Virtual HANA or vHANA

[Former Member]

During SAPPHIRENow event in Madrid, on 15-Nov-2012, SAP announced that "VMware vSphere is now supported and is the preferred way to virtualize SAP’s high performance HANA database". It was really a great news for both - VMware and SAP Customers.

But from several blogs and discussions, I have found that most of us not completely aware about the above.

In a lab, I have used vSphere 4.1 and successfully installed SAP HANA 1.0 built 21 on early days of 2012. Later I have tried on my laptop(using VMware Workstation) and HANA installation was also successful.

On a ‘strategic collaboration’ with VMware, SAP officially supports the HANA platform on vSphere 5.1 from end of 2012. But the above platform offered by SAP technology partners for test and development only.

This helps customer provision instances of SAP HANA in virtual machines faster, enabling customers to deploy the analytics platform ‘on-demand’, and will enable HANA to operate on VMware deployment architecture. HANA running on vSphere can be treated and managed along with the rest of your SAP landscape using the same tools already in use.  Extensive testing has been done with HANA on vSphere and it has been confirmed that HANA functions exactly the same as it does as a hardware appliance, but with the added benefits of VMware virtualization. While allowing for smaller HANA instances, vSphere 5.1 also allows for virtual machines to be scaled up to 64 virtual CPUs and 1 TB of memory.  This enables virtual HANA to address a wide range of needs of customers. HANA on vSphere opens many new possibilities by enabling a more flexible and still high performing leading edge database environment.

Recently we have observed the following press releases related to VMware and SAP :

On May 23, 2013 - http://www.VMware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-sap-hybrid-cloud-services-052113.html

- VMware and SAP Collaborate to Deliver SAP® Solutions as a Service on VMware Cloud Infrastructure. SAP HANA® One Premium, a new subscription-based 64GB instance of the leading SAP HANA platform for productive use and with enterprise support, will be available on VMware vCloud® Suite and the new VMware vCloud Hybrid Service.

On June 18, 2013 - https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/286/77371

Kevin Knieriem(SAP) and Ray Blanchard(VMware) explained during "Transform Your Business: Virtualize SAP HANA with VMware" webcast

- The new deployment choices for your virtualized SAP HANA environment, on vCloud Suite or newly announced vCloud® Hybrid Service™, and the benefits

- How VMware and SAP together are helping SAP customers assess, create and adopt virtualization strategies for their SAP HANA environments.

Stay tuned for more interesting news on vHANA.