SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure · This guide is for SAP Basis...

SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Configuration and Deployment Best Practices

December 2018

H17317.2

Validation Guide

Abstract

This validation guide provides best-practice storage and configuration guidelines for a

Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged appliance for SAP HANA deployment. The solution

incorporates 14th generation Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, VMware vSphere

infrastructure, and VMware vSAN storage.

Dell EMC Solutions

Copyright

2 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Configuration and Deployment Best Practices Validation Guide

The information in this publication is provided as is. Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

Copyright © 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel Inside logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Published in the USA 12/18 Validation Guide H17317.2.

Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

Contents

3 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Configuration and Deployment Best Practices

Validation Guide

Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 4

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA............................................................................................. 6

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines ......................................... 13

Support requirements and considerations ................................................................................ 21

References ................................................................................................................................... 24

Appendix: SAPS values for PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F) ............................................. 25

Introduction


Introduction

Dell EMC VxRail Appliance, the exclusive hyper-converged infrastructure appliance from

Dell EMC and VMware, is the easiest and fastest way to extend and simplify a VMware

environment. Powered by VMware vSAN and managed through the VMware vCenter

interface, the VxRail Appliance gives existing VMware customers an experience with

which they are already familiar. Seamless integration with existing VMware tools also

enables customers to use and extend their current IT tools and processes.

In 2018, SAP extended their HANA platform support with a certification and validation

process for a hyper-converged platform (a software stack comprising VMware vSphere

and vSAN) and infrastructure (a VxRail hardware stack). This process complements

existing hardware certifications for SAP HANA appliances and enterprise storage.

SAP has certified the VxRail appliance in the configuration that this validation guide

describes for running SAP HANA workloads.

This Dell EMC hyper-converged solution for SAP HANA based on VxRail infrastructure

incorporates Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers with vSphere and vSAN

virtualization software. The solution encompasses design configurations and deployment

options. Customers use SAP sizing tools for SAP systems on VMware virtualized

infrastructure to determine the requirements of the deployment, and then work with Dell

EMC representatives to configure and deploy the solution.

With the VxRail appliance, Dell EMC delivers a fully engineered, hyper-converged

infrastructure solution that enables businesses to innovate faster and accelerate their IT

operations. Customers implementing the solution can expect the following benefits:

Agility―A modern SAP landscape management experience that delivers

automated provisioning capabilities for SAP applications including SAP HANA and

provides a faster time-to-value.

Engineering―Compute, networking, and storage components that are integrated

with the specified prerequisites, and tested dependencies that deliver a seamless

solution experience.

Optimization―Design and deployment guides that highlight proven performance,

automation, and resiliency best practices for SAP landscapes including SAP HANA.

Executive

summary

Solution

overview

Key benefits

Introduction


Validation Guide

This guide describes how to plan, prepare, and configure a VxRail hyper-converged

infrastructure for SAP HANA deployments. The guide provides validated best practices for

the configuration and design of virtualized SAP HANA deployments on VxRail based on

vSphere and vSAN technologies.

This guide does not replace the requirement for VxRail implementation services by Dell

EMC Professional Services. Detailed VxRail installation and implementation

documentation is available for Dell EMC service personnel only.

This guide is for SAP Basis administrators, system administrators, storage administrators,

and presales architects who design mission-critical SAP HANA systems to be deployed

on VxRail hyper-converged appliances. You should have some knowledge of VxRail

appliances, PowerEdge servers, and VMware virtualization technologies including

vSphere and vSAN.

Dell EMC and the authors of this guide welcome your feedback on the solution and the

solution documentation. Contact the Dell EMC Solutions team with your comments.

Authors: Werner Katzenberger, Aighne Kearney

The following page of the Everything SAP at Dell EMC Community space on the Dell

EMC Communities website provides links to additional documentation for this solution:

Solutions for SAP Server Info Hub: Technical Documentation

Document

purpose

Audience

We value your

feedback

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Feedback:%20SAP%20HANA%20on%20Dell%20EMC%20VxRail%20Hyper-Converged%20Infrastructure%20Validation%20Guide%20(H17317.2)

https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-66864

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA



SAP has certified SAP HANA on a VxRail P series All Flash (P570F) hyper-converged

infrastructure. The dual-socket VxRail P570F is the only model to support SAP HANA

workloads. Hybrid models (the P570) and other models such as the VxRail E series,

V series, or S series are not supported in a SAP HANA environment.

The following figure shows the system specifications for the VxRail P series:

Table 1. VxRail P series system specifications

Form factor

Single system 2U

Drive configuration

24 x 12G SAS drive slots (2.5”)

Up to four disk groups with up to five capacity drives each

Processors

Single- or dual-socket, up to 28 cores per CPU

Max capacity

76.8 TB SSD or 48 TB HDD

Memory

Up to 3,072 GB RAM (1,536 per processor)

Power supplies

1100W 100-240V AC, 1600W 200-240V AC, 1100W 48V DC

Additional network options

Up to three (single CPU) or four (dual CPU)

2 x 10 GbE SFP+, 2 x 10 GbE RJ45, 4 x 10 GbE RJ45, 4 x 0 GbE SFP+, 2 x 25 GbE SFP28

Boot

BOSS with two 240 GB SATA M.2

With SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) phase 5, SAP introduced

customer-workload-driven SAP HANA system sizing, in which SAP application

performance standard (SAPS) requirements for specific customer workloads are used to

determine the type and number of processors required to run SAP HANA. Customers use

the SAP HANA Quick Sizer tool and sizing reports and share the results with Dell EMC to

determine the optimal number of VxRail nodes, CPU types, and memory sizes for their

SAP HANA environment.

It is important to understand the impact and limitations of vSphere virtual machine (VM)

and vSAN. The References section of this guide provides links to relevant information

from VMware and SAP.

Dell EMC VxRail

model

Sizing

considerations



Validation Guide

While VxRail is generally available with single or dual CPU sockets, SAP HANA is

certified only on dual-socket VxRail P-Series appliances with Intel Xeon-SP platinum or

gold CPUs and a minimum of 12 cores per socket.

When configuring memory for VxRail nodes used for SAP HANA, ensure that you comply

with the SAP requirement for a symmetric, homogeneous DIMM assembly and that all

memory channels (six with Intel Xeon-SP CPU architecture) are used.

Mixed DIMM configurations are not supported on VxRail nodes. The following memory

configurations are available for VxRail P570F nodes:

384 GB (12 x 32 GB DIMMs1)

768 GB (24 x 32 GB DIMMs or 12 x 64 GB DIMMs)

1,536 GB (24 x 64 GB DIMMs or 12 x 128 GB DIMMs)

3,072 GB (24 x 128 GB DIMMs)

Note: 128 GB DIMMs are only supported with Intel Xeon-SP M-type CPUs.

Because of this strict SAP requirement for a symmetric, homogeneous DIMM assembly,

memory sizes such as 1,024 GB or 2,048 GB are not possible with the Intel Xeon-SP

CPU architecture.

The following table shows the CPU type and DIMM assembly combinations that are

available in the two-socket (2S) VxRail nodes for SAP HANA:

Table 2. CPU type and DIMM assembly combinations

1 DIMM = Dual Inline Memory Model―the memory chips in the server

CPU and

memory

considerations

CPU type 384 GB (12 x 32 GB)

768 GB (24 x 32 GB)

768 GB (12 x 64 GB)

1.5 TB (24 x 64 GB)

1.5 TB (12 x 128 GB)

3 TB

(24 x128 GB)

6126 (12C, 2.6 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6130 (16C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6132 (14C, 2.6 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6136 (12C, 3.0 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6138 (20C, 2.0 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6140 (18C, 2.3 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6142 (16C, 2.6 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6146 (12C, 3.2 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6148 (20C, 2.4 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6150 (18C, 2.7 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6152 (22C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S



Sharing CPU sockets between SAP HANA VMs (NUMA2 node sharing) is not supported

on dual-socket VxRail appliances; therefore, only one SAP HANA production VM per CPU

socket using all available cores can be deployed. However, it is possible to deploy SAP

HANA VMs which use both CPU sockets and all cores.

With the NUMA architecture, each processor has its local memory and can also access

the non-local memory of the other processors over an advanced memory controller. Even

though this is a high-performance connection, access to local memory is always faster

than access to the non-local memory of the other processors. Take this into consideration

when designing and configuring SAP HANA VMs under vSphere on VxRail appliances.

In a dual-socket VxRail P-Series appliance, 50 percent of the available memory (RAM) is

local to each processor. The following examples present a VxRail node with a total

memory capacity of 3,072 GB, which is the maximum for a VxRail P-Series node.

Example 1: SAP HANA VM requiring 1,024 GB memory and 20 vCPUs

When the SAP HANA memory requirement is equal to or less than the memory owned by

a single processor (NUMA node), follow these steps:

1. Ensure that the required vCPUs are from a single processor by specifying a

Cores per Socket value that is equal to the number of CPUs, as shown in the

following figure.

2 Non-uniform memory access

CPU type 384 GB (12 x 32 GB)

768 GB (24 x 32 GB)

768 GB (12 x 64 GB)

1.5 TB (24 x 64 GB)

1.5 TB (12 x 128 GB)

3 TB

(24 x128 GB)

6154 (18C, 3.0 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8153 (16C, 2.0 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8160 (24C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8164 (26C, 2.0 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8168 (24C, 2.7 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8170 (26C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8176 (28C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

8180 (28C, 2.5 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S

6140M (18C, 2.3 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S

6142M (16C, 2.6 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S

8160M (24C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S

8170M (26C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S

8176M (28C, 2.1 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S

8180M (28C, 2.5 GHz) 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S 2S



Validation Guide

Figure 1. Using cores on a single CPU socket

2. When specifying the memory size, select Reserve all guest memory, as shown

in the following figure.

Figure 2. Allocating and reserving guest memory

3. Repeat these steps for all SAP HANA production VMs. It is not necessary to

perform these steps for non-production VMs.

Example 2: SAP HANA VM requiring 2,048 GB memory and 40 vCPUs

In this example, the required memory is more than what is available on a single processor

(NUMA node). Follow these steps:

1. Use the Cores per Socket value to distribute the required vCPUs equally across

the two available sockets, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 3. Use cores on both CPU sockets

2. Specify the memory size you require, as shown in the following figure.



Figure 4. Allocating and reserving memory on both NUMA nodes

Important: If a production VM partially uses resources from both NUMA nodes, current SAP and

VMware rules do not allow the use of unused CPU and memory resources for SAP HANA or non-

SAP HANA VMs. In our second example, the SAP HANA VM uses only 2,048 GB of the available

3,072 GB memory capacity. The remaining 1,024 GB cannot be used for other workloads.

Therefore, when an SAP HANA VM spans NUMA resources (memory and CPU), it is a best

practice to allocate all available resources to the VM and not waste available resources.

For more information about the SAPS-based sizing of the Intel Xeon-SP CPU models that

are available for VxRail P-Series configurations, see Appendix: SAPS values for

PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F).

A VxRail cluster can have at least three and as many as 64 nodes. When running SAP

HANA in production on a VxRail cluster, Dell EMC strongly recommends that you use a

minimum of four nodes to avoid an availability and performance impact when nodes

become unavailable―for example, during software upgrades (maintenance mode).

When sizing a VxRail cluster for SAP HANA, consider having enough free resources

(standby nodes) for smooth upgrades, or for situations where VMware HA needs to

migrate VMs to available nodes if a VxRail node fails.

The following table lists the sizing recommendations for a VxRail cluster for SAP HANA:

Table 3. Recommended VxRail standby nodes

Number of VxRail nodes required for SAP HANA

Recommended number of standby nodes

Up to 7 1

Up to 14 2

Up to 21 3

Up to 28 4

Up to 35 5

Up to 42 6

Number of

VxRail nodes



Validation Guide

Number of VxRail nodes required for SAP HANA

Recommended number of standby nodes

Up to 49 7

Up to 56 8

The SAP certification for SAP HANA on VxRail P-Series hyper-converged infrastructure

limits the deployment to two production SAP HANA VMs per physical VxRail node. This

limitation does not apply to non-production SAP HANA VMs.

While it is possible to deploy two production SAP HANA VMs on a physical host (one per

CPU socket), Dell EMC recommends that you consider having enough free resources to

allow vSphere HA to perform an automatic restart of the SAP HANA VMs on another host

if one host fails due to a hardware problem. See Table 3 for the VxRail standby node

sizing recommendations.

If up to two SAP HANA VMs that do not span NUMA nodes are deployed on a physical

host and free resources such as CPU and memory are available, deploy the non-SAP

HANA VMs on the same physical host.

The VxRail P-Series P570F nodes support up to 24 disks per node. Only all-flash

configurations are supported for SAP HANA, with a minimum of two vSAN disk groups per

node and a minimum of three capacity disks per disk group.

Based on your capacity requirements, you can configure up to four disk groups with a

maximum of five capacity disks per disk group. SAS or NVMe disks are required for the

vSAN cache tier. All SSD types are supported for the capacity tier.

The following table provides details about the disks that are available in a VxRail node:

Table 4. Cache and capacity disks in a VxRail node

Available cache SSDs Available capacity SSDs

Number of cache SSDs (disk groups)

Minimum number of capacity SSDs

Maximum number of capacity SSDs

400 GB 10WPD 2.5"

800 GB 10WPD 2.5"

NVME 800 GB5WPD 2.5I

NVME 1.6 TB 5WPD2.5I

1.92 TB 1WPD2.5"

3.84TB 1WPD 2.5"

2 6 10

3 9 15

4 12 20

The RAID-1 failure tolerance method must be assigned in the storage policy to the SAP

HANA persistence (data and log of each SAP HANA VM), as explained in Virtual machine

storage policies for SAP HANA data and log. That means that twice the capacity of the

data and log devices is required as SSD capacity.

SAP HANA VMs

per node and per

total

Non-SAP HANA

VMs

Disks



Although RAID-1 is the default for all vSAN devices, you can create a new capacity-

optimized storage policy with RAID-5/6 and assign it to other non-persistent devices.

RAID-5/6 consumes 1.33 times the usable device capacity on disk.

To support the SAP HANA bandwidth requirements, Dell EMC recommends configuring

the VxRail nodes with two 25 GbE SFP28 network daughter cards (NDCs) and an

additional two 25 GbE SFP28 connectivity cards for SAP HANA-specific application

network traffic―the SAP HANA internode. Although 10 GbE network configurations are

also supported, they provide limited network and storage performance, which might result

in longer SAP HANA database restart times.

In addition to the system networks required for vSphere and vSAN software, configure the

following networks for SAP HANA when the corresponding function (SAP HANA system

replication) is used:

App server

Clients

System replication

Internode

Backup

Dell EMC recommends creating a new vSphere distributed switch (VDS) for the networks

required for SAP HANA and assigning the additional 2 x 25 GbE (or 2 x 10 GbE) network

cards as uplinks to this new distributed switch. To meet the performance requirements of

the SAP HANA internode network communication, set an MTU size of 9,000 on this

distributed switch and in the operating system network settings of the SAP HANA VM for

the internode network. Follow VMware and SAP HANA requirements and best practices

when configuring networks on the VxRail distributed switch.

For detailed information and considerations for planning logical and physical VxRail

networks, see the Dell EMC VxRail Network Guide.

Network

https://www.dellemc.com/resources/en-us/asset/technical-guides-support-information/products/converged-infrastructure/h15300-vxrail-network-guide.pdf

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines


Validation Guide


Only scale-up (single-node) SAP HANA deployments are supported on VxRail

infrastructure. In accordance with SAP requirements, a scale-out deployment must have

four-socket systems at a minimum.The VxRail on 14G Dell servers is currently available

only on two-socket systems.

Use SAP and VMware sizing guidelines to size CPU and memory for the SAP HANA

virtual machines. Over-commitment of CPU and memory resources is not allowed.

Special requirements apply when you configure the SAP HANA persistence (data and log)

of an SAP HANA virtual machine.

Dell EMC strongly recommends using Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) devices for

the SAP HANA persistence. LVM allows striping of the logical volumes across multiple

vSAN devices, which provides flexible administration and better performance. LVM also

allows resizing of logical volumes if capacity must be adjusted.

Configuration

The following sections provide step-by-step instructions for configuring the SAP HANA

persistence on Linux LVM devices.

SCSI Controller

A VMware best practice is to use a dedicated SCSI controller for the SAP HANA devices.

Configure the SCSI controller as VMware Paravirtual. The example in the following figure

uses SCSI Controller 0 for the system device and SCSI Controller 1 for the LVM devices.

Figure 5. VM SCSI controller for the SAP HANA persistence

In addition, set the following Linux kernel settings in the virtual machine:

elevator=noop

vmw_pvscsi.cmd_per_lun=254

vmw_pvscsi.ring_pages=32

In a SUSE Linux virtual machine, you can set these parameters by using yast2 and the System Bootloader settings for the kernel parameters. For more information, see the VMware Knowledge Base article KB2053145: Large-scale workloads with intensive I/O patterns might require queue depths significantly greater than Paravirtual SCSI default values.

SAP HANA

deployment

options

CPU and

memory

SAP HANA

persistence

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2053145

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2053145?lang=en_US#q=2053145





Device capacity for data and log

Use the SAP Quick Sizer tool to determine the required capacity for the SAP HANA data

and log devices. If the sizing details are not available, Dell EMC recommends configuring

the sizes of the data and log devices based on the memory size of the SAP HANA virtual

machine: for data, configure 2x RAM; for log, configure 0.5-1x RAM. For more

information, go to the Quick Sizer website.

Add the capacity of the data and the log devices to get the total capacity required for the

SAP HANA persistence of the virtual machine.

Virtual machine storage policies for SAP HANA data and log

The SAP HANA LVM physical devices deployed on the vSAN datastore must have a

storage policy assigned. While the default vSAN storage policy is adequate for the system

device, the SAP HANA persistence devices must have a dedicated storage policy to meet

the SAP performance requirements. The rules in the storage policy for the SAP HANA

persistence are defined as shown in the following figure.

Figure 6. VM storage policy for the SAP HANA persistence

vSAN storage policy requirements for the SAP HANA persistence

The vSAN storage policy requirements can be summarized as follows:

Failure tolerance method = RAID-1 (Mirroring)

Provides best performance on vSAN compared to RAID-5/6, which is mainly

optimized for space utilization.

Object space reservation (%) = 100

Specifies that the devices will be thick-provisioned.

https://www.sap.com/about/benchmark/sizing.quick-sizer.html#quick-sizer



Validation Guide

Primary level of failures to tolerate = 1

Defines the number of disk, host, or fault-domain failures that a storage object

can tolerate.

Disable object checksum = No

During read/write operations, vSAN checks for validity of data based on the

checksum. If data is not valid, vSAN takes necessary steps to either correct the

data by retrieving a new copy from another replica or report it to the user to take

action (non-recoverable errors).

Number of disk stripes per object = 12

The number of disks across which each replica (with RAID-1, each storage object

has two replicas) of a storage object is striped. The optimal number depends on

the number of available disk groups and capacity disks. The minimum (default) is

1 and the maximum is 12. Choose the highest number of stripes possible in a

given host and disk configuration.

Dell EMC engineers performed the VxRail HCI certification tests with four

capacity disks per disk group. They found that setting 12 disk stripes per object

provided the best overall results.

Assign vSAN devices for the SAP HANA persistence to the virtual machine and use them in LVM

Linux LVM distributes the logical volumes used by the application across multiple physical

devices―in our case, vSAN devices. Dell EMC recommends distributing the persistence

across four to eight physical devices (four is the minimum number while eight is the

maximum). In our example below, we need 500 GB capacity for the SAP HANA data

device and 200 GB for the SAP HANA log device. Therefore, a total of 700 GB is required

for the SAP HANA persistence. We created eight 100 GB vSAN devices to allow some

free space in case additional capacity is required at a later time.



Figure 7. vSAN devices for the HANA persistence

Every 100 GB volume uses the VM storage policy “HANA-Persistence” and is assigned to

the dedicated SCSI controller 1, as shown in the following figure.



Validation Guide

Figure 8. Assign VM storage policy and SCSI controller

SAP HANA persistent devices can be thin-provisioned because the storage policy has the

Object space reservation (%) = 100 setting, which means that the device is thick-

provisioned by default.

Add devices to Linux LVM and create the SAP HANA persistence

After the devices have been added to the VM, follow these steps in Linux to partition the

devices and add them to LVM:

1. Rescan the SCSI devices using the following Linux command:

rescan-scsi-bus.sh

2. Verify that devices are visible using the following command:

fdisk –l

3. Create a Linux LVM partition on each device. The best way to do this is to create

a text file fdin.txt with the following content:

n

p

1

t



8e

w

4. Create a partition on a device using the following command:

cat fdin.txt | fdisk /dev/sdb

This command creates new LVM partitions on the devices, for example,

/dev/sdb1, which can be used as physical devices in LVM. Repeat this

command for every device created for the SAP HANA persistence.

5. Add the devices as physical devices to LVM using the following command:

pvcreate /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1

/dev/sdg1 /dev/sdh1 /dev/sdi1

6. Create an LVM volume group with the name hana using the following command:

vgcreate hana /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1

/dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1 /dev/sdh1 /dev/sdi1

7. Create logical volumes for the SAP HANA data and log file systems on the new

volume group using the lvcreate command. For example:

lvcreate --name data --size 500G --stripes 8 --stripesize 64

hana and lvcreate --name log --size 200G --stripes 8 --

stripesize 64 hana

8. Use the number of physical devices created earlier as the --stripes parameter.

9. Format the devices using the following command:

mkfs.xfs /dev/hana/data and mkfs.xfs /dev/hana/log

10. Mount the formatted devices under the required mount points for SAP HANA. For

example: mount /dev/mapper/hana-data /hana/data and mount

/dev/mapper/hana-log /hana/log

SAP HANA installations require a file system to store the SAP HANA binaries, trace, and

configuration files. This file system is mounted under the /hana/shared mount point.

In SAP HANA scale-up (single-node) deployments, this mount point can reside on the

local system device. SAP HANA requires approximately 1x the RAM memory capacity for

the /hana/shared file system.

Note that SAP HANA scale-out deployments are only supported on four-socket servers

and therefore are not supported on two-socket VxRail hyper-converged infrastructures.

The following functions support high availability (HA) in the SAP HANA system.

Automatic restart of SAP HANA VMs

You should enable the vSphere HA feature in a vSphere cluster with SAP HANA. If one of

the hosts in the cluster fails, this feature restarts a VM on another host that has enough

free resources. Enable the SAP HANA service autostart feature in the SAP HANA

software, either at the time of the SAP HANA installation or by setting the autostart option

to 1 in the /hana/shared/<SID>/profile/<SID>_HDB<InstNo>_<hostname> file.

SAP HANA

shared file

system

High availability



Validation Guide

Ensure that the minimum vSphere HA settings are in place, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 9. vSphere HA settings

High availability for SAP HANA virtual machines

The SAP HANA auto-restart watchdog function automatically detects a failure and restarts

the corresponding SAP HANA process―nameserver, indexserver, and so on. This

service monitors the SAP HANA application and the associated services within a VM.

The VMware HA VM monitoring feature “Guest not heartbeating” restarts the guest OS of the VM as well as SAP HANA on the same host. This feature handles operating system crashes if the SAP HANA autostart options are enabled.

Enable the heartbeat monitoring feature when you enable vSphere HA. Dell EMC

recommends setting Heartbeat monitoring sensitivity to High, as shown in the following

figure.

Figure 10. Settings for VM monitoring



VMware Tools must be installed and running in the VM. You can install VMware Tools as

part of the operating system (open-vm-tools) or by using the vSphere web client and

selecting Guest OS > Install VMware Tools in the VM context menu.

You can configure the SAP HANA file I/O layer with certain parameters to optimize file

I/Os for a given storage solution and file system. The Linux XFS file system is used on all

storage volumes for the SAP HANA persistence.

Setting file I/O layer parameters in SAP HANA 1.0

For SAP HANA 1.0 installations, use the SAP HANA hdbparam command as <sid>adm

in the Linux shell:

su - <sid>adm

hdbparam –p # lists current parameter setting

hdbparam –-paramset fileio.max_parallel_io_requests[Data]=256

hdbparam –-paramset fileio.max_parallel_io_requests[Log]=256

Setting file I/O layer parameters in SAP HANA 2.0

For SAP HANA 2.0 installations, use either hdbsql or the SQL function in SAP HANA

Studio or cockpit and the following SQL commands:

ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('global.ini', 'SYSTEM') SET

('fileio', 'fileio.max_parallel_io_requests[Data]') = '256' WITH

RECONFIGURE;

ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('global.ini', 'SYSTEM') SET

('fileio', 'fileio.max_parallel_io_requests[Log]') = '256' WITH

RECONFIGURE;

For more information, see SAP Note 2399079: Elimination of hdbparam in HANA 2

(access requires an SAP username and password).

Optimizing file

I/Os after the

SAP HANA

installation

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2399079

Support requirements and considerations


Validation Guide


Infrastructure report

As part of the SAP HANA HCI certification requirements, SAP requires a method to detect

if an SAP HANA VM is running in a hyper-converged environment on a vSAN datastore.

SAP HANA Studio and the SAP HANA cockpit cannot report the hardware vendor and

type when running under VMware; therefore, it is important to report to SAP that SAP

HANA is running on VxRail P570F hyper-converged infrastructure.

In addition, VMware developed and supports a script that must be deployed on every

VxRail node. The script checks if a VM has a device on the vSAN datastore. If the device

is found, the following parameters are added to the VM’s configuration file:

"guestinfo.vsan.enabled": True/False,

"guestinfo.SDS.solution": ESXi_version, which is also the

vSAN release version

"guestinfo.vm_on_vsan": True/False

This information is used by the SAP CIM provider and support tools such as

sapsysinfo.sh.

To find out how to obtain and deploy the script, go to the SAP HANA on VMware vSphere

website.

Health check with VxRail Manager

Before reporting a problem to SAP, check the physical health of the VxRail hardware. The

health function in the VxRail Manager application provides details of any problems, as

shown in the following figure.

Figure 11. VxRail Manager health check

SAP support

calls

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/VIRTUALIZATION/SAP+HANA+on+VMware+vSphere



Health check with iDRAC

In addition to the health status check with VxRail Manager, use the Integrated Dell

Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) dashboard to verify the health of the system. The

following figure shows an iDRAC health check report example.

Figure 12. iDRAC health check

Ensure that all hardware-related issues are fixed before reporting an SAP HANA problem

to SAP.

Dell EMC Online Support provides a single point of support for all VxRail hardware issues

as well as vSphere Hypervisor and vSAN issues.

To collect VxRail log information and create a support bundle for Dell EMC support, log in

to VxRail Manager and select Config > General. Then locate Generate New Log Bundle

under Log Collection, as shown in the following figure.

Dell EMC

support calls

https://support.emc.com/



Validation Guide

Figure 13. Generating a log bundle

References


References

The following documentation on Dell EMC.com and Dell EMC Online Support provides

additional, relevant information. Access to documents on Online Support depends on your

login credentials. If you do not have access to a document, contact your Dell EMC

representative.

Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Version 4.5 Administration Guide

Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Operations Guide

Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Techbook

Dell EMC VxRail Appliances on 14th Generation PowerEdge Servers

Dell EMC VxRail Network Guide

Dell EMC Networking Switch Configuration Guide for VxRail

Note: Deploying VxRail requires Dell EMC implementation services. Detailed installation

documentation is only available to Dell EMC service personnel.

For SAP Ready Solutions documentation, see Solutions for SAP Server Info Hub:

Technical Documentation in the Everything SAP at Dell EMC Community forum.

The following documentation provides additional, relevant information:

Architecture Guidelines and Best Practices for Deployments of SAP HANA on

VMware vSphere

Virtualize Business Critical Applications

SAP and VMware Virtualization-Overview

SAP Solutions on VMware Best Practices Guide

SAP Note 618104: “sapsysinfo” – Compiling system information on Linux provides

additional, relevant information.

For proper sizing of a SAP HANA environment, look for the latest version of the SAP

HANA Quick Sizer tool on the Quick Sizer website.

The SAP HANA on VMware vSphere website provides information about running SAP

HANA on VMware vSphere and points to several related documents.

Visit the SAP Help Portal for all other SAP HANA documentation.

Dell EMC

documentation

VMware

documentation

SAP

documentation

http://www.emc.com/

https://support.emc.com/

https://www.emc.com/collateral/TechnicalDocument/docu86660.pdf


https://www.dellemc.com/resources/en-us/asset/technical-guides-support-information/products/converged-infrastructure/vxrail-appliance-operations-guide.pdf

https://www.dellemc.com/resources/en-us/asset/technical-guides-support-information/products/converged-infrastructure/h15104-vxrail-appliance-techbook.pdf


https://www.dellemc.com/resources/en-us/asset/technical-guides-support-information/products/converged-infrastructure/h15300-vxrail-network-guide.pdf

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_networking/networking-s5048f-on_users-guide_en-us.pdf



http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/sap_hana_on_vmware_vsphere_best_practices_guide-white-paper.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/whitepaper/sap_hana_on_vmware_vsphere_best_practices_guide-white-paper.pdf

https://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2016/05/sap-hana-on-vsphere-deployment-options-and-best-practices.html

http://www.vmware.com/solutions/business-critical-apps/sap-virtualization.html

https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/sap/sap-solutions-on-vmware-best-practices-guide.pdf

https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/618104

https://www.sap.com/about/benchmark/sizing.quick-sizer.html#quick-sizer

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/VIRTUALIZATION/SAP+HANA+on+VMware+vSphere

https://help.sap.com/viewer/p/SAP_HANA_PLATFORM

Appendix: SAPS values for PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F)


Validation Guide


Dell EMC performed internal testing with the sales and distribution (SD) benchmarks to

validate the extrapolated SAPS values across the platinum, gold, silver, and bronze CPU

range. The results showed that the extrapolations were accurate to within a 5 to 10

percent range in our laboratory environment. ”M” editions of a CPU model have the same

extrapolated SAPS values as non-M editions of that model.

The following table shows the SAPS values for the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740/R740xd

servers on which the VxRail P series (P570F) models are based and which are supported

for SAP HANA installations.

Table 5. PowerEdge R740 systems values with SAPS and SAPS per core

PowerEdge server Number of cores

Number of sockets

Number of cores per socket

SAPS SAPS per core

PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 5115, 2.40 GHz) 20 2 10 62,850 3,143














PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8153, 2.00 GHz)

32 2 16 85,352 2,667


48 2 24 138,374 2,883


52 2 26 144,193 2,773


52 2 26 139,020 2,673


48 2 24 157,125 3,273


52 2 26 147,426 2,835

Overview



PowerEdge server Number of cores

Number of sockets

Number of cores per socket

SAPS SAPS per core


56 2 28 155,185 2,771

PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8180, 2.50 GHz) 56 2 28 175,230 3,129

PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8180M, 2.50 GHz) 56 2 28 175,230 3,129

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