform support. Since SAP HANA was previously only available on Intel-x86 computer architectures, this new development gives SAP customers more freedom of choice when designing, building, and operating SAP HANA or SAP HANA applications. In addition, IBM Power8 is specially designed for processing large volumes of data from transactions and analyses. At the same time, there is optimized access to data, which is saved and managed based on in-memory technologies. IBM Power8 for SAP HANA hereby achieves extremely high performance while using fewer cores. Power8 also offers useful functions for high availability, scalability, and providing corresponding resources/capacities for (native and virtualized) SAP HANA deployment.
HA Features Out of the Box
In combination with SUSE, which is the leading SAP HANA operating system platform for the IBM Power platform, the benefits of Power8 are increased further. One example is high availability (HA): with the SLES for SAP Applications operating system platform, IBM-Power-on-SAP HANA users get sophisticated HA features practically free of charge. HA was duly taken into account already in the early development phase of SAP HANA on IBM Power, whereby SUSE – as already with Intel-x86-based SAP HANA systems – provided HA expertise from SAP HANA developments. As a result, IBM-Power-on-SAP HANA users benefit from highly available, business-critical real-time analyses. They get a fast insight into their business situation, combined with a level of availability that they need for their workloads. This also applies to future application deployments such as cloud computing, real-time analytics, big data, Industry 4.0, or the lnternet of Things.
SLES for SAP Applications supports as of Version 11
SUSE supports Power8 for SAP HANA with SLES for SAP Applications as of Version 11, Service Pack 4, including High Availability Extension.
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Comments
Hi Friedrich,
Thanks for your post.
We are considering P8 for our SAP HANA project.
Just wondering how SUSE will be installed on P8, is it on PowerVM ( like VMware for X86) from IBM or can be installed directly on P8 LPAR ?
Is there any special plug-in from SUSE to be installed before we install SUSE on P8 ?
please share the link if there is any documentation on this.
your reply will be appreciated
Thanks
Al Mamun
Hello Al,
The short answer is that SAP requires SAP HANA to be run on PowerVM either in full partition mode or up to 4 LPARs on P8 Systems.
SAP provides a wealth of information about SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems. I refer you to SAP Note 2055470 – HANA on POWER Planning and Installation Specifics – Central Note which states “The partitions can be set up either in full partition mode or using the POWER LPAR technology provided by the PowerVM Hypervisor (SAP Note 2230704).” I hope you have access to the SAP Support Portal so you can review both of these SAP Notes.