Persistent Memory In The Data Center

It’s only logical that SAP customers do not focus on infrastructure technologies or system operation that much, even though they continuously profit from further developments. Especially the computer or chip and processor technologies were and still are crucial for SAP customers.

The Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory technology opens up a new chapter for SAP Hana workloads regarding storage and memory. The foundation is NVDIMM technology which enables users to shift big data sets next to the processor. Simultaneously, main memory latency is significantly reduced.

NVDIMM stands for Non-Volatile Inline Memory Module; main memory that stores contents even without electricity. Hana as in-memory database and Hana-based applications like S/4 benefit the most from these functionalities. SAP itself believes that providing Hana with Persistent Memory is nothing less than a milestone.

SAP, Intel and Suse hand in hand

Suse was the first Linux distributor and open source provider for SAP. Now, it is the first to fully support Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory in combination with Hana and the platform SLES for SAP Applications.

“DC” in this context means data center, meaning that Persistent Memory is predestined for databases and data centers. Therefore, SAP, Intel, and Suse once again highlight their deep and engaging partnership regarding mission critical SAP use.s

The Persistent Memory technology offers SAP customers new or optimized applications for data access and data storage. Consequently, businesses can profit even more from using SAP Hana.

One example is the possible use of cost-efficient in-memory database solutions with bigger data volumes. Another one would be the flexible selection of warm and hot data, e.g. in SAP analytics or big data applications.

Advantages also with cloud use

What is more, Persistent Memory allows for the reduction of in-memory loading and recovery times. In realistic tests, for example, the booting and loading times of a SAP Hana database which was six terabytes big were drastically reduced compared to traditional systems; from fifty minutes to just four. Furthermore, Persistent Memory enables higher memory capacities (more than three TB per CPU) and therefore less total cost of ownership (TCO).

Both on-premise SAP customers and public cloud provider, like Microsoft with Azure, Amazon with AWS, and Google with Google Cloud Platform, benefit from persistent memory. Even the SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) can benefit as well. Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory combined with Hana is supported by new Intel Xeon processors.