High Hana performance - Optimum performance

An SAP IT infrastructure is essentially responsible for achieving adequate application performance. This applies to OLTP as well as OLAP applications or OLTP applications in which analytics functions are also provided.

The operating system environment plays an important role here. Nowadays, it does or offers much more than the sheer processing of machine-dependent commands.

For Hana or Hana-based applications, SAP has decided to use Linux exclusively as the operating system platform. And as the exclusive Hana development partner, Suse has been evaluating and testing with SAP for years to ensure optimal performance with the highest possible performance in the interaction between Hana and Suse SLES for SAP Applications.

Two elements or software features available today for increasing performance are of particular importance here. One is Page Cache Limit and the other is the so-called Hana installation pattern, both of which contribute to continuous optimum performance.

Suse's Linux extension with Page Cache Limit helps ensure consistently high availability and performance with SLES for SAP Applications, even at maximum utilization of CPU and RAM capacities.

In simple terms, this involves limiting the page cache by using Linux kernel parameters. This makes it possible to control the available capacities of the main memory in such a way that Linux and Hana or Hana-based applications always have optimal capacities available - and there are no performance losses because SAP applications are allocated too few CPU or RAM resources.

The background is that a number of SAP solutions require corresponding storage capacities. And this is to accelerate access to necessary data. However, it is usually the case that access to various memory areas does not take place on a regular basis.

Page Cache Limit affects in particular the paging behavior of Linux in such a way that the capacity of a used page cache (here and there also called filesystem cache) is minimized as needed - which ultimately means SAP performance optimization.

Using the working memory/Linux kernel with file system cache operations, for example for backups, counteracts possible SAP performance losses. Details on this can be found in SAP Note: 1557506.

Hana Pattern, which is also provided with Suse SLES for SAP Applications, is an installation package including fine-tuning options which, by the way, can also be used for updates and with which performance improvements can be achieved.

It also provides simplification and a high level of automation using best practices and workflows, which consequently also results in increased security for SAP installations.

After all, an SAP installation - and this includes a Hana installation - requires a number of parameters to be configured in accordance with SAP guidelines. If even one parameter is set incorrectly or not set at all, this can have a significant impact on SAP operation or performance.

The Hana Patterns counteract all this and save time and money. This is also because new SAP services or new supported business processes with Hana and Hana-based applications such as S/4 can be quickly deployed.

In summary: SAP and Suse have been addressing the issue of "optimum performance" in Hana deployment with specific optimization features or solutions for some time now.

SAP customers benefit from both the Page Cache Limit Linux extension and the Hana Pattern installation support tool to achieve SAP performance and productivity improvements.