SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure December 2018 H17317.2 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 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 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. 2 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Contents 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 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 3

Introduction Introduction Executive summary 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. Solution overview This Dell EMC hyper-converged solution for SAP HANA based on VxRail infrastructure incorporates Dell EMC PowerEdge 14 th 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. Key benefits 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. 4 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Introduction Document purpose 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. Audience 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. We value your feedback 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 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 5

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA VxRail requirements for SAP HANA Dell EMC VxRail model 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 Processors Single- or dual-socket, up to 28 cores per CPU Memory Up to 3,072 GB RAM (1,536 per processor) 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 Drive configuration 24 x 12G SAS drive slots (2.5 ) Up to four disk groups with up to five capacity drives each Max capacity 76.8 TB SSD or 48 TB HDD Power supplies 1100W 100-240V AC, 1600W 200-240V AC, 1100W 48V DC Boot BOSS with two 240 GB SATA M.2 Sizing considerations 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. 6 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA CPU and memory considerations 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 DIMMs 1 ) 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 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 1 DIMM = Dual Inline Memory Model the memory chips in the server SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 7

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA 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 Sharing CPU sockets between SAP HANA VMs (NUMA 2 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 8 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA 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. SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 9

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA 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). Number of VxRail nodes 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 10 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA Number of VxRail nodes required for SAP HANA Recommended number of standby nodes Up to 49 7 Up to 56 8 SAP HANA VMs per node and per total 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. Non-SAP HANA VMs 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. Disks 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 GB 5WPD 2.5I NVME 1.6 TB 5WPD 2.5I 1.92 TB 1WPD 2.5" 3.84 TB 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 on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 11

VxRail requirements for SAP HANA Although RAID-1 is the default for all vsan devices, you can create a new capacityoptimized 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. Network 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. 12 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines SAP HANA deployment options 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. CPU and memory 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. SAP HANA persistence 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 on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 13

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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. 14 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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. SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 15

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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. 16 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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 thickprovisioned 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 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 17

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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 shared file system 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. High availability 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. 18 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 19

Configuration recommendations for SAP HANA virtual machines 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. Optimizing file I/Os after the SAP HANA installation 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). 20 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Support requirements and considerations Support requirements and considerations SAP support calls 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 HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 21

Support requirements and considerations 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 support calls 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. 22 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Support requirements and considerations Figure 13. Generating a log bundle SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 23

References References Dell EMC documentation 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 14 th 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. VMware documentation SAP documentation 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. 24 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Appendix: SAPS values for PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F) Appendix: SAPS values for PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F) Overview 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 Gold 5118, 2.30 GHz) 24 2 12 73,713 3,071 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 5120, 2.20 GHz) 28 2 14 82,765 2,956 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6126, 2.60 GHz) 24 2 12 82,765 3,449 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6130, 2.10 GHz) 32 2 16 97,637 3,051 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6132, 2.60 GHz) 28 2 14 97,637 3,487 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6136, 3.00 GHz) 24 2 12 93,758 3,907 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6138, 2.00 GHz) 40 2 20 113,803 2,845 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6140, 2.30 GHz) 36 2 18 113,803 3,161 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6142, 2.60 GHz) 32 2 16 109,276 3,415 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6148, 2.40 GHz) 40 2 20 126,088 3,152 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6150, 2.70 GHz) 36 2 18 124,148 3,449 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6152, 2.10 GHz) 44 2 22 127,381 2,895 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Gold 6154, 3.00 GHz) 36 2 18 132,554 3,682 PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8153, 2.00 GHz) PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8160, 2.10 GHz) PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8164, 2.00 GHz) PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8164, 2.00 GHz) PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8168, 2.70 GHz) PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8170, 2.10 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 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 25

Appendix: SAPS values for PowerEdge R740xd (VxRail P570F) PowerEdge server Number of cores Number of sockets Number of cores per socket SAPS SAPS per core PowerEdge R740 (Intel Xeon Platinum 8176, 2.10 GHz) 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 26 SAP HANA on Dell EMC VxRail Hyper-Converged Infrastructure