SUSE Partners with Intel and SAP to Accelerate IT Transformation with Persistent Memory in the Data Center

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is the FIRST enterprise Linux optimized for Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory with SAP HANA® workloads.

SAP HANA offers businesses of all sizes a high-performance database solution for their SAP applications. Taking advantage of this performance traditionally requires significant infrastructure investment to support the in-memory nature of SAP HANA. This means during maintenance cycles, such as a reboot, more time is required as the SAP HANA database has to be read from/to disk (also known as a DRAM-only cold start). Persistent memory removes this requirement, resulting in dramatically reduced time demands when faced with maintenance tasks such as a reboot. Customers using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications running SAP HANA workloads on Intel Optane DC persistent memory can expect infrastructure cost savings alongside a reduction in management overhead. Because SAP HANA workloads run exclusively on Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the only solution to offer support for SAP HANA and Intel Optane DC persistent memory.

What is Persistent Memory?

Persistent memory uses NVDIMM technology. High-capacity persistent memory in the data center allows applications to run without incurring the latency penalty of going out to storage over the PCIe bus. Users can optimize their workloads by moving and maintaining larger amounts of data closer to the processor and minimizing the higher latency of fetching data from system storage during maintenance.

Here is an excellent article by Intel on Optane DC persistent memory – Reimagining the Data Center Memory and Storage Hierarchy

How does it benefit you as a user?

Common benefits of persistent memory include

• Cost-effective, large-capacity in-memory database solutions
• More system uptime and faster recovery after power cycles
• Virtual machine storage acceleration
• Higher performance for multi-node, distributed cloud applications
• Advanced encryption for persistent data built into the hardware

Persistent memory gives an order of magnitude improvement as compared to a traditional system with SSD storage. Strategically, persistent memory adoption puts you in the right trajectory for developing/adopting next-gen in-memory applications.

For SAP HANA users, SAP HANA & Persistent Memory blog describes impressive improvement with persistent memory – Based on a 6 TB instance of SAP HANA, startup time improved by a factor of 12.5 – from 50 minutes with regular DRAM to just 4 minutes with persistent memory. This means a significantly lower boundary for planned business downtimes – for example due to an upgrade – of a mere few minutes, instead of almost an hour.

SUSE has eyes set on future

Persistent memory technology will spark new applications for data access and storage. By offering a fully supported solution built on Intel Optane DC persistent memory, businesses can take greater advantage of the performance of SAP HANA. SUSE continues to partner with companies like SAP and Intel to serve customers worldwide who are looking to fuel growth by transforming their IT infrastructure. It is their needs that drive the direction of our innovation.

Support for Intel Optane DC persistent memory with SAP HANA workloads running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is included in SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 4, which is now available worldwide.

Don’t miss the upcoming live webinar on Jan 29, 2019

In the upcoming webinar – Get your SAP systems back in production faster with NVDIMMs, you will learn more about the benefits and challenges of using NVDIMM technology for SAP HANA in-memory databases.

Helpful links at a glance:

• Press Release – SUSE Partners with Intel and SAP to Accelerate IT Transformation with Persistent Memory in the Data Center
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 Service Pack 4 is Generally Available
• SAP HANA & Persistent Memory
• Reimagining the Data Center Memory and Storage Hierarchy

Stay tuned @RajMeel7