SAP HANA on GCP with Aviatrix

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SAP HANA

SAP HANA is SAP AG’s implementation of in-memory database technology. There are three components within the software group:

SAP HANA Database (or HANA DB) refers to the database technology itself
SAP HANA Tools refers to the suite of tools provided by SAP for modeling. It also includes the modeling tools from HANA Studio as well replication and data transformation tools to move data into HANA DB
SAP HANA Certified Hardware refers to HANA DB as delivered on certified hardware.

HANA DB takes advantage of the low cost of main memory (RAM), data processing abilities of multi-core processors and the fast data access of solid-state drives relative to traditional hard drives to deliver better performance of analytical and transactional applications. It offers a multi-engine query processing environment
which allows it to support relational data (with both row- and column-oriented physical representations in a hybrid engine) as well as graph and text processing for semi- and unstructured data management within the same system. HANA DB is 100% ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation und Durability) compliant.

While HANA has been called variously an acronym for Hasso’s New Architecture (a reference to SAP founder Hasso Plattner) and High Performance Analytic Appliance. HANA is a name not an acronym.

HANA is not SAP’s first in-memory product. Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA, formerly termed BIA) was designed to accelerate queries by storing BW infocubes in memory. This was followed in 2009 by Explorer Accelerated where SAP combined the Explorer BI tool with BWA as a tool for performing ad-hoc analyses. Other SAP products using in-memory technology were CRM Segmentation, By Design (for analytics) and Enterprise Search (for role based search on structured and unstructured data). All of these were based on the TREX engine.

Aviatrix Overview

Aviatrix is a cloud network platform that brings multi-cloud networking, security, and operational visibility capabilities that go beyond what any cloud service provider offers. Aviatrix software leverages AWS, Azure, GCP and Oracle Cloud APIs to interact with and directly program native cloud networking constructs, abstracting the unique complexities of each cloud to form one network data plane, and adds advanced networking, security and operational features enterprises require.

Aviatrix Configuration

Create a new vpc (or pick an existing one):

Deploy AVX gws:

And attach to the transit gateway.

As specified in SAP Note 2731110, do not place any network virtual appliance (NVA) in between the application and the database layers for any SAP application stack. Doing so introduces significant data packets processing time and unacceptably slows application performance.

Linux Deployment

The VMs deployed as SAP DB HANA nodes should be certified by SAP for HANA, as published in the SAP HANA hardware directory. SAP certifies two linux distributions for HANA: SuSE and RedHat:

I’m going to work with SuSE in this post. This distribution provides SAP-specific capabilities, including pre-set parameters for running SAP effectively.

Certified instance sizes:

I’m going to install the smallest certified instance for testing (and save a few $)

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/sap/docs/certifications-sap-hana

Instance creation:

The instance is deployed using the vpc that was created from AVX controller:

For persistent block storage, you can attach Compute Engine persistent disks when you create your VMs or add them to your VMs later.

When you certain Compute Engine SSD-based persistent disks for SAP HANA, you need to account for not only the storage requirements of your SAP HANA instance, but also for the performance of the persistent disk. Some of the minimum throughput characteristics that SAP is recommending, are:

Read/write on /hana/log of 250 MB/sec with 1 MB I/O sizes
Read activity of at least 400 MB/sec for /hana/data for 16 MB and 64 MB I/O sizes
Write activity of at least 250 MB/sec for /hana/data with 16 MB and 64 MB I/O sizes

SAP support note #2972496 lists the supported file systems for different operating systems and databases, including SAP HANA.

I’ll create 1 TB volume assuming that the /hana/data, /hana/log and /hana/shared volumes are all mapped to the same disk.

Add the disk to the instance:

Create FSs:

Do not forget to add the FSs to the /etc/fstab to mount properly during a reboot.

Install Java (you can download from https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/#cloud):

ricardotrentin@suse-hdb:/var/tmp> sudo rpm -ivh sapjvm-8.1.090-linux-x64.rpm 
Preparing...                          ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing...
   1:sapjvm-8-1.090-1                 ################################# [100%]
 
Configuring SAP JVM JDK 
 
  Version        : 8.1.090
  Directory      : /usr/java/sapjvm_8.1.090
 
 
Adapt  /usr/java/sapjvm_8_latest  pointing to  /usr/java/sapjvm_8.1.090
 
 
Create symbolic link  /opt/sapjvm_8  pointing to  /usr/java/sapjvm_8_latest
 
Done. Have fun :-) ....

Download Software:

If you are downloading the software from the SuSE Linux you will probably will need to install VINO. Run yast2 (yast2 is SuSE management tool) and install VINO:

And enable remote management:

Use the Download Manager in GUI mode to download the SAP HANA 2.0, express edition server only installer:

Install HANA

I’m installing HANA Express what is slightly different from a full blown HANA deployment.

run setup_hdxe.sh as root

Provide a master password:

Install HANA Tools

The SAP HANA studio is a collection of applications for SAP HANA. It enables technical users to manage the SAP HANA database, to create and manage user authorizations, and to create new or modify existing models of data in the SAP HANA database. It is a client tool, which can be used to access local or remote SAP HANA databases. To install SAP HANA Tools, proceed as follows:

Get an installation of Eclipse:

In Eclipse, choose in the menu bar Help > Install New Software

Add the URL https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/2022-06

After restarting Eclipse:

To work with and manage an SAP HANA system in the SAP HANA studio, you must create and configure a connection to the system:

Once the instance is added we can check/monitor its status and manage it:

Checking/Testing

As the HDB admin user, run:

instance-hdb:avxadm> HDB info
USER          PID     PPID  %CPU        VSZ        RSS COMMAND
avxadm      16325    16324   0.0     235492       5456 -bash
avxadm      16930    16325   0.0     222784       3416  \_ /bin/sh /usr/sap/AVX/
avxadm      16965    16930   0.0     268556       4176      \_ ps fx -U avxadm -
avxadm       2757        1   0.0      25548       3228 sapstart pf=/usr/sap/AVX/
avxadm       2822     2757   0.0     405716      98064  \_ /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/in
avxadm       3008     2822   1.8    5090576    3108604      \_ hdbnameserver
avxadm       3379     2822   0.3     845512     178484      \_ hdbcompileserver
avxadm       3402     2822   2.1    5402948    3622292      \_ hdbindexserver -p
avxadm       3554     2822   0.3    1534580     374704      \_ hdbdiserver
avxadm       3557     2822   0.3    1741888     614464      \_ hdbwebdispatcher
avxadm       2151        1   0.0     458096      36440 /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/exe/sa
avxadm       1980        1   0.0      89548       9908 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd 
avxadm       1983     1980   0.0     169956       5180  \_ (sd-pam)
avxadm       2285     1980   0.0      84704       5672  \_ /usr/bin/dbus-daemon

instance-hdb:avxadm> HDB proc
USER         PID    PPID %CPU    VSZ   RSS COMMAND
avxadm     17187   16325  0.0 222784  3396  \_ /bin/sh /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/HDB proc
avxadm     17224   17187  0.0 222784   520      \_ /bin/sh /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/HDB proc
avxadm      2757       1  0.0  25548  3228 sapstart pf=/usr/sap/AVX/SYS/profile/AVX_HDB01_instance-hdb.c.rtrentin-01.internal
avxadm      2822    2757  0.0 405716 98064  \_ /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/instance-hdb.c.rtrentin-01.internal/trace/hdb.sapAVX_HDB01 -d -nw -f /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/instance-hdb.c.rtrentin-01.internal/daemon.ini pf=/usr/sap/AVX/SYS/profile/AVX_HDB01_instance-hdb.c.rtrentin-01.internal
avxadm      3008    2822  1.8 5090576 3108604      \_ hdbnameserver
avxadm      3379    2822  0.3 845512 178484      \_ hdbcompileserver
avxadm      3402    2822  2.1 5402948 3622292      \_ hdbindexserver -port 30103
avxadm      3554    2822  0.3 1534580 374704      \_ hdbdiserver
avxadm      3557    2822  0.3 1741888 614464      \_ hdbwebdispatcher
avxadm      2151       1  0.0 458096 36440 /usr/sap/AVX/HDB01/exe/sapstartsrv pf=/usr/sap/AVX/SYS/profile/AVX_HDB01_instance-hdb.c.rtrentin-01.internal -D -u avxadm

avxadm@instance-hdb:/usr/sap/AVX/HDB01> /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe//sapcontrol -nr 01 -function GetProcessList

25.10.2022 18:41:18
GetProcessList
OK
name, description, dispstatus, textstatus, starttime, elapsedtime, pid
hdbdaemon, HDB Daemon, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:12:35, 3:28:43, 4293
hdbcompileserver, HDB Compileserver, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:13:06, 3:28:12, 4551
hdbdiserver, HDB Deployment Infrastructure Server, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:18:39, 3:22:39, 7665
hdbnameserver, HDB Nameserver, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:12:36, 3:28:42, 4315
hdbwebdispatcher, HDB Web Dispatcher, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:13:53, 3:27:25, 4763
hdbindexserver, HDB Indexserver-AVX, GREEN, Running, 2022 10 25 15:13:06, 3:28:12, 4571

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