Switching over to new HANA hardware

[mstitsel]

For a customer I work for the current HANA hardware server did not have sufficient hardware capacity anymore.

In the past already hardware capacity was added to the physical server, this resulted in a HANA of 512 GB.

But now the memory of the server was fully used and there was a need for 1024 GB memory.

The switch over from the old to the new server is described in this document.

Basically the migration to the new HANA server is done via a backup/restore.

Difficult part was that this HANA server got its data from SAP ECC via a SAP SLT server.

So replication and database triggers should be taken into account when switching over.

The connections between the applications look like:

The high level steps are:

1. Suspend the replication on SAP SLT server
2. Backup old SAP HANA server
3. Stop the current / old SAP HANA server
4. Move the backup files form HANA old to HANA new
5. Install the exact same HANA software on the new HANA server
6. Restore the backup on the new HANA server
7. Perform technical test on new HANA server
8. Adjust the HANA hostname and ip address in SLT
9. Perform technical test on SLT server
10. Replicate one small new table
11. Turn on replication again on SLT for all tables
12. Check if replication is going without issues
13. Adjust the BO configuration for the HANA new server
14. Perform technical tests on BO server and Portal
15. Perform functional tests

Below the steps will be described in more detail.

1. Suspend the replication on SAP SLT server

Suspend the replication on SAP SLT server for all the tables in HANA Studio > Data Provisioning

After this, stop the load jobs.

SAP transaction LTR on SLT server.

Then click on the schema name.

In "jobs and connections" choose for STOP

2. Backup old SAP HANA server

Perform a manual back up via the HANA studio.

Right click on the HANA system in the left side pane and choose backup.

3. Stop the current / old SAP HANA server

Use the normal stop command via operating system as <sid>adm

4. Move the backup files form HANA old to HANA new

We used SFTP to copy the files.

5. Install the exact same HANA software on the new HANA server

We will not go into detail of this as this document focuses on the move and not on the installation itself.

See HANA installation manual for more details.

6. Restore the backup on the new HANA server

Perform a manual restore via the HANA studio.

Right click on the HANA system in the left side pane and choose recover.

It will ask to stop the HANA database.

After this the recover wizard will start

Choose destination type is File.

And specify the backup location.

At the end of the restore we installed a valid license key so that HANA is started without issues.

7. Perform technical test on new HANA server

Check running services from HANA studio > Administration Console

And also from this screen check alerts-tab.

Check users in HANA studio

Right click on the HANA system in the left side pane and choose Security > Users

Check the existing tables from HANA studio

Right click on the HANA system in the left side pane and choose Catalog > <Schemaname> > Tables

8. Adjust the HANA hostname and ip address in SLT

Check on SLT server via transaction LTRC (IUUC_SYNC_MON) > Expert functions > Additional functions

Change settings for connection to target system

9. Perform technical test on the SLT server

Check on SLT server if the hostname is changed via transaction LTR.

In our case the new hostname was not shown correctly!

We created an OSS call for this and it turned out that the change was successful but that this screen was not updated successfully. SAP will create a new OSS note to solve this issue in the future. But it was just a display issue and the change of the hostname was successful.

To be sure the change is successful check the content of table DBCON on the SLT server. The new hostname should be there.

10. Replicate one small new table

We first wanted to test a small new table before we turned on replication for the old tables.

In HANA Studio > Data Provisioning we added a small new table.

The replication was started normally without issues.

The log table and database trigger was created and entries were moved via SLT server to HANA.

11. Turn on replication again on SLT for all tables

In step 1 we suspended the replication of tables.

No we turn it on again.

This is done again from HANA Studio > Data Provisioning

12. Check if replication is going without issues

Start on SLT server transaction transaction LTRC (IUUC_SYNC_MON)

Check the Table Overview, Data Transfer Monitor and Application Logs

13. Adjust the BO configuration for the HANA new server

The BO server is connected to the HANA server.

On two places we need to adjust configuration settings to the new hostname.

First in the CMC

In CMC > Applications and right click on Explorer > Properties.

(I removed the actual details like user/pw)

Second in the Information Design Tool (client tool) the connection to HANA can be altered.

The new connection(s) can be tested and after wards published.

14. Perform technical tests on BO server and Portal

This step is really customer specific.

For this customer we ran basic reports via the SAP portal. The reports were retrieved from SAP BO and this data was from HANA.

15. Perform functional tests

Also this step is customer specific.

The functional consultants and the users perform specific tests at this point.

Best regards,

Marco