SAP grants support for SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 6.7U2 running on Intel Cascade Lake based servers

As of May 6, 2019, SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 12 Revision 122.19 and higher is supported for production use on Intel Cascade Lake based server systems with vSphere 6.7U2. Please review SAP note “2393917 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 in production” for details.

This allows deployment of SAP HANA VMs on vSphere 6.7U2 supported hosts with up to 256 vCPUs and up to 6 TB RAM per single VM. In Scale-Out deployments up to 32 TB RAM are possible and supported (16 x SAP HANA 2 TB VMs).

In the case of a 4-socket Intel Cascade Lake 8280M, 28 core CPU based server with 6 TB of host RAM, the maximum size of virtual SAP HANA VM is limited to 224 vCPUs with up to 6 TB memory. Due to restrictions of the underlying certified hardware and the maximum support of a 4-socket VM size, OLAP workloads are limited to 3 TB of memory in Scale-Up deployments and are, as of today, only supported up to 2 TB in Scale-Out deployments.

The support statement allows all SAP and VMware hardware partners to offer virtual SAP HANA solutions on VMware vSphere 6.7U2 on premise, in the cloud and as HCI solutions. Providing customers, the broadest range of choice, deployment options and support for their private and public SAP HANA cloud projects.

The table below summarizes the current support status as of SAP note 2393917 for SAP HANA with supported vSphere versions and Intel server processor generations.

Details what’s supported:

1. What are the relevant SAP notes?
   1. 2393917 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 6.5 and 6.7 in production
   2. 2779240 – Workload-based sizing for virtualized environments
2. What Intel Cascade Lake based servers are supported?
   1. All SAP HANA supported servers as listed on SAP HANA Hardware Directory under “Certified Appliances” or “Supported Intel Systems”
3. How many CPU sockets per host are supported?
   1. Based on the SAP note referred above, hosts with 2, 4 or 8 sockets are currently supported
4. What SAP HANA VM sizes are supported?
   1. Maximum SAP HANA VM RAM is 6 TB (6128 GB).
   2. Maximum 256 vCPU can get configured with vSphere 6.7U2 and 128 vCPUs with 6.5 or 6.7U1. Actual usable CPU threads depend on the underlying certified hardware
   3. As of today, only SAP HANA VMs that span up to 4 CPU sockets are supported (4-socket VM). Support for >4 socket VMs are planned.
5. Is workload based sizing (WBS) as of note 2779240 supported with Cascade Lake?
   1. Yes, Intel Cascade Lake is supported with WBS. Check out SAP Note 2779240 for details.
6. Is vSphere 6.7U2 also supported for Intel Broadwell or Skylake based servers?
   1. Yes, vSphere 6.7U2 is supported on these platforms including Workload based sizing
7. Which SAP HANA versions are supported?
   1. The SAP HANA start release for Cascade Lake based servers is SAP HANA 1.0 SPS 12 Revision 122.19. SAP strongly recommends SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 4 for Cascade Lake.
8. Will Intel Cascade Lake systems be available as HCI solutions?
   1. Yes, SAP HANA HCI partners have already started planning Cascade Lake based HCI solutions. Contact your HCI partner for solution details and availability.

More details can be found in the reference SAP notes and the SAP HANA on VMware vSphere Wiki pages on wiki.scn.sap.com.