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h13937 Saphana Networker WP PDF
h13937 Saphana Networker WP PDF
EMC Solutions
Abstract
This White Paper validates the functionality of EMC NetWorker as a tool for
protecting SAP HANA systems through NetWorker Module for SAP (NMSAP),
while continuing to protect other data center systems, on both physical and
virtualized environments, with comprehensive, integrated backup and restore
facilities.
February 2015
Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation
Trademarks on EMC.com.
All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 6
Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 25
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 25
Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 25
With earlier versions of SAP HANA, organizations usually had to add yet more tools,
processes, and skillsets to back up and restore SAP HANA, since the built-in options
were quite limited.
With SAP HANA SPS05 came the HANA BACKINT interface, which enables integration
with third-party backup tools. This allowed EMC to develop that integration into EMC
NetWorker, enabling customers to keep their data center practices consistent by
using a single tool to protect SAP HANA and other data center applications, across
both physical and virtualized environments.
Solution overview EMC NetWorker Module for SAP (NMSAP) is an add-on module for the NetWorker
server and client that provides backup and recovery services for SAP HANA. Database
administrators can continue to use existing, familiar workflows to protect virtual SAP
HANA with NMSAP. The solution described in this paper covers NMSAP configuration,
and automatic backup and test validation including virtual SAP HANA migration,
backups, and recovery.
Scope This document provides test validation of migration, backup, and recovery of virtual
SAP HANA with NMSAP and serves the following purposes:
Introducing the key solution technologies
Describing the key business benefits of using NMSAP with virtual SAP HANA
Describing how to configure NMSAP for virtual SAP HANA migration and
backup
Describing how to recover virtual SAP HANA with NMSAP
SAP does not currently support incremental or differential data backups. For more
information on SAP HANA backup and recovery, refer to the SAP HANA Administration
Guide and SAP Note 1642148.
To refresh or repurpose a SAP application running on HANA (with SID changed), SAP
does not currently support backint.
Audience This document is intended for data center architects who define backup and recovery
standards for the data center (including SAP HANA systems), as well as for SAP
system administrators who wish to integrate SAP HANA with EMC NetWorker. This
document may also be useful to architects and administrators responsible for
implementing backup and recovery strategies for SAP HANA across physical and
virtualized environments.
SAN switches 2 8 Gb FC
Software resources
Table 2 describes the software components used in the deployment.
EMC NetWorker EMC NetWorker is a storage management software suite that provides backup,
recovery, and other services to hosts with a wide variety of operating systems and
data types. NetWorker products for different operating systems are interoperable.
NetWorker provides the flexibility to design a storage management system that works
best with the current computing environment.
EMC NetWorker EMC NetWorker Module for SAP (NMSAP) is an add-on module for the NetWorker
Module for SAP server and client that provides backup and recovery services for SAP HANA and SAP
(NMSAP) with Oracle data. NMSAP provides a backup-restore interface between the SAP
NMSAP features A SAP HANA database holds most of the data in memory but also uses persistent
specific to SAP storage on disk. During normal database operations, the data is automatically saved
HANA from memory to the disk at regular intervals. All data changes are also captured in the
redo log on disk, which is updated after each committed database transaction. The
data on disk must be backed up to ensure protection against disk failure. NMSAP is
integrated with the SAP HANA BACKINT interface program, hdbbackint, to provide the
backup, deletion, inquiry, and recovery services for SAP HANA database data and
redo logs. Based on the features that SAP HANA supports, NMSAP supports the
following SAP HANA data operations:
Manual and scheduled backups
Online backups
Full database backups
Redo log backups
Recovery of a database to its most recent state, a specific point in time, a
specific data backup, or a log position
Recovery to the original host or an alternate host
Deduplication backups and restores with a Data Domain system
Client Direct backups to an advanced file-type device (AFTD)
Configuration with the Backup Configuration Wizard
NMSAP works with the following SAP HANA interfaces on the database server to
perform backup and restore operations:
SAP HANA command line interface (CLI) with the hdbsql command
SAP HANA Studio GUI
SAP DBA Cockpit in the Computing Center Management System (CCMS) GUI
SAP HANA SAP HANA is an in-memory database that combines transactional data processing,
database analytical data processing, and application logic processing in memory. This design
enables real-time online application processing (OLAP) analysis on an online
transaction processing (OLTP) data structure.
In a distributed scale-out environment, one node (usually the first one installed) is
the master node. It handles the workload of the NetWeaver stack, the statistics and
the tables located in the row store. For a HANA scale-out database, it is a requirement
to have at least three nodes. In a two-node landscape, the table distribution and the
degree of parallel processing do not usually provide worthwhile benefits over a
single-node configuration.
Data and log information are automatically saved to disk at regular savepoints as
shown in Figure 4 and described in the following sections.
Data Volume
Data in memory is asynchronously written to the persistence mechanism as a
savepoint every five minutes by default. This data volume capture method uses a
locking mechanism to prevent modification of pages while copying modified pages
and capturing open transactions before finally increasing the savepoint version and
releasing the lock.
SAP HANA on SAP HANA now runs in production on vSphere, the foundation of the VMware vCloud
vSphere Suite. You can combine the power of the SAP HANA in-memory platform with vSphere
to achieve faster time-to-value, better service levels and lower TCO for your
production environments, and take the next step to the software-defined data center.
As shown in Figure 5, the benefits include:
Faster Time-to-Value—Accelerate and automate provisioning and reduce
deployment time to hours rather than days. Use template provisioning to
ensure consistency and scalability across environments.
Better Service Levels—With vSphere vMotion, live-migrate SAP HANA across
hosts in minutes with zero downtime and zero data loss. Ensure 99.9% high
availability and maximize uptime by automatically restarting SAP HANA virtual
machines with vSphere High Availability. Automatically manage peak analytic
workloads.
Lower TCO—Reduce capital expenditure (CapEx) by 70% and operational
expenditure (OpEx) by 56% through greater utilization of existing resources
and infrastructure. Unify and manage SAP HANA with the rest of your
virtualized data center. Improve resource utilization through simplified
operations management.
For detailed information on virtualizing SAP HANA with VMware vSphere, refer to SAP
Note 1788665 and to the VMware documentation section.
A variety of techniques and tools are available to customers when migrating SAP
HANA on vSphere. In Migrating from a physical to a virtualized environment using
NMSAP, we show how to migrate SAP HANA on vSphere using NMSAP.
NMSAP for SAP NMSAP is an add-on module for the NetWorker server and client software. In this
HANA solution, we use the followings steps to configure the NMSAP for SAP HANA after
configuration installing the NetWorker client and NMSAP software on the SAP HANA node.
1. Create a SAP HANA user key and set the credential parameters. The SAP HANA
user key takes the higher precedence because it is more secure than the
standard username/password combination, as a password can be leaked
through the process list.
Create a user key BACKUP with the hdbuserstore command, as shown in
Figure 6. This key is then used in step 3.
3. Specify the options and values required for the backup configuration on each
wizard page that appears. In this solution, we specify SAP HANA as
application type and the user key BACKUP, as created in step 1. The SID,
Note: HANA full backups can be directed to any device supported by NetWorker
such as tape drives, virtual disk library, basic file, or Data Domain. In this solution,
Data Domain is recommended since SAP HANA full backups benefit greatly from
data deduplication.
For full SAP environment protection (including applications such as ERP, BI, and so
on), we strongly recommend using NetWorker's powerful features to schedule regular
VMware image and critical files backup. This can include the instance profile, the
transport domain configuration file, and other critical files under the /sapmnt,
/usr/sap/, and /hana/shared file systems. Additional NetWorker clients can be
created for virtual machines for either traditional backup or VMware Consolidated
Backup (VCB).
Migrating from a This test scenario validates that NMSAP can be used for migrating SAP HANA from a
physical to a physical to a virtual platform with a different OS patch level. Beyond that particular
virtualized validation, this scenario can also be used to restore the backup to a different host for
environment using repurpose—for example, using the restored SAP system as a TEST system with the
NMSAP same SID but using a different hostname.
In this solution, we restore to a virtual SAP HANA database from the backup of a
physical HANA saved on Data Domain using NMSAP. The OS patch of the virtual SAP
HANA database upgrades from SUSE Linux 11 SP2 to SP3 by migration.
Note: Follow the SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide and Best Practices
and Recommendations for Scale-up Deployments of SAP HANA on VMware vSphere
documents to install SAP HANA on vSphere.
Note: Follow NMSAP for SAP HANA configuration on page 14 to install and configure
NMSAP for virtual SAP HANA.
Figure 10. Query the record count of the physical HANA database table and OS version
2. In HANA Studio’s physical HANA backup console, perform data backup for
physical HANA. Select Backint for Destination Type and type 4migration for
the backup name in the Backup Prefix text box, as shown in Figure 11. The
backup name is later used for the virtual HANA restore.
3. In HANA Studio’s virtual HANA backup console, initiate a recovery SAP HANA
database to a specific data backup operation through HANA Studio. For
virtual HANA recovery, specify the same Destination Type and Backup Prefix
settings as the physical HANA backup, as shown in Figure 12.
Validation results
We verified the table records count and OS version from the recovered virtual HANA
database. Figure 13 shows the table records count matching the values recorded on
the physical HANA with the OS patch upgraded. The HANA database is migrated to a
virtual machine with a different OS version using NMSAP for HANA and the data is
validated.
Figure 13. Validate table records count and OS version on virtual HANA
Virtual HANA This test scenario validates that NMSAP integrated with the SAP HANA BACKINT
backup and backup solution is compatible with a virtual HANA database. The testing includes:
recovery with Recovering virtual HANA to its most recent state
HANA Studio and
NMSAP Recovering virtual HANA to a specific point-in-time
Recovering virtual HANA to its most recent state
Recovery of virtual HANA to its most recent state is required when database data or
log areas become unusable. This can happen if data or log files are damaged by a
false operation, a vSphere data store failure, and so on. In this solution, we validate
virtual HANA recovery to its most recent state with HANA Studio and NMSAP by
simulating data file corruption.
2. Delete one HANA data file manually to simulate a data file crash.
3. Restart the virtual HANA database. Due to the missing data file, the restart
fails.
4. In the SAP HANA Studio Specify Recovery Type window, select Recover the
database to its most recent state for the recovery type.
5. Specify the log backup location and select the latest available data backup,
as shown in Figure 15.
Figure 15. Recover virtual HANA database to its most recent state
Validation results
We started the recovered virtual HANA database and verified the table records count.
Figure 16 shows that the table records match the values recorded before the table
records were deleted.
Test procedure
1. Query the current table records count and timestamp, as shown in Figure 17.
2. Drop one table to simulate a database logic error, as shown in Figure 18.
3. In the SAP HANA Studio Specify Recovery Type window, select Recover the
database to the following point in time as the recovery type. Specify the point
in time from step 1 in the Date and Time fields, as shown in Figure 19.
4. Specify the log backup location and select the latest available data backup.
5. Start the recovery operation.
Figure 20. Validate table records number after database point-in-time recovery
Automate backup SAP HANA database backup can be initiated either through HANA Studio or through
through NetWorker the NetWorker console. The NetWorker console enables centralized management of
console and SAP NetWorker components (including NetWorker server, various clients, and backup
GUI devices) and comprehensive data protection options within the enterprise. This test
scenario validates that automating the backup solution is compatible with a virtual
HANA database.
Test procedure
1. In HANA Studio, ensure Enable Automatic Log Backup is selected, as shown
in Figure 21.
2. In the NetWorker console, open the group properties of the virtual HANA
client.
3. Set the Start time of the group, as shown in Figure 22. The NetWorker client in
the backup group begins automatic scheduled backups according to the start
time of the group.
The SAP Basis administrator can also schedule backup of SAP Business Suite on
HANA through transaction code DB13 in the SAP GUI, as follows:
1. Select BACKINT for Destination Type in the Action Parameters tab, as shown
in Figure 24.
Findings The test results for virtual SAP HANA backup and restore with NMSAP for HANA
presented here confirm the following:
NetWorker is an enterprise-class data protection solution that meets specific
needs. NMSAP for HANA enables comprehensive SAP HANA data protection
options within the enterprise.
NMSAP enables easy migration to virtual SAP HANA using existing physical
SAP HANA database backup. Migrating to a virtualized environment provides
the benefits of rapid provisioning, zero downtime, and low TCO.
The NMSAP backup solution is compatible with a virtual HANA database
including manual and automated backup, specific backup set restore, most
recent restore, and point-in-time restore.
SAP For additional information, see the SAP documents listed below.
documentation
SAP Note 1995460 - Single SAP HANA VM on VMware vSphere in production
SAP Note 1788665 - SAP HANA Support for VMware Virtualized Environments
SAP HANA Administration Guide - SAP HANA Platform SPS 08
SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide - SAP HANA Platform SPS 08
SAP HANA Guidelines for Being Virtualized with VMware vSphere
VMware For additional information, see the VMware documents listed below.
documentation
SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 5.5 Best Practices Resource Guide
Best Practices and Recommendations for Scale-up Deployments of SAP HANA
on VMware vSphere