VMware, which is now part of Broadcom, has worked with SAP and its hardware partners since 2019 to provide reliable, high-performance, and certified SAP HANA hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions.
Since then, these co-engineered, SAP-certified HCI solutions, enable customers to run SAP HANA on industry-standardized, cost-optimized server components, including the latest Intel CPU technologies, NVMe storage devices, Ethernet network components, and VMware vSphere and vSAN.
We are pleased to announce Lenovo and Fujitsu, our hardware partners who collaborated with us during the initial Sapphire Rapids and later Emerald Rapids vSAN 8 ESA SAP HANA HCI validations, have completed certification for their SAP HANA HCI solutions. They are now listed in the SAP Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware Directory web page. Both partners offer vSAN ESA based solutions with Sapphire (SPR) and Emerald Rapids (EMR) CPUs.
VMware vSAN 8 offers a new storage architecture, called vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA). This new storage architecture, which is an alternative storage architecture to the original vSAN OSA, is now available for approved vSAN ReadyNodes and SAP HCI-certified systems based on Intel Xeon Scalable Generation 4 (Sapphire Rapids) and Generation 5 (Emerald Rapids) processors. See SAP note 3406060 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 8 and vSAN 8 for details.
Why vSAN Express Storage Architecture is Superior to the Original
At a high level, the original vSAN architecture was a two-tier setup, with dedicated cache and data disks designed to accommodate a wide range of storage devices. In contrast, the vSAN Express Storage Architecture in vSAN 8 is a single-tier design, eliminating the need for dedicated cache devices and optimized for high-performance NVMe-based TLC flash. The new log-structured file system and IO path optimizations to the write path reduce write amplification and lower write latency.
These optimizations not only allow for higher storage capacities, leveraging RAID 5/6 at the performance level of RAID 1 for SAP HANA VMs, but also reduce the number of components (no cache devices needed anymore). This significantly reduces the cost per GB for VMware vSAN SAP HANA HCI clusters.
Performance Gains and Easier Operation with vSAN ESA
When running on qualified hardware, ESA consistently delivers superior performance, scalability, resilience and easier operation for SAP HANA VMs compared to OSA. During our SAP HANA vSAN 8 validation, we used SAP HCMT to measure the performance of eight SAP HANA VMs running in parallel on both vSAN OSA and ESA-configured datastores. Using identical hardware and software configurations (8 x NVMe devices), we observed the significant performance improvements with ESA, while managing and operating the vSAN configuration is much easier and less error prone.
Overall, vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is the superior choice for any SAP HANA HCI deployments starting with Intel Sapphire Rapids (SPR) CPU-based systems.
SAP HANA HCI Validation with Emerald Rapids
We have also successfully validated two SAP HANA VMs per CPU socket with EMR-based CPUs without using Sub NUMA Node Clustering (SNC).
This validation allows for 4 VMs per 2-socket Intel EMR CPU-based SAP HANA vSAN HCI hosts, compared to just 1 VM per CPU socket with SPR. See SAP note 3372365 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 8 for details.
This is particularly important as it doubles the number of SAP HANA VMs per CPU socket, effectively halving the cost per SAP HANA VM on an EMR HCI node.
SAP HANA HCI SPR and EMR Deployment Examples:
| CPU Type | #CPU Sockets/Host | #VMs/Socket | #VMs/Host | SAP HANA HCI Supported vSAN Arch. | Storage Devices |
| SPR | 2 | 1 | 2 | OSA and ESA | SAS and NVMe |
| 4 | 1 | 4 | |||
| EMR | 2 | 2 | 4 | ESA | NVMe |
Compared to non-VMware SAP HANA HCI solutions, which require a storage management VM to handle software-defined storage traffic, our new EMR validation supporting up to 2 VMs per CPU socket and our 4-socket SPR-based SAP HANA HCI solution provide a 25% higher VM density. This allows us to deploy 4 SAP HANA VMs instead of just 3, as seen in non-VMware SAP HANA HCI solutions.
Note: Only SAP HANA HCI certified systems can be used for SAP HANA deployments. Non-certified SAP HANA HCI vSAN ReadyNodes are not supported. Please refer to the SAP Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware Directory for certified VMware-based OEM vendor SAP HANA HCI solutions.
References:
- VMware vSAN product page
- SAP note 3372365 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 8
- SAP note 3406060 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 8 and vSAN 8
- SAP Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware Directory
