SAP is familiar territory for EMC, as proven by the recent IDC Storage Users Demand Study, which named EMC #1 in storage for major applications, including SAP. And because we’re never one to rest on our laurels, I’m proud to announce that our revolutionary new VMAX3 is now certified for the SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI) solution, supporting up to 104 HANA nodes in a single VMAX.
Working with SAP to Build the Next Generation Analytics and ERP Platform
A founding member of the HPI FutureSoc Lab, EMC has been involved in this innovation hub from the early beginnings. SAP HANA was created with the goal to empower real-time decision making by moving the database in memory and improving query performance by 100-1000x.
Unprecedented Scale with VMAX3
SAP worked with EMC to create HANA solutions that are scalable and deliver greater performance, availability, and protection. There are several deployment options, including Data Center Ready Appliances and Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI). The latter allows for a flexible deployment that offers customers the ability to leverage existing infrastructure including VMAX storage. VMAX3 obtained the SAP HANA certification by passing specific tests and meeting a set of KPIs.
EMC’s VMAX3 supports 104 SAP HANA Nodes leveraging a VMAX 400K with 8 Engines. This configuration delivers one of the most scalable HANA solutions in the market today and provides customers industry-leading TCO on a per-HANA node basis.
A list of certified EMC Storage for HANA can be found here.
For more details on the specific test criteria refer to the SAP HANA Administration Guide.
Availability – Leveraging the Most Trusted Storage in the Industry
To ensure the in-memory database is protected, HANA writes the content of the database to the storage frequently. Failover of the HANA node (or server) is built into the SAP software but leverages underlying VMAX availability features.
Since customers can collocate regular SAP ERP workloads with the SAP HANA, they benefit from VMAX’s high availability to protect the entire SAP landscape, not just individual components. Manageability is also improved compared to managing islands of SAP storage.
Disaster Tolerance – Leveraging VMAX SRDF and TimeFinder to Protect the Entire SAP Landscape
Storage replication offers advantages over application-based disaster recovery solutions where only the database content is replicated to the secondary site. Leveraging SRDF provides a disaster tolerance solution for the entire SAP landscape. VMAX SRDF consistency technology can be leveraged to include all relevant HANA and non-HANA volumes, even across multiple arrays at each site, ensuring fast recovery of the entire SAP landscape, not only the database.
A leading, global oil & gas company relies on VMAX to support its mission-critical SAP environment. Apart from the regular ERP environment, this customer is leveraging SAP HANA for analytics related to exploration. SRDF consistency technology for both SAP ERP and SAP HANA are the key enabler for an always-on and disaster tolerant environment.
EMC TimeFinder can be used for a rapid recovery of the database and to augment remote replication for specific use cases. Best Practices and Use Cases for SRDF and TimeFinder are documented here.
