Power to the Community

Professor Hasso Plattner has chosen the wrong friends regarding the in-memory computing database Hana: Together with Intel, a concept for in-memory databases was developed at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam.

Eight years later, it turns out that almost all the concepts were right - just not the hardware base and the concept of appliances.

For experts, it was already clear shortly after the first installations of Hana on the Intel architecture that performance, scaling and virtualization could only be implemented inadequately here.

But Intel did not want to or could not improve. Perhaps Intel also succumbed to the fallacy that the connection with SAP was beyond doubt. And really: Professor Hasso Plattner and the then SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka resisted porting the Hana database to the IBM Power architecture for a long time. Although everyone in the scene already knew that HoP, Hana on Power, was the much better answer, SAP refused to grant IBM Hana certification for a long time.

Even an exotic HP subsidiary like SGI got Hana certification almost overnight, while IBM had to wait out the door with its Power architecture. On the Intel platform, on the other hand, Hana problems were getting bigger by the day.

The appliance sizes did not meet the expectations of SAP's existing customers, and virtualization with VMware was not suitable for productive operation for a long time.

On the other hand, the entire SAP community knew that the Hana operating system Suse Linux was also available for the IBM Power architecture and that a switch would therefore be problem-free. Finally, SAP gave in and IBM was able to officially prove that the computer architecture of Power is superior to an Intel processor in terms of Hana by dimensions.

Of course, IBM has also stopped going for the appliance model with T-shirt sizes and has started providing Hana servers right away according to the ideas of SAP's existing customers.

SAP and HPI's attitude toward IBM Power has finally changed: The Hasso Plattner Institute launched an online course on the future of computing on May 1 of this year. It lasted four weeks and was offered free of charge on the IT learning platform openHPI: "Future of Computing - IBM Power 9 and beyond.

IBM Power at HPI

HPI Professor Andreas Polze, Head of Operating Systems and Middleware, organized the course together with Hildegard Gerhardy from the IBM Academic Initiative Europe and Wolfgang Maier, Director of IBM Hardware Development in Böblingen.

"We will present participants with different approaches to meet the challenges of digitization, especially the exponential growth of data"

explained Polze, professor of computer science.

He pointed out that the per capita capacity available worldwide for storing information has nearly doubled every 40 months or so since the 1980s.

"And in about five years, some researchers already expect more than 160 zettabytes of global data volume."

Gerhardy added.

"As more and more unstructured data, such as in the Internet of Things, is generated and needs to be analyzed, it is necessary to take new approaches to software development"

said Wolfgang Maier.

It is also about the provision of microservices, container solutions and cloud-based applications. In addition, IT departments need new enabling technologies such as hardware accelerators, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies to process huge amounts of data.

Polze and the other two course instructors contrasted this trend of new types of data analysis in so-called "systems of engagement" with the essential technologies of traditional "systems of record."

"Reliability, high availability and serviceability of systems require sophisticated, sophisticated hardware, operating systems and application-neutral programs to handle transactions at scale"

says HPI Professor Polze.

A focus of the course on the future of computing was shown on technologies around IBM Power Systems. In its Open Power initiative, IBM is collaborating with more than 300 member companies, including Google, Samsung and Nvidia, to create diverse innovations from software to hardware.

Big Data & DB Architecture

Professor Plattner, at his Sapphire keynote this year in Orlando, also emphasized the enormous growth in data and the need to find answers quickly with appropriate computing architectures and databases.

According to his presentation, the switch to Hana within the SAP community should have taken place in about three years. Now the "database version change" is already taking a bit longer, which is probably also due to the inadequate Intel platform in the first years of Hana.

The Hana development at the Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam was coordinated with Intel and focused on the x86 architecture of the Xeon processors. But IBM's Power architecture proved to be the better foundation. It was not until 2014 that SAP gave up its resistance and allowed HoP - Hana on Power.

The in-memory computing database Hana has many great advantages over classic SQL databases - not because SAP is better, but because Professor Hasso Plattner had the courage to make a fresh start: Hana could be created without legacy and compatibility requirements on the drawing boards in Potsdam at the Hasso Plattner Institute and in Walldorf at SAP headquarters.

In Potsdam, Professor Plattner's students researched and programmed together with Alexander Zeier. Hana was brought to operational maturity by mathematician and ex-SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka in Palo Alto, California.

All three - Plattner, Zeier and Sikka - may be assumed to have been not only first-class connoisseurs of the Intel processor architecture, but also to have firmly believed that only this general-purpose processor was best suited for their Hana database - a mistake, as was officially proven in 2014.

IBM Power for Big Data

"Power 8 and also Power 9 were each newly and specifically designed for big data processing, with large memory bandwidth - factor four larger than Intel x86, more cache - factor five more cache than x86 as well as high performance - factor two per core in benchmark, up to factor four in real customer workloads, furthermore higher flexibility with PowerVM, high reliability through redundancy, especially in the Power Enterprise servers."

Andreas Klaus Span, Director and Business Unit Executive for SAP Hana on Power, confirms in an E-3 interview.

However, according to Andreas Span, the argument that Intel x86 comes from the commercial sector with the "good enough" approach and Power always had to meet the requirements of the enterprise world and thus developed a completely different architecture is generally more convincing.

Differentiation factor "Power

Since the end of 2015, Hana has been available on IBM Power Systems with IBM's innovative Power 8 architecture and processors - current status: Power 9. IDC market researchers are convinced that Power systems represent a convincing differentiation factor for Hana and S/4.

Designed for very data-intensive workloads like Hana, Power includes high-performance integrated virtualization that is SAP-certified and numerous features to improve reliability.

Andreas Span knows very well that measured by the weak virtualization, the increasing security errors, the limitation and low load capacity of the x86 memory DIMMs, the TCO approach to purchasing is becoming less and less profitable.

Chip: "Add to that the exponential growth of Hana databases and data in general, which are just crying out for a flexible customizable TCO approach. Measured against that, Power is not only the higher value, more stable platform, but also the more affordable."

The flexibility of IBM Power systems allows multiple environments to run simultaneously. For example, you can use unused capacity from the production environment for development or user acceptance testing.

Therefore, compared to most other architectures, IBM Power achieves greater efficiency from shared resources. IBM Power provides the resiliency that Hana customers demand for critical workloads.

Features and functions for reliability, availability and maintainability in the power architecture make these systems ideal for Hana implementations.

This combined solution also supports a variety of different mechanisms, tools and procedures, including best-in-class support for redundancy and replication.

Tailored Datacenter Integration

As always, it depends on the size:

"However, there may well be areas characterized by small databases and a manageable number of applications where Intel pays off. But mostly only in the TDI approach (Tailored Datacenter Integration) recently also recommended by SAP - not as an appliance!"

The entire power platform is certified for Hana.

"Once and for all"

explains Andreas Span.

"That means we don't have to approve each server individually and have it re-approved for the slightest change, as is the case with appliances.

When new releases come out - like Power 9 - they're tested together during the development phase, and if all goes well, SAP's documentation level is pulled up promptly."

SAP has set a goal of having everyone and everything converted by 2025 with the Hana database, but more importantly as a platform.

"To do this, they also need a partner who can offer them a comparable perspective for the future"

IBM manager Span says in an E-3 interview.

"They have that partner with us. That said, the code for Hana on Power and Intel has always been almost identical - over 97 percent. Meanwhile, there is only one line of development for both platforms, the code is identical and the release times are simultaneous."

A study by the market researchers at IDC thus also quite correctly notes:

"Moving to an SAP Hana in-memory platform has become less complicated than it was a few years ago.

Many companies have already taken the first step with a migration to SAP Business Warehouse on Hana. BW is a good starting point for an SAP Hana in-memory database":

IDC sees the market situation similarly:

"IBM is positioning itself as a Hana and S/4 expert that can offer the complete package - from defining strategy and functional specification through IBM Global Business Services to implementing and deploying Power-based hardware on-premises and as a hybrid cloud.

Back in April 2016, IBM and SAP announced a digital transformation partnership to jointly create innovative solutions around cognitive enhancements, user experiences, and industry-specific capabilities with Hana and S/4.

There are several reasons that make IBM Power Systems an excellent platform for Hana, with outstanding platform flexibility, resilience and performance at the core."

Finally, it should be mentioned that the business aspects go far beyond the purely mathematical TCO approach. Timely Hana positioning and implementation often delivers a competitive advantage and helps a company position itself strategically for the future.

IBM acts here not only as an infrastructure supplier, but also as a consultant and companion on a journey that has only just begun. Because Hana is not just a database, but a constantly renewing ERP/CRM platform for S/4, BW/4 and C/4.