Power for Hana

It's refreshing to learn that you now have freedom of choice when it comes to the technology platform. Since last year, Hana users have been able to choose between Intel and IBM technology.

IBM's new Power 8 processors are a real boon for the SAP solutions we are to use in the future. We hear Simplify your Business on all channels. The advantages of an IBM Power platform fit this like the proverbial lid on the saucepan.

Important for the midmarket is and was the necessary availability of the common SAP components. In the meantime, the following SAP solutions have been released for Hana on Power (HoP), as can be read in relevant SAP notes:

• SAP EHP1 for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.3
• SAP Business Warehouse 7.4
• SAP ERP 6.0 EHP7
• SAP CRM 7.0 EHP3
• SAP SRM 7.0 EHP3
• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.1 SP03
• SAP Business Planning and Consolidation 10.1 (controlled availability)

Advantages

Let us now turn to the advantages of a Hana implementation on IBM Power technology that have been mentioned. There are quite a number of users who still enjoy the benefits of SAP on AIX or SAP on IBM i (formerly AS/400). Sooner or later, these will also switch to Hana.

Depending on the size of the company, this can entail longer-term projects for IT and the business. How good it is to be able to concentrate on the SAP project without having to think about the hardware.

In the next few years, there will often be hybrid SAP landscapes (Hana and AnyDB) that can be mapped on a single physical system thanks to LPAR technology.

One focus of SAP in-memory technology is logically main memory processing. The bandwidths to and from the main memory are currently unbeatable with Power, which is a real joy especially for Big Data scenarios.

Technology enthusiasts pay attention to the performance of processor cores. SAP is not entirely innocent of this with its specifications. The Intel processor is a very good, universal computing powerhouse. The power processor has been optimized for Big Data applications. Thus, there is more performance with fewer processor cores.

The fact that productive SAP systems are booted up on Monday and shut down on Friday has long been a thing of the past. There is less and less room for IT departments to maintain SAP systems.

The SLA determines the lifecycle of IT systems. This is where certain aspects for a deployment of the power architecture in the Hana environment now take effect. Through various RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) features, the availability of the components increases drastically. Here is a small foretaste:

• Enterprise Memory with Chipkill / Advanced ECC Memory
• Avoiding Soft Errors: eDRAM for L4 Cache
• L2 Cache Column Repair
• Active memory mirroring for the hypervisor
• redundant hardware (power supply, fan, service processor, clocking)

Those who want to know more details about the Hana roadmap should take a look at SAP note 2227464.

Hana on Power Working Group

To meet the knowledge needs of the growing Hana community, a special Hana on Power (HoP) working group has been in place since 2015, which meets at regular intervals to share the latest information and experience.

Existing SAP-on-Power customers, consultants and technical mentors from the manufacturers SAP, IBM and Suse meet there under the auspices of Common, GSE and DSAG. This association is probably unique in Germany. The digital mirror of this working group can be found at the address: hanaonpower.com

For those who want to approach the topic of Hana in moderate steps, Q-Partners offers an interim solution: A proof of concept (PoC) of the customer's own SAP systems on the Hana-on-Power platform. During the project, the PoC is accompanied by experienced consultants and hosted externally to relieve the burden on the company's own IT.

The next few years will be characterized by complex and exciting SAP migration projects. So there is a lot of work ahead for corporate IT. In the midst of all this enthusiasm, however, one should not forget the old AS/400 advertising slogan: Run your business, not your computer!