SAP:SAP HANA Deployment Guide

This guide explains how to plan and deploy SAP HANA on Alibaba Cloud ECS, covering instance selection, storage, networking, and operating system configuration.

• Introduction

• Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance types

• Alibaba Cloud services

• Supported SAP HANA and operating system versions

• SAP HANA deployment architectures

  • Single-node architecture

  • Multi-node architecture

• Deploy SAP HANA on Alibaba Cloud

  • Preparations

    • Alibaba Cloud account

    • SAP HANA installation media

    • Account management

  • Deployment procedure

    • Configure the network

    • Create an SAP HANA virtual machine

  • Connect to SAP HANA

• Post-deployment tasks

Version history

Introduction

SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-store relational database management system developed by SAP. It stores and retrieves data for applications while also supporting high-performance analytics and real-time data processing.

This guide covers how to plan and deploy SAP HANA on Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS), including ECS instance configuration, block storage, networking, and the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) operating system. It reflects the combined best practices of Alibaba Cloud and SAP.

For high-availability (HA) deployments, see Deploy a high-availability SAP HANA environment in the same zone.

ECS instance types

For the ECS instance types currently certified for SAP HANA, see Certified ECS Instances (SAP HANA) or the official SAP hardware directory at Certified and Supported SAP HANA Hardware.

Alibaba Cloud services

This guide uses the following Alibaba Cloud services:

Supported SAP HANA and operating system versions

For the currently supported SAP HANA and operating system versions, see SAP Note 2235581.

SAP HANA deployment architectures

SAP HANA supports single-node scale-up and multi-node scale-out architectures.

Single-node architecture

The single-node deployment in this guide uses the following components:

• One ecs.r5.16xlarge ECS instance as the SAP HANA database primary node (64 vCPUs, 512 GB memory). The data volume is an ESSD cloud disk larger than 1.5 TB. Both the log volume and the HANA shared volume are ESSD cloud disks larger than 512 GB.

• A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in your selected region with a custom IP address range. All SAP HANA and supporting ECS instances are launched within this VPC. You can use an existing VPC or create a new one.

• An Internet gateway for public network egress. This guide assumes you have configured one.

• An ECS security group to control access between instances.

• One ecs.g6.xlarge ECS instance running Windows, used to host the SAP HANA Studio client.

Multi-node architecture

SAP business application systems can only scale up. For workloads that exceed single-node capacity, SAP HANA supports a scale-out (multi-node) architecture based on a shared-nothing design. Multiple SAP HANA nodes form a cluster, distributing load across all nodes as demand grows.

The scale-out cluster consists of one primary node and multiple worker nodes, connected over a network with up to 25 Gbps bandwidth. Each node has its own /hana/data and /hana/log volumes on ESSD cloud disks for consistent, high IOPS. The primary node also acts as the NFS master for the /hana/shared and /hana/backup volumes, which are mounted on all worker nodes.

The multi-node deployment uses the following components:

• One ecs.r5.16xlarge ECS instance as the SAP HANA database primary node (64 vCPUs, 512 GB memory). The data volume is an ESSD cloud disk larger than 1.5 TB. Both the log volume and the HANA shared volume are ESSD cloud disks larger than 512 GB.

• Multiple ecs.r5.16xlarge ECS instances as SAP HANA database worker nodes. Each instance has 64 vCPUs and 512 GB of memory. The data volume is an ESSD cloud disk larger than 1.5 TB. Both the log volume and the HANA shared volume are ESSD cloud disks larger than 512 GB.

• A VPC in your selected region with a custom IP address range. All SAP HANA and supporting ECS instances are launched within this VPC. You can use an existing VPC or create a new one.

• An Internet gateway for public network egress. This guide assumes you have configured one.

• An ECS security group to control access between instances.

• One ecs.g6.xlarge ECS instance running Windows, used to host the SAP HANA Studio client.

Deploy SAP HANA on Alibaba Cloud

This section covers how to deploy a multi-node SAP HANA system on Alibaba Cloud.

Preparations

Alibaba Cloud account

Create an Alibaba Cloud account before starting the deployment.

SAP HANA installation media

1. Download the SAP HANA installation media.

For more information, see SAP HANA Server Installation and Update.

1. Activate Object Storage Service (OSS).

   • Log on to the Alibaba Cloud official website.

   • On the OSS product page at https://www.aliyun.com/product/oss/, click Activate Now.

   • After the service is activated, click Management Console to open the OSS console.

2. Create a bucket.

   • Go to the OSS console.

   • Click Create Bucket. The Create Bucket dialog box appears.

   • In the Bucket Name field, enter a name for the bucket. Bucket names must be globally unique within Alibaba Cloud OSS and cannot be changed after creation. For naming requirements, see OSS Terms.

   • From the Region drop-down list, select the region for the bucket. The region cannot be changed after the bucket is created. To access OSS from an ECS instance over the internal network, select the same region as your ECS instance. For more information, see Endpoints.

   • In the Read and Write Permissions box, select the access permission for the bucket:

     • Public Read/Write: Anyone, including anonymous users, can read and write objects in this bucket. All fees from these operations are charged to the bucket owner. Use this permission with caution.

     • Public Read: Only the bucket owner can write objects. Anyone, including anonymous users, can read them.

     • Private: Only the bucket owner can read and write objects. No other users have access.

   • Click Submit. The bucket is created.

3. Upload the installation files.

   • Go to the OSS console.

   • Click the name of the target bucket to open its management page.

   • Click Objects to open the file management page.

   • Click Upload to open the file selection dialog box.

   • Select the HANA installation package and click Open. After the upload completes, click Refresh to confirm the file appears in the bucket.

Account management

1. SAP HANA account

   During SAP HANA installation, you must specify a system ID (SID). The installer creates an operating system account named <sid>adm for the SAP HANA instance. If the account does not already exist, the installer creates it automatically. To avoid conflicts, do not use personal account names that end with adm. In a scale-out deployment, all nodes must share the same <sid>adm account, with a consistent user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) across all nodes.

2. Internal system accounts

   Alibaba Cloud does not pre-create any accounts. By default, Linux systems have only the root user. Create or remove accounts as needed using standard Linux commands:

   Create a user: useradd -u <uid> -g <gid> username

   Delete a user: userdel username

Deployment procedure

Configure the network

1. Create a VPC and a vSwitch.

   • Log on to the VPC console.

   • In the left navigation pane, click VPCs.

   • On the VPCs page, select a region and click Create VPC.

   • In the Create VPC dialog box, enter a name for the VPC and select a CIDR block.

   Select one of the following standard private CIDR blocks. The CIDR block cannot be changed after the VPC is created. Use a large CIDR block to allow for future expansion.

   10.0.0.0/8 (10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255)
   172.16.0.0/12 (172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255)
   192.168.0.0/16 (192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255)

2. Click Create VPC.

   The system generates a VPC ID and creates a vRouter for the VPC.

   • Click Next to create a vSwitch.

   • On the Create vSwitch tab, fill in the required fields and click Create vSwitch.

     Name: Enter a name for the vSwitch.

     Zone: Select the zone for the vSwitch.

     CIDR Block: Enter the CIDR block for the vSwitch.

     The vSwitch CIDR block can match or be a subnet of the VPC CIDR block, and must be between a /16 and /29 network mask.

     Note: If the vSwitch CIDR block is the same as the VPC CIDR block, you can create only one vSwitch in that VPC.

   • Click Complete.

     Return to the instance list and click the VPC ID to open the details page and verify the VPC and vSwitch were created.

3. Configure a security group.

   About security groups

   A security group is a logical grouping of ECS instances in the same region that share the same security rules. Each instance must belong to at least one security group, specified at instance creation time. Instances in the same security group can communicate over the internal network. By default, instances in different security groups cannot communicate, but you can authorize cross-group access.

   This deployment uses a VPC, so security group rules apply to both public and private network traffic without distinction. By default, a new security group has no rules. When creating an ECS instance, make sure the security group allows inbound traffic on port 22 (Linux SSH) or port 3389 (Windows RDP), or you will be unable to log on remotely.

For the SAP port requirements and corresponding security group rules, see the official SAP documentation.

Create an SAP HANA virtual machine

1. Go to the ECS product purchase page.

2. Select Subscription as the billing method.

3. Select a region and zone.

   Select the region where you plan to deploy. If you already configured a vSwitch, also select the matching zone.

4. Set the network type to VPC.

   Select the VPC and vSwitch you created. In this multi-node architecture, SAP HANA does not serve traffic directly from the public internet, so do not assign a public IP address.

5. Select an instance type.

   Choose an SAP HANA-certified instance type.

6. Select an operating system image.

   SAP recommends SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications. Select the relevant image from the Marketplace.

7. Configure storage disks.

   Alibaba Cloud offers OSS, block storage (cloud disks), and Apsara File Storage NAS to meet SAP system storage requirements.

8. Configure initialization information.

   Set the initial password and create the instance. Wait a few minutes for initialization to complete.

9. Install the SAP HANA database.

For SAP HANA installation and configuration details, see the SAP HANA Platform documentation.

Connect to SAP HANA

The deployment does not assign a public IP address to the SAP HANA instance. Connect to it using one of the following methods:

• SSH through Bastionhost: Connect to Bastionhost using your SSH client, then connect to the SAP HANA instance from there.

• SAP HANA Studio on Windows: Connect to the Windows ECS instance using a remote desktop client. Install SAP HANA Studio on the Windows instance, then use it to access the SAP HANA database.

Post-deployment tasks

Before using the SAP HANA instance, complete the following steps. For details, see the SAP HANA Installation and Update Guide.

• If you are using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, verify that the Linux kernel version is at least 3.12.74-60.64.40. Earlier versions can cause performance degradation under certain conditions. If needed, upgrade the kernel to this minimum version. For more information, see SAP Note 2205917.

• Update SAP HANA to the latest version.

• Install any additional components you need, such as the Application Function Library (AFL) or Smart Data Access (SDA).