Front cover

Getting Fast Business Insight with

SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server and IBM Power Systems
Michael Tabron

Redguide

Executive overview
Many organizations are struggling to turn growing amounts of data into business value. They
are looking for ways to do this rapidly and affordably. SAP HANA running on SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server for SAP Applications on IBM Power Systems can give organizations the
tools they need to compete effectively in the world of big data.
SAP HANA is an in-memory database that provides much faster results than traditional
relational databases. By running SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems, a platform designed for
the high performance and scalability demands of in-memory workloads, organizations can
give business users reliable access to mission-critical data analytics.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was the first Linux distribution for SAP HANA and the first
Linux to run on Power Systems servers. By using key features of both SAP HANA and the
Power Systems platform, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications gives
organizations a highly-available, cost-effective way to tackle their big data challenges.
This IBM Redguide publication explains to business users how SAP HANA running with
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on the Power Systems platform addresses the major
challenges of organizations today, and what benefits their organizations can expect. This
guide describes the solution in detail, explains how it can fit into an organizations
environment, and provides links and contact information for those who want to learn more.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2015. All rights reserved.

Too much of a good thing: The challenge of data

Making wise business decisions requires a combination of experience and accurate
information. For the modern organization, information technology is not just a way of enabling
productivity, but the most important way of providing the data to support good decisions.
To make these decisions quickly, organizations need an infrastructure that can handle all of
the relevant data. Then they need a way to analyze that data and get results to business
users.
Data volumes are exploding. Organizations once made decisions, such as how much
inventory to stock, based on the previous quarters sales and minimal public data, for example
current prices on the commodities market. Now, making decisions with so little information
leaves organizations at a competitive disadvantage. You need to consider many factors, such
as foreign markets, weather patterns, customer buying behavior, and floods of unstructured
data coming from social media or the web. The availability of all this information is a great
benefit to businesses but is also a challenge to the IT departments charged with handling it.
Taking this data in is only part of the challenge. You must then store it in a way that allows for
rapid access. Traditionally, organizations have used relational databases to store information.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to get data out of these relational databases quickly. A typical query
might take several hours to return a result, and for larger, more complex queries, your
business users might be stuck waiting days for answers.
If an organization only had one question to ask, this query process might be acceptable. But
often, you are testing hypotheses and asking multiple questions to better understand a new
market or competitive environment. This situation means it can take weeks of asking and
waiting just to explore a business opportunity. In this era of fast moving markets and rapid
product innovation, spending months on a decision-making process will put your organization
at a distinct disadvantage.

The value of SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and

IBM Power Systems
Running SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and IBM Power
Systems servers can help speed your decision making process and give your business users
fast access to all of your organization's data.
SAP HANA is an in-memory database that provides much faster data access than relational
databases. IBM Power Systems platforms offers the reliable and high-performance platform
you want for a business-critical tool, such as SAP HANA. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for
SAP Applications is the crucial link between the hardware and software. It is an operating
system that takes advantage of the Power architecture, provides high availability features, and
supports SAP HANA's unique demands for performance and scalability.
With this solution, your organization gets answers to its business questions faster. You can
respond quicker to customers and increase revenue by seizing new business opportunities.
SAP HANA can serve as the source of customer data for contact center agents. With SAP
HANA, agents can make queries about a customer's history while on the phone with the
customer. Agents can find out what customers ordered previously or if they have ever
returned products while they are speaking with the customers. This capability empowers your
agents to improve customer service and revenues.

Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

SAP HANA can also provide the information your marketing operations team needs to tailor
campaigns. With the rapid response provided by SAP HANA, a marketing executive can ask
questions about previous campaigns and get the information needed to tailor future
campaigns on the fly. This insight enables the executive to adjust for a factor that might
change customer behavior, such as the unexpected appearance of a competitors new
offering.
Manufacturing operations can use real-time analytics results from SAP HANA to drive greater
efficiency. Meeting the demands of sales channels requires up-to-date information about the
current mix of products. At the same time, manufacturers must manage the supply chain so
that parts are available when needed and so that the costs of shipping are not excessive.
With fast access to analysis of historical sales transactions, operations personnel can
manage the supply chain to predict production requirements and select transportation options
that minimize the need for costly expedited shipping.
SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and Power Systems offers
the IT department as many benefits as it does the business. SAP HANA runs on all IBM
POWER8 processor-based servers, giving IT planners tremendous flexibility in choosing
and deploying right-sized infrastructure for their data analytics needs. When combined with
the reliability, availability, and serviceability of IBM Power Systems, the solution helps your IT
department offer a stable and robust service to the business.
While other SAP HANA solutions typically package the database as an appliance, this
solution offers tailored data center integration. The tailored data center approach combines
the simplicity of pre-selected configurations with the ability to use your existing resources and
modify the installation to match your requirements and environment.
By taking advantage of your current IBM Power Systems investments to run SAP HANA, you
could save significantly on operating expenses. With Power Systems, you can run other
applications (including other SAP applications) on the same server as HANA. By
consolidating on a single server platform, you save on maintenance and administration and
avoid increasing the complexity and footprint of your data center. Meanwhile, SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server gives you an enterprise operating system without the high licensing
expenses. Together, this approach can reduce your total cost of ownership so the cost of
implementing your solution does not get in the way of reaping value from it.

Implementing SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and

IBM Power Systems
In this solution, SAP HANA runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
which runs directly on the IBM Power Systems platform. Traditionally, SAP HANA was offered
as a closed appliance. This architecture allowed SAP to ensure that a customers
configuration changes did not damage the performance and reliability SAP promised. SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications provides a foundation for these appliance
implementations. So, although server appliance versions of SAP HANA are available, they
limit you to specific storage and networking configurations. In contrast, this solution takes the
tailored data center integration approach so that you can fit SAP HANA into your current
environment, while maintaining the performance and reliability that you need.

Figure 1 shows what the solution looks like when run by itself on an IBM Power Systems
server.

Figure 1 SAP HANA running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and IBM Power
Systems

You can connect SAP HANA to your current sources of data and use a variety of business
analytics applications to access the data in HANA and provide the user interface and answers
your workforce needs.
You can also take advantage of the capabilities of Power Systems servers to run multiple
workloads and use it to support your SAP HANA implementation and the systems HANA
connects to, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 SAP HANA and other applications running on multiple instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server on a single IBM Power Systems server

Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

If you have a Power Systems server running a SAP or third-party application that you want to
connect to SAP HANA, you can use the available capacity of that Power Systems server to
run your HANA systems as well, described in Virtualization on page 5.

Fitting the solution to your environment

Tailored data center integration enables you to match your implementation to your data
center. SAP HANA runs on all IBM POWER8 processor-based servers. In addition, IBM
provides three starter configurations that you can customize and modify according to your
needs. These configurations enable you to quickly optimize and deploy SAP HANA on IBM
Power Systems while maintaining the ability to add virtualized workloads and capacity on
demand.
Power Systems included are:
IBM Power Systems S824, with 24 cores and a minimum of 512GB RAM
IBM Power Systems E850, with 32 cores and a minimum of 1TB fully active RAM
IBM Power Systems E870, with 40 to 80 cores and a minimum of 1TB fully active RAM
As shown in the Figure 3, each configuration can be expanded with additional RAM.

Figure 3 The three IBM configuration options for tailored data center integration

IBM has similar ways to purchase its largest enterprise-class system, the IBM Power System
E880, for SAP HANA workloads.

Virtualization
You can run other SAP solutions or your business analytics applications on the same Power
Systems server as SAP HANA using the built-in virtualization available through IBM Power
Systems and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications allows you to take advantage of the
benefits of either IBM PowerVM or PowerKVM and supports PowerVM features, such as

active memory sharing and dynamic memory remove. With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for
SAP Applications and Power VM, your virtualization layer takes up fewer computing
resources. Virtualizing workloads in this way means that you can use fewer cores to meet
your business needs.

High performance features

The newest generation of Power Systems servers are built on POWER8. POWER8 is the first
processor designed for big data, with massive parallelism and bandwidth for real-time
analytics results. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications takes advantage of
some of the unique properties of the IBM Power Systems server to further optimize the
solution for big data.
IBM Power Systems offer the processors, memory, and cache you need to take full advantage
of SAP HANA:
Up to 1,536 threads per system, for flexible, fast execution of analytics algorithms
Up to 16 TB of memory, providing the large, fast workspace crucial for in-memory
databases like SAP HANA
Up to 224 MB cache per socket to ensure continuous data load for fast responses
Up to 230 gigabytes per second of sustained memory bandwidth, providing a constant
stream of data to allow all execution threads to proceed at peak efficiency
These performance features mean that your queries on your SAP HANA implementation
return much faster. In fact, SAP benchmarks show that IBM and SUSE achieved a world
record in the SAP Business Warehouse Enhanced Mixed Workload Standard Application
Benchmark 1 at 2 billion records, demonstrating twice the performance per core over previous
benchmarks.2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications offers tuning options for performance
gains in I/O, memory and compute-intensive workloads. Features, such as the flexible large
page support allows you to tune SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications to match
your SAP HANA workload.
Running SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and Power
Systems can help you consolidate and reduce the number of systems in your data center,
eliminating complexity, minimizing points of failure, reducing latency, and simplifying
management.

High availability features

SAP HANA provides multiple options to implement high availability:
System Replication with data-preload (extremely short RTO)
System Replication without data-preload (longer RTO compared to data-preload, but less
memory requirements on failover host)
Storage Replication, host auto-failover or data backup (long RTO)

1
2

SAP BW Enhanced Mixed Load (BW EML) Standard Application Benchmark Results,
http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/bweml-results.htm
Announcing General Availability of SAP HANA on IBM Power System, Kyle Garman, Aug 21, 2015.
https://blogs.saphana.com/2015/08/21/announcing-general-availability-of-sap-hana-on-ibm-power-system
s/

Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

The SAP HANA System Replication feature requires additional high availability cluster
software to automate the failover process. IBM Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms
has a SAP HANA System Replication high availability policy for IBM Power Systems.3 Third
party high availability cluster software is also available.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications comes with the SUSE High Availability
extension. With high availability cluster software in place you can minimize the impact of
updates and changes and prepare your systems for natural disasters and other unplanned
interruptions.
When you depend on analytics for business decisions, any downtime can hurt your
operations. Downtime might mean the inability to access critical systems, such as healthcare
patient information or the inability to identify fraud, giving attackers more time to cause
damage.

Minimize the impact of downtime

Avoiding and surviving unplanned downtime, whether it is caused by a hardware failure, a
natural disaster, or a malicious attack, means you can protect both your reputation and
revenue.
SAP HANA system replication is one way to protect your HANA instance. Normally, this type
of replication would be a manual process, but a high availability cluster implementation makes
it faster and easier to fail over and recover your in-memory data.
The high availability features in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications support
the capabilities of Power Systems for switching the SAP HANA server to a backup server for
high availability and disaster recovery.
As your organization comes to realize the value of SAP HANA, it will rely more and more on
the solution. Having the high availability eliminates time consuming manual processes and
saves precious time in protecting your organization's data and maintaining its operations.

Flexibility and support

Building your SAP HANA implementation on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP
Applications and Power can save your IT team time and effort. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
for SAP Applications comes with time-saving installation, configuration, deployment, and
administration tools, all powered by the markets fastest integrated packet management
subsystem, Zypper.
As your business grows, your SAP HANA deployment can grow with it. IBM Power Systems
offer capacity on demand options. With capacity on demand, you have memory and cores
available in your Power Systems server that you can activate and use when your organization
needs them, such as in the following instances:
Elastic capacity on demand gives you temporary use of cores or memory. You rent the
capacity by the day. IBM tracks your use for quarterly billing.
Utility capacity on demand automatically delivers additional CPU core capacity
temporarily. Your extra CPU use is measured in processor minutes. These cores are
available for virtual machines and you can prepay or pay afterwards.
Trial capacity on demand allows you to test additional processors or memory. You can
activate available processors and memory partially or entirely for a fixed time. Trial
3

IBM Tivoli System Automation for Multiplatforms - SAP HANA System Replication high availability policy,
http://ibm.co/1XTat0G

capacity on demand requires no formal commitment, meaning your organization can

experiment to find the best solution for your unique business challenges.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications offers you integrated priority support
from both SUSE and SAP for your SAP HANA deployment. It is a range of support options
that includes 24/7 electronic and phone support with industry-leading response times and
instant access to all of the latest fixes and patches through a separate, dedicated update
channel.

Industry partnerships
SUSE and IBM have worked together for more than 20 years and both companies have long
standing relationships with SAP. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the SAP development
platform for Linux, and SAP and SUSE have a close joint testing and development
relationship that starts at the SAP Linux Lab in Germany.
SUSE was the first to develop Linux for Power Systems and continues to support new Power
Systems features. IBM and SUSE work together to maintain a joint software development
center in Toronto.
These partnerships provide a smoother implementation experience for you. SAP and IBM
have worked together closely on SAP HANA implementations. Because IBM Power Systems
comply with SAP HANA system KPI requirements, tools and processes defined by SAP, you
can use SAP tools when planning your HANA implementation on Power Systems, including
the SAP HANA Quicksizer, SAP database sizing tools, and the Hardware Configuration
Check Tool.

Conclusion
Business insight is of no use if it arrives late. SAP HANA offers organizations, such as yours
the chance to discover new business insights faster, in a way that allows you to change and
innovate quicker than the competition. To reap the full benefits of SAP HANA, however, you
must run it on the right platform.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and IBM Power Systems form the ideal
combination of operating system and server platform to maximize the performance and
reliability of your SAP HANA implementation. In this paper you have seen how the high
performance and high availability features of this solution can provide superior access to
business data for your organization.
The partnerships between SAP, SUSE, and IBM have helped these organizations optimize
the solution and offer convenient configuration options that allow you to take advantage of
your previous investments and make adjustments for your unique environment.
With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and IBM Power Systems, your
organization can take full advantage of SAP HANA. This combination means that when new
business challenges surface, you have the data you need to make rapid decisions and drive
your organization forward.
Get a feel for what SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications and
IBM Power Systems would look like in your environment by contacting SUSE today.

Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

Other resources for more information

For more information and contacts:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications website
https://www.suse.com/products/sles-for-sap/
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM Power website
https://www.suse.com/products/power/
SAP HANA System Replication on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications
https://www.suse.com/promo/sap/hana/replication.html
SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems website and solution brief
http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/solutions/bigdata-analytics/sap-hana/
SAP HANA TDI overview presentation
https://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-63140
You can also contact us at:
SUSE LINUX GmbH
Maxfeldstr. 5
90409 Nrnberg, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)911-740 53-0
https://www.suse.com/

Authors
This guide was produced by a specialist working with the International Technical Support
Organization (ITSO).
Michael Tabron is a Product Marketing Manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server solutions
at SUSE, Gmbh. He has worldwide responsibility for marketing programs, campaigns, and
collateral for solutions that are associated with SAP software and IBM Power servers. He has
over 30 years of IT industry experience in product marketing and development. He started his
career at IBM as a networking hardware design engineer, eventually moving to various roles
in product marketing and channels marketing. Prior to joining SUSE in 2015, he was the
Product and Solution Manager for analytics solutions on IBM Power Systems servers.

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Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

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Copyright IBM Corp. 2015. All rights reserved.

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This document, REDP-5248-00, was created or updated on December 8, 2015.

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Getting Fast Business Insight with SAP HANA on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM Power Systems

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