Reg : SAP HANA features

[Former Member]

Hello,

I am presently evaluating the features of SAP HANA. For this, I would like to have the following information.

Hardware Requirements

Processor,RAM,disk space requirements? Are there any other requirements?

Supports Intel x64 based processor, 2TB RAM servers and servers like the Dell R910 and HP DL980

What are the supported operatingsystems?

AIX 5.3, 6.1, HP-UX 11.31/IA64 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10/11 64-bit operating

systems

Cost of hardware,price per procesor, license costs ?

Are there any other APIs supported?

JDBC, ODBC, ODBO, SQLDBC, SAP BI 4.0, SQL/MDX, BICS

Are there any other SQL standards supported?

Full ANSI SQL-92 and EXCEL 2010 standard MDX

Do they support Triggers and if yes, how?

Do they support Stored procedures ?

Supported Index Types Bitmap?

Data independence(Programming Abstraction) Yes or No?

Transaction Processing support Yes or No?

What are the levels in transaction isolation ?

Locking support - at Row,table ,database level?

Durability Support (ACID) ?

Yes , Persistence layer

High Availability support -Replication?

Yes

Backup & Recovery Support?

Yes

Can SAP In-Memory Database act as a secondary cache to Relational DBMS? What are the databases supported by the cache?

Which kind of application profile is best suited for SAP In-Memory Databases? Does it produce best results for complex queries, subqueries,joins,table lookups?

Well suited for OLAP applications.

Does it offer a cost-based optimizer or rule-based optimizer?

Does it support partitioning and maximum number of partitions supported?

Utilities - for administrative tasks?

Could you please support on the above information?

Thanks in advance.

[former_member93896]

Hello Priya,

a lot of questions... Anyway, here we go...

Processor,RAM,disk space requirements? Are there any other requirements?

Check the Product Availability Matrix. It lists all certified hardware for HANA.

http://service.sap.com/pam > Type in "HANA"

What are the supported operatingsystems?

The applicance/server runs on LINUX SUSE SLES11/X86_64 64BIT exclusively.

The studio runs on WINDOWS and LINUX.

Check the PAM for client OS support.

Cost of hardware,price per procesor, license costs ?

Hardware costs > Please contact hardware vendor.

License costs > Please contact your SAP account executive.

Are there any other APIs supported?

JDBC, ODBC, ODBO, SQLDBC, SAP BI 4.0, SQL/MDX, BICS

Yes, but please see SAP Note <a href="http://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1577128">1577128</a>

Are there any other SQL standards supported?

SQL 92 and core features of SQL 99. On top of this HANA offers several SQL extensions for example for row and column based tables and conversion between the two.

Do they support Triggers and if yes, how?

No

Do they support Stored procedures ?

Yes

Supported Index Types Bitmap?

No. Column tables do not need any additional indexes. You can create secondary indexes for row tables (type btree).

Data independence(Programming Abstraction)?

There are various levels of abstraction. Not sure what you refer to.

Transaction Processing support Yes or No?

Yes. HANA is fully ACID compliant.

What are the levels in transaction isolation ?

Transaction and statement level isolation

Locking support - at Row,table ,database level?

HANA uses multi version concurrency control. Concurrent read operations see a consistent view of the database without blocking concurrent write operations. Write operations use row-level locks to prevent conflicts.

Durability Support (ACID) ?

Yes. See above.

High Availability support - Replication?

Yes. Depends on hardware vendor.

Backup & Recovery Support?

Yes. See http://help.sap.com/hana > System Administration > Database Backup and Recovery Guide

Can SAP In-Memory Database act as a secondary cache to Relational DBMS? What are the databases supported by the cache?

No. But you can load data from basically any RDBMS (see BusinessObjects Data Services) into HANA and report on the data in HANA.

Which kind of application profile is best suited for SAP In-Memory Databases? Does it produce best results for complex queries, subqueries,joins,table lookups?

HANA has many use case with benefits to a large number of business applications.

Does it offer a cost-based optimizer or rule-based optimizer?

Both. The calculation engine uses mostly rule-based optimization. The database engine uses a cost-based optimization.

Does it support partitioning and maximum number of partitions supported?

Yes. However, partitioning is typically used to split data across several hosts in distributed HANA databases. It's not necessary to speed up queries.

Utilities - for administrative tasks?

The central administration tool is the HANA Studio.

Regards,

Marc

SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)

[esjewett]

Hi Marc,

Is the PAM out of date with regards to hardware platforms? I just looked under the extended enterprise edition and the hardware maxes out at 1TB of memory. But John Appleby reports 2TB appliances available from most vendors and IBM supposedly supplies a 5TB appliance. Is this correct?

Thanks,

Ethan

[Vitaliy-R]

Ethan, the hardware list in PAM is from June, so certainly outdated. AFAIK (and I need to remind every time that I am not a hardware guy , the biggest single servers - although technicaly capable of having 2 TB RAM, are certified with 1TB max for both 64 (Nehalem-EX) and 80 (Westmere-EX) cores machines to keep the ratio required by HANA software.

5TB RAM in the single machine? I saw this only as an example of prototype built by SAP R&D - consuming the energy of 5 single-family houses

[esjewett]

Hi Vitaliy,

Sounds like a lot of RAM for one machine to me too I thought I read about the 5TB IBM machine here ([http://peopleprocesstech.com/2011/09/20/sap-hana-an-analysis-of-the-major-hardware-vendors/]), but now I see that it actually was talking about 2.5TB and in a different context. So I guess I must have mis-read!

Cheers,

Ethan

[former_member93896]

Vitaliy is correct. On another note, scale out solutions are in the pipeline to be certified. However, if you or any customer is interested in these bigger systems, please contact the hardware vendors directly so they see that there's a demand for it. This will help to accelerate the certification.

Thanks,

Marc

SAP Customer Solution Adoption (CSA)

[Former Member]

I am looking for a HANA hardware for Test and Developmental purpose. As per the sizing, we would not need more than 32GB of memory.

What is the recommended hardware for test purpose and who is the cheapest vendor.

[Vitaliy-R]

Hi priya4484.

From the list of your questions, I think after going through the material sugested by Mark, you should then talk to your SAP and hardware vendor(s) reps to get general understanding as well as price points.

Regards,

-Vitaliy

[Former Member]

Hello Priya,

SAP HANA is currently only sold as an appliance, so SAP realeases you from worrying about hardware specifics. You can only buy the certified appliances from HP, IBM, Cisco, Fujitsu etc. I haven't heard any announcement that HANA could be installed independently.

Most of your other questions about interfaces etc are answered in this presentation from Marc Bernard:

There is even an example of the syntax for Stored procedures.

Regards,

Mark