Scaling SAP HANA Performance: Insights from AWS, Intel, and SUSE

Most SAP teams know they need to move to the cloud. The hesitation isn’t about whether they should, it’s about what happens to performance when you get there. On-premises SAP HANA appliances are predictable, but the cloud often feels like a variable you can’t fully control.

In the recent webinar, “Scaling SAP HANA Performance on Amazon EC2 High Memory Instances,” experts from AWS, Intel, and SUSE detailed how their 14-year partnership provides a certified, purpose-built infrastructure that dismantles these barriers.

The Power of Scale-Up Infrastructure

For memory-intensive workloads like SAP HANA, unified memory access is the defining factor for performance. David Rocha (AWS) and Akanksha Bilani (Intel) explained the engineering collaboration behind the Amazon EC2 High Memory instances:

• Massive Capacity: Built with Intel 4th Gen Xeon processors, these instances scale up to 32 TiB of memory in a single instance. 
• Predictable Performance: By keeping massive datasets entirely within one memory space, the scale-up approach ensures ultra-fast data processing and more predictable behavior. 
• Engineering Under the Hood: The partnership ensures that the Intel silicon, the memory, and the AWS Nitro System are optimized as a single unit to maximize bandwidth and efficiency. 
• Energy Efficiency: New 8th-generation instances (powered by Xeon 6) utilize liquid cooling to increase thermodynamic power (TDP), helping customers reduce their carbon footprint.
  

Operational Resilience and the “Super Glue”

Infrastructure is only as resilient as the software managing it. Sherry Yu (SUSE) described the operating system as the “super glue” that holds the stack together – from storage and network up to the application layer.

• Automated High Availability: SLES for SAP includes a high-availability cluster that continuously monitors the health of HANA and S/4HANA. If a failure occurs in the application, storage, or network, the cluster automates failover to a standby instance to minimize downtime. 
• Eliminating Human Error: Through the AWS Launch Wizard, complex implementations that once took weeks are reduced to hours, ensuring configurations are fully compliant with SUSE’s best practices. 
• Live Patching: This “game-changer” allows customers to apply critical security updates to the Linux kernel and selected userspace without rebooting the system for up to 12 months, eliminating the burden of planned maintenance windows.
  

Moving SAP HANA to AWS: you never have to think about a hardware refresh cycle again

The transition to the cloud is more than just a shift from CapEx to OpEx. The AWS/Intel/SUSE stack delivers tangible operational efficiencies:

• End of Hardware Refresh Cycles: Customers are no longer beholden to rigid 3-to-5-year hardware acquisition cycles. As Intel and AWS release new instance types, organizations can modernize their landscapes dynamically. 
• Elastic Scalability: Organizations pay only for the resources they use, adjusting up to 32 TiB as business needs evolve. 
• Innovation over Maintenance: Automating the infrastructure layer frees IT teams to focus on high-value innovation rather than routine administrative overhead.
  

Future-Proofing: AI and SAP Hybrid Integration

Migration is just “Day One.” The panel highlighted how this platform serves as the foundation for next-generation capabilities:

• AI-Ready Infrastructure: The integration of Intel’s on-chip AI engines within the AWS Nitro System enables EC2 instances to execute real-time inference workloads with lower latency. 
• Agentic AI in the OS: The newly released SLES 16 (available day-one on AWS) embeds Agentic AI building blocks to support smarter, AI-assisted infrastructure management. 
• Edge Integration Cell (EIC): As SAP transitions from PI/PO to the Integration Suite on BTP, the EIC has become a critical hybrid solution. Because SAP validated EIC exclusively on Intel-based Kubernetes platforms, both AWS EKS and SUSE Rancher for SAP provide secure, validated foundations for containerized integration. 

Ready to Modernize Your SAP Landscape?

The partnership between AWS, Intel, and SUSE ensures that the technology and performance optimizations are managed for you, allowing you to focus on driving business value. The webinar is worth watching in full, especially if your team is still on the fence about what SAP HANA performance actually looks like in the cloud.

WATCH THE WEBINAR ON YOUTUBE

Featuring:

• David Rocha, Partner Solutions Architect, AWS
• Akanksha Bilani, Global Head of Go-to-Market (Team Amazon), Intel
• Sherry Yu, Global Alliance Director on SAP Solutions, SUSE

Moderated by: Robert Holland, SAPinsider