Hana Large Instances and Linux on Azure

There are fewer and fewer people in the SAP community who have reservations and say: "We're giving cloud deployment a wide berth". Or the other way around: For practically all customers who rely on Hana and Hana-based SAP solutions, cloud computing, or more precisely hybrid cloud computing, is at the top of the agenda.

In a recent Forrester study, for example, 74 percent of the companies surveyed (SAP and non-SAP customers) stated that their strategy was "hybrid". That is, on-premises use paired with public cloud or multi-cloud use.

In the SAP environment in particular, Microsoft Azure is currently particularly popular as a public cloud provider, as the DSAG user association also revealed in its investment survey at the beginning of the year.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) also plays a major role, of course. And Google with its Google Cloud Platform is on the rise. This will certainly be ensured by former SAP executive Robert Enslin, now Google Cloud President; but probably also Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, a high-ranking and long-standing Oracle manager until last fall.

More and more Hana deployments

Anyone who wants to use SLES for SAP Applications via Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Microsoft Azure today can do so without restriction. Suse works with practically all public cloud partners in the SAP environment. The respective offerings are continuously being expanded.

Since this year's Susecon event, for example, enterprise Linux large images for Hana on Azure have also been supported as part of the Suse-Microsoft partnership. Once again, Suse and Microsoft have intensified their long-standing partnership.

The provision of Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications for Hana Large Instances on Microsoft Azure was preceded by various development activities. As a result, it is now possible for existing SAP customers to use Hana configurations together with SLES for SAP Applications larger than 0.5 TB via Microsoft Azure.

It is planned to operate or support SAP workloads/Hana environments via Azure up to 60 TB. In this way, Suse and Microsoft are meeting the growing demand of SAP customers in particular to be able to use large Hana or Hana-based applications as part of their hybrid cloud deployment. For example, in the project to consolidate several SAP ECC ERP systems into one S/4 system.

Help with public cloud usage

In addition, Suse and Microsoft are pushing the optimization of the Suse kernel for Microsoft Azure use as part of a co-engineering effort. Incidentally, SLES for SAP Applications was the first and only "SAP Linux" for SAP Large Hana Instances on Microsoft Azure when its availability was announced at the Susecon event in early April. And arguably still is.

Also important in connection with SLES for SAP Applications deployment on Microsoft Azure (as on AWS or GCP) is the fact that Suse supports existing SAP customers with various tools when moving from the data center to the public cloud or when creating an image and using it in a public cloud. And thus offers a bit of life support, so to speak. For example, with OBS, the Suse Open Build Service, and other open source tools such as Kiwi.