SLES: HA for Hana and Power

HA was already given due consideration in the early development phase of Hana on IBM Power. As with Intel x86-based Hana systems, Suse also contributed its expertise from Hana development in terms of HA.

One thing is clear: for data center managers or IT managers today, there is no question as to whether a system environment must have HA features or not. In times when SAP has to run virtually 24 hours a day, system failures always mean a standstill or non-availability of business-relevant or critical business processes.

SAP infrastructures must be designed to be HA-compliant, just in case. This applies to both classic SAP and SAP Hana-based solutions.

With the operating system platform Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications for SAP Hana, IBM Power on Hana users now have a whole range of sophisticated functions at their fingertips to realize their Hana deployment as optimally as possible:

for example, support for demand-based balancing for large in-memory workloads, ensuring high performance even in system stress situations (both in physical and virtualized systems), features or templates for rapid commissioning of SAP applications - or important features for business continuity or high-availability requirements through the built-in Suse Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension.

Cluster reference architecture

The central anchor point for Hana-HA is the "SAP NetWeaver High Availability Cluster 730 Certification", presented by SAP in October 2012.

This is the first time that SAP has specified a cluster reference architecture containing clustering guidelines that solution providers must fulfill. Incidentally, Suse was also involved in the development of this clustering architecture.

SLES and Suse Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension fulfill the SAP Cluster 730 certification accordingly (de facto and from the outset).

This is both a standard for SAP clustering solutions and a requirement that such HA solutions can be implemented easily, quickly and cost-effectively and can be used efficiently.

Linux clustering technology elements from the Pacemaker open source project (for cluster resource management) have been incorporated here.

Interestingly, an IBM developer, Alan Robertson, was significantly involved in the predecessor of Pacemaker called Heartbeat and even initiated Heartbeat.

Anyone who now uses Hana on Power with Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, the recommended and preferred Hana operating system platform, is in a comfortable position when it comes to HA: namely to make two physical Hana servers highly available via clustering.

Added value in a package

In addition, IBM's virtualization technology LPAR (Logical Partition or server partitioning) can be used on individual servers to achieve extended HA for both NetWeaver and Hana.

Incidentally, SAP Classic and SAP Hana-based solutions can also be operated advantageously under SLES in a Power environment. With Power on Hana, IBM provides both extremely high performance for Hana - which SAP benchmarks have also shown - as well as extended HA features for business-critical SAP use.

In combination with Suse SLES, this demonstrably results in an advantageous additional benefit or added value, even for future applications such as cloud computing, real-time analytics/big data, Industry 4.0 or IoT.

Suse supports Power8 for Hana with SLES for SAP Applications from version 11, Service Pack 4 (incl. High Availability Extension).