Hana and Linux go together

You don't have to be a prophet: in 2018, SAP Hana penetration will continue to grow strongly. This is also due to the switch of many companies from the NetWeaver-based SAP ERP ECC ("SAP Classic") to S/4 Hana. Numerous existing SAP customers will thus say goodbye to their Unix and, above all, Windows operating system platforms (in addition to switching databases) and move in the direction of Linux.

Every change implies a certain amount of skepticism, which is in the nature of a "new territory". According to all experiences so far, this tends to zero very quickly from Suse's point of view when dealing with the matter more closely.

This also has to do with the fact that Linux in general and in the SAP environment in particular is anything but new. Linux has long been established in mission-critical SAP deployments. Large and largest SAP deployments have been realized under Linux for years and have proven themselves.

Even before the availability of Hana and S/4 Hana, there was a veritable wave of change among SAP's existing customers in the direction of Linux and the use of x86 standard hardware.

As the exclusive operating system platform partner, Suse has contributed its experience and know-how from tens of thousands of SAP NetWeaver-based use cases with Suse SLES for SAP Applications to the Hana developments.

And even after Hana became available in spring 2010, SAP and Suse have continued to develop together or provide new functions/features on a regular basis. Usable with both Hana-on-Intel and Hana-on-IBM Power hardware.

SAP Award

For example, the current version 12 of Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications features so-called System Replication Resource Agents for Hana use. They allow automatic failover to a backup system including recovery without the intervention of a system administrator.

This minimizes recovery times for large Hana in-memory datasets from hours to minutes. Last year, Suse received a Hana Innovation Award from the Walldorf-based software group specifically for this feature.

Other highlights of SLES 12 for SAP Applications: The "Benchmark Tuning Option at Installation" feature as a further element of SAP Hana performance optimization; enhanced functionality in the Suse Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension (HAE) to drastically minimize possible downtimes; a usable "Hawk Graphical User Interface" for configuring High Availability cluster environments with combined physical and virtual servers; a so-called Cluster Sanity Check Framework (Clustertools2) to verify HA/DR configurations, prior to a production deployment; live patching and much more.

Beyond Linux

Over the years, Suse has been involved in the SAP Hana environment and has played a very active role in a wide range of developments. For example, in the design and implementation of a high-availability and disaster recovery reference architecture around six years ago. Or in the development of a reference environment for the SAP Hana Enterprise Cloud (HEC) in 2015.

And, of course, the joint cooperation with SAP continues. Be it in the area of security, performance optimization or the integration or use of AI techniques in Suse SLES for SAP Applications in interaction with SAP Hana.

It has become clear that SAP Hana and Linux are an excellent match, also with regard to the use of Hana/Linux in the cloud environment. The cooperation between Suse and SAP has long since extended beyond Linux to other open source projects and solutions. The key words here are OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes and Ceph.