HA and DR in SAP Hana Linux Deployment

More than 18,000 SAP customers are currently using the Hana Platform with the SAP in-memory database as the core element, according to an SAP press release at the beginning of November.

Hana is used in conjunction with S/4, with SAP BW and BW/4Hana, or with SAP Classic, as a database together with the SAP NetWeaver-based Business Suite. Incidentally, Hana has been used for a long time - and increasingly so - with SAP Business One.

As is well known, Hana deployment also means using Linux or open source. Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications is the proven and recommended operating system platform.

Virtually all of the aforementioned 18,000 SAP Hana customers use SLES for SAP Applications. Perhaps less well known is the fact that numerous SAP customers also make beneficial use of the High Availability Extension (HAE) integrated and usable in SLES for SAP Applications.

For example, Geberit, an internationally active company in the sanitary industry, is one of SAP's long-standing and larger existing customers with well over 5,000 SAP users.

Suse HAE for SAP Applications is based on the open source solution Pacemaker (predecessor Heartbeat 2), in whose development Suse played a leading role. The software, which provides HA and DR functionality as a cluster resource management solution, is available to SAP Suse customers for use free of charge.

As part of a program called "Fit for the Future", Geberit decided to use Suse Linux (SLES for SAP Applications) instead of Unix and Hana instead of Oracle DB for SAP.

For Geberit's Head of SAP Services, Manfred Bantle, it was clear that even with Hana DB use, the SAP deployment (12 different SAP systems, Business Suite on Hana) had to be effectively secured with HA/DR functionality.

In doing so, the well-known company from the sanitary industry decided on Suse HAE due to "the positive experiences with Suse SLES for SAP, which work together perfectly," as Bantle said in a presentation "HA-/DR with Suse HAE in Hana deployment" at this year's DSAG annual congress.

At Geberit, SAP Hana system replication at the Pfullendorf headquarters (Data Center 1) runs via a memory preload in a so-called "performance optimized" 2-node cluster (with scale-up Hana server systems). Geberit preferred this approach instead of the "cost-optimized HA/DR variant", which is also possible in Hana environments.

In the event of a disaster, automatic switching between node 1 and node 2 is performed using Suse HAE for SAP Applications. In the Geberit disaster recovery scenario, SAP Hana system replication is performed by an additional asynchronous replication to another site (another data center, about 100 kilometers away from data center 1) also using Suse HAE. This ensures DR coverage.

Based on Hana Resource Agents (RA) from Suse, Hana database instances and replications are administered and managed at Geberit. These resource agents also ensure intelligent and at the same time simplified use of the cluster configuration.

The actual configuration or management of the HA cluster environment (with combined physical and virtual servers) is done using the "Hawk Graphical User Interface", a component of Suse HAE.

Geberit emphasized at the DSAG presentation that the HA/DR solution Suse HAE "works smoothly" and "that the very good cooperation between SAP and Suse has enormously reduced an otherwise certain prevailing complexity in HA/DR solutions".

In another planned step, Geberit will soon be upgrading from Hana 1.x to Hana 2.x and from SLES for SAP Applications 11.3/11.4 to 12.2.