Release Notes #

Support requires an appropriate subscription from SUSE. For more information, see https://www.suse.com/products/sles-for-sap.

General Support Statement

The following definitions apply:

SUSE will only support the usage of original (unchanged or not recompiled) packages.

Setting up a reproducable SAP HANA-SR infrastructure on several machines can be lot of administrative work. The SAP HANA-SR wizard is a manual tool that reduces the workload. However, it still requires some manual steps by admins to set it up.

With this version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, we are introducing a new unattended mode for the SAP HANA-SR wizard. Administrators now only have to define a configuration inside the wizard once and can then re-apply the saved configuration file without user interaction.

To deploy a preconfigured HANA-SR environments, we offer an unattended installation mode for the HANA-SR wizard on bare-metal servers. To use it, first create a configuration file by running the YaST sap_ha module manually and saving the configuration on its last screen. This configuration can then be used for automatic deployments using the following CLI commands:

Setting up a reproducible SAP HANA System Replication infrastructure on several machines can be a lot of administrative work. The SAP HANA-SR wizard is a manual tool that reduces the workload. However, it still requires some manual steps by administrators to set it up.

With this version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, we are extending the SAP HANA-SR wizard capabilities for the Azure Cloud. Administrators can now use the SAP HANA-SR Wizard to configure the SAP HANA cluster on Azure and only have to define a configuration inside the wizard once and can then re-apply the saved configuration without user interaction.

To deploy a preconfigured SAP HANA-SR environments, we offer an unattended installation mode for the SAP HANA-SR wizard. To use it, first create a configuration file by running the YaST module sap_ha manually and saving the configuration on its last screen. This configuration can then be used for automatic deployments using the following commands:

For information on Near Zero Downtime for SAP HANA System Replication, see also Use SAP HANA System Replication for Near Zero Downtime Upgrades (https://help.sap.com/viewer/2c1988d620e04368aa4103bf26f17727/2.0.03/en-US/ee3fd9a0c2e74733a74e4ad140fde60b.html).

The SAP NetWeaver integration has been improved to match the growing usability of cluster solutions especially during SAP maintenance procedures. This includes the visibility of the cluster solution in the SAP Management Console (SAP MC) and support for SAP kernel updates.

sap_suse_cluster_connector has been updated to API version 3 to support the newest features and calls from sapstartsrv. This includes transparent support for SAP rolling kernel switches (RKS) for central services instances and replication instances.

An important and regularly occurring maintenance task for SAP HANA clusters is upgrading the SAP HANA database. If installing the initial cluster is already critical, upgrading is even more so, as you now need to care about data integrity and system availability.

The yast2-hana-update module provides a YaST workflow that will guide you step-by-step on the process of upgrading your SAP HANA in a SUSE cluster setup. The entire process is based on the so-called Near Zero Downtime Upgrade process described in the official SAP HANA documentation. The wizard handles the part of the procedure related to the SUSE cluster, leaving only some steps related to be performed manually by the SAP HANA administrator.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP4 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP4 add support for Intel Optane DC memory. This enables SAP workloads, such as SAP HANA to benefit from persistent memory in the future to shorten start times of the system and provide better overall system stability. Currently, configurations up to 12 TB of NVDIMMs plus 3 TB of regular DIMMS of supported memory and 4 socket machines have been tested. Additional configurations will be tested over time.

From a file system perspective, the XFS file system is supported for the NVDIMMs, with SAP HANA running in DAX mode. SUSE intends to keep the leading position as technology provider, working closely with SAP on future developments.

If there are pmem namespaces, these need to be destroyed before the installation. To mount persistent memory directly on boot, we recommend adding the nofail mount option in /etc/fstab as it can take a long time for the /dev/pmem devices to become usable.

For example:

/dev/pmem0    /mnt/pmem0    xfs    dax,nofail    0  0
/dev/pmem1    /mnt/pmem1    xfs    dax,nofail    0  0

Namespaces need to be created individually. That means, you need to execute the following command for each namespace you want to create:

ndctl create-namespace --mode=fsdax --map=dev