Edit

Requirements and considerations for application volume group for SAP HANA

  • Article

This article describes the requirements and considerations you need to be aware of before using Azure NetApp Files application volume group for SAP HANA.

Requirements and considerations

  • You will need to use the manual QoS capacity pool functionality.

  • You must have created a proximity placement group (PPG) and anchor it to your SAP HANA compute resources. Application volume group for SAP HANA needs this setup to search for an Azure NetApp Files resource that is close to the SAP HANA servers. For more information, see Best practices about Proximity Placement Groups and Create a Proximity Placement Group using the Azure portal.

  • You must have completed your sizing and SAP HANA system architecture, including the following areas:

    • SAP ID (SID)
    • Memory
    • Single-host or multiple-host SAP HANA
    • Determine whether you want to use HANA System Replication (HSR). HSR enables SAP HANA databases to synchronously or asynchronously replicate from a primary SAP HANA system to a secondary SAP HANA system.
    • The expected change rate for the data volume (in case you're using snapshots for backup purposes)

  • You must have created a VNet and delegated subnet to map the Azure NetApp Files IP addresses.

    It is recommended that you lay out the VNet and delegated subnet at design time.

    Application volume group for SAP HANA will create multiple IP addresses, up to six IP addresses for larger-sized estates. Ensure that the delegated subnet has sufficient free IP addresses. It’s recommended that you use a delegated subnet with a minimum of 59 IP addresses with a subnet size of /26. See Considerations about delegating a subnet to Azure NetApp Files.

Important

The use of application volume group for SAP HANA for applications other than SAP HANA is not supported. Reach out to your Azure NetApp Files specialist for guidance on using Azure NetApp Files multi-volume layouts with other database applications.

Best practices about proximity placement groups

To deploy SAP HANA volumes using the application volume group, you need to use your HANA database VMs as an anchor for a proximity placement group (PPG). It’s recommended that you create an availability set per database and use the SAP HANA VM pinning request form to pin the availability set to a dedicated compute cluster. After pinning, you need to add a PPG to the availability set and then deploy all hosts of an SAP HANA database using that availability set. Doing so ensures that all virtual machines are at the same location. If the virtual machines are started, the PPG has its anchor.

Important

If you have requested Azure NetApp Files SAP HANA volume pinning before the application volume group was available, you should remove the pinning for your subscription. Existing pinning for a subscription might impact the application volume group deployment and might result in a failure.

When using a PPG without a pinned availability set, a PPG would lose its anchor if all the virtual machines in that PPG are stopped. When the virtual machines are restarted, they might be started in a different location, which can result in a latency increase because the volumes created with the application volume group will not be moved.

This situation leads to two possible scenarios:

  • Stable long-term setup:
    Using an availability set in combination with a PPG where the availability set is manually pinned.

    With the pinning, it is always assured that the placement of the virtual machine will not be changed even if all machines in the availability set are stopped.

  • Temporary setup:
    Using a PPG or an availability set in combination with a PPG without any pinning.

    SAP HANA capable virtual machine series (that is, M-Series) are mostly placed close to Azure NetApp Files so that the application volume group with the help of a PPG can create the required volumes with lowest possible latency. This relationship between volumes and HANA hosts will not change if at least one virtual machine is up and running.

    Note

    When you use application volume group to deploy your HANA volumes, at least one VM in the availability set must be started. Without a running VM, the PPG cannot be used to find the optimal Azure NetApp files hardware, and provisioning will fail.

Next steps