S/4 High Availability in the Hybrid Cloud

The Suse technology blueprint includes the steps Provision, Deploy, Operate, Optimize, Transform, Monitor and Report. The Operate step covers the important area of high availability for S/4 Hana and other SAP applications and ensures their uninterrupted deployment in the hybrid cloud.

High Availability

Hybrid cloud deployment with different SAP IT operating options is tailor-made for zero downtime. One trend among on-premises customers is the increasing use of public cloud offerings, especially Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). But even in the hybrid cloud era, no customer should ignore the issue of high availability (HA). For most companies, the top priority is continuous availability of an SAP IT infrastructure and thus a kind of round-the-clock use of SAP applications and SAP services. Downtimes - whether planned or unplanned - can put the business in a precarious position, even leading to loss of revenue. 

Even during the early Hana development phase, SAP and Suse addressed the topic of HA, including disaster recovery (DR), as part of a development partnership and against the background of Hana data center readiness. And for some time now, Suse has been supporting SAP customers with HA solutions and features that are specifically designed for SAP use and significantly minimize downtimes. This is true for both on-premises and public cloud use as well as for ERP ECC and S/4 Hana.

Suse is therefore at the forefront of SAP deployment and offers customers comprehensive services in this area. Three Suse solutions provide particularly valuable services: the Suse Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications including the so-called High Availability Extension (HAE), the live patching solution for the Linux kernel developed by Suse, and the Linux management solution Suse Manager.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications has long been the preferred and SAP-recommended Linux operating system for Hana and SAP application servers. SLES offers HA and security features including encryption management as standard. The High Availability Extension is delivered with SLES for SAP and represents a complete cluster software including automated Hana fail-over provisioning.

Put simply, if a Hana primary system fails, for example, an installed failover system automatically takes over its tasks - without significant downtime and without SAP system or even business interruptions. Several Hana deployment scenarios such as "performance" or "cost-optimized" in scale-up and scale-out are taken into account.  

Reduce downtimes   

Suse Linux Enterprise Live Patching is an optional patching technology that automatically applies stability and security patches to the Linux kernel without the need for a shutdown followed by a system or application boot, and thus without downtime.       

Suse Manager combines far-reaching management tools for smooth Hana deployment and thus for SAP applications (and non-SAP applications, by the way). For example, when it comes to automated patch and update management. Or the automated management, control and monitoring of various IT or operating system components.

All the Suse solutions listed can be used equally as on-premises and as public cloud offerings (or in combined form) for SAP deployment. Our customers can rest assured that in both operating concepts and in their combination, there is technology consistency with the same functionality and reliable SAP hybrid cloud use is ensured, for example, in the context of SAP's new ERP generation S/4 Hana.