It’s been a while since we last talked about SAP HANA on vSAN here and here. With SAP SAPPHIRE 2018 right around the corner, it’s time to do a quick status update.
The message we want to share is quite simple and exciting: the time has come to start planning for running SAP HANA on HCI powered by vSAN.
SAP Introduced HCI Certification for HANA
Earlier this year, recognizing the fast adoption and growth of HCI in the marketplace, SAP created an HCI certification program for HANA. The program outlines a process and the necessary requirements to validate the hypervisor, the HCI platform, and HCI solutions based on the HCI platform. Collaborating with SAP, we have been running certification tests to validate vSAN and vSphere as the platform for SAP HANA.
We are testing the new Intel Skylake processor, in both 2-socket and 4-socket configurations. The latest and greatest vSAN 6.7 version is used, with NVMe devices at the cache tier and SAS SSD drives at the capacity tier. Solid progress has been made to date towards meeting scalability, performance, and consistency requirements and KPIs defined in the certification program, using SAP tools including the SAP HANA Hardware Configuration Check Tool (HWCCT), SAP HANA Hardware and Cloud Measurement Tool (HCMT), SAP BW/4HANA, etc.
SAP HANA and HCI Core to Our Customers’ Businesses
Why is it so important for VMware to get our HCI platform and the OEM solutions certified, you might ask? Because SAP HANA is at the digital core of our customers’ businesses.
The performance and speed of SAP HANA is one of the primary reasons that customers adopt and deploy it. We all know that there is some small amount of overhead that gets introduced via the hypervisor, but we also want to ensure that by adding vSAN, we do not impact the performance of HANA significantly. Our joint SAP/VMware customers have come to expect rich capabilities and the highest levels of performance from their infrastructure. These certifications ensure that we meet or exceed those standards and enable our customers to use their familiar SAP Customer Support for any issues that they might have.
We are also partnering with our broad ecosystem to bring the value of HCI to HANA by certifying their vSAN powered systems as HCI solutions for HANA. For example, we are closely working with Dell EMC in their effort of certifying VxRail as a solution. More vSAN OEM partners are joining the effort.
Preparing for SAP HANA on vSAN
While vSAN can be deployed in non-production HANA environments today, VMware’s customer base has been eagerly waiting for the official support of running HANA on vSAN in production. vSphere being the most mature and proven hypervisor, and vSAN being the leading HCI platform, we are working closely with SAP to make sure we have a solution that is mutually supported.
We look forward to helping customers deploy HANA at scale and in production on various HCI solutions powered by vSAN, like the VxRail HCI appliance, in the near future. Start refining your vSAN skills today by exploring our free, online vSAN Hands-on Labs.
It’s not too soon to start planning for SAP HANA on vSAN!
