23-November-2013: No, it’s not a normal day for me. It’s a special & exciting day for me and also for EMC Global-IT.
On this date, SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) on HANA Production Landscape (SAP HANA 1.0 SPS06) will be going live on Virtualized environment - may be for the first time in the world. SAP is having a close watch on it also.
It has been an exciting but satisfying experience for me...why? Then you should know how vHANA (virtualized SAP HANA) evolved within EMC-IT…let's have a look back and experience our journey with SAP HANA till now.
SAP HANA deployment initiative in EMC-Global IT has been started around November'2011. Due to my past SAP HANA experience, from EMC, I was the only person, coordinating with SAP and Cisco for the same. Setup & installation of our first HANA Appliance (Cisco UCS C460 M2) for PoC work was completed on 02-December-2011, and released for HANA Development/Modeling. It was HANA 1.0 SPS03 Rev.21. From the installation perspective, I didn't find any major difference from Rev.05/06 which I have worked in Medtronic Project along with SAP Consultant, Greg Monaco. But of course, it was the first time for me to install/configure SAP LT Server and integrate with SAP HANA. Around 40 tables from ECC had been identified and I had configured real-time replication for those tables.
As it was a new technology trend, we didn't have HANA Modeling experts in EMC Global-IT, so we didn't have any other choice than to consider SAP Consulting for SAP HANA Modeling.
Sometime later, during April'2012, SAP AGS was also involved into HANA project, for looking into other HANA deployment options like Suite Accelerator, etc.
I handed over HANA setup to SAP AGS for HANA Suite Accelerator deployment. SAP AGS came up with a new requirement – HANA 1.0 SPS 03 Rev.26.
I was insisting for HANA Upgrade but SAP AGS was not comfortable for HANA upgrade from 21 to 26 due to some technical/modeling(already some of models have been developed by SAP Consulting) reasons.
Old SAP HANA Installation of Rev.21 was destroyed and a fresh SAP HANA 1.0 SPS03 Rev.26 installation was completed by SAP AGS team. This incident haunted me like anything to have an immediate workaround for checking for a successful upgrade without disturbing the existing installation.
There were so many activities going around for EMC PROPEL Go-Live but I didn't have any choice. I had to come up with a feasible solution. Why?
Soon, HANA Modeling team will definitely be asking for SAP HANA upgrade to accommodate new functionalities. There was only one appliance box, and each time, I did the HANA upgrade...it would be quite a risky affair for me if something would happen during or after the upgrade...total work, time & investment on HANA Modeling/Consulting would be wasted just for me.
But again, who will sponsor me a HANA Appliance just for testing....I have to find out a way.
In Bangalore, I started some R&D, looking into HANA installation code...tried bypassing hardware check…tried in my own laptop with VMware workstation environment. I successfully bypassed hardware check but SAP HANA didn't come up due to shortage of memory in my laptop. After this success, I confidently asked my manager for a VM in Bangalore Lab for further testing. I got a VM with vSphere 4.1 and was able to succeed for the first virtual HANA (HANA 1.0 SPS03 Rev.21) installation at EMC. Then immediately I did HANA upgrade from Rev.21 to Rev.26.
In May'2012, HANA Modeling team asked for SAP HANA upgrade from Rev.26 to Rev.30, and then Rev.31 so on. I followed my own test process - first performed upgrade in Bangalore-Lab and then on HANA Appliance. In this way, I have found my own way to minimize the risk of any SAP HANA upgrade failure.
One thing to be clarified here is that, I had no connection with VMware and was completely in dark about what was happening in SAP HANA field within VMware during that time frame.
As time went by, HANA demands increased...new projects were launched...and slowly it became a de-facto standard for Training/Sandbox/Development/Testing environment for SAP HANA...which definitely saved a huge appliance costs – separate for each project/system.
Also, I have helped other BU’s (mainly Engineering/Product based teams) for their testing environments of product/solution with SAP HANA. Now vHANA has been tested with vSphere 5.1 environment also.
Everything is fine, what about the next step? That means, virtual SAP HANA environments are ok for non-Prod but what about Production? There should be some productive readiness features has to be bring into the table for vHANA to get it socialize!! High-Availability and Disaster Recovery – are the two key aspects for Production Go-Live for every business. And for BPC on HANA Production Go-Live, we have to come-up with at least proper High-Availability solution. For that, I worked with Ken Paul, Cloud and Virtualization Architect. Along with project team members, I have successfully tested the HA Solution. This solution currently works perfectly but for larger VM HA, we have to continue to work with VMware & SAP to make it a success. And for the DR, as this is not an immediate requirement, we will concentrate after go-live.
So, more than a year and half of eventful/exciting journey of vHANA we have experienced...and now, already the count-down has started....23-November-2013 is not far away....6 days to go!!!
Keep my fingers-crossed...hope for the best.
Note#1: In July'2012, SAP HANA Appliance (standalone) was replaced by EMC-Cisco 4 Node Scale-out HANA Appliance. From that time onwards, we have 3 systems landscape for SAP HANA. Here, I have not discussed about the same.
Note#2: Learn how EMC’s IT implementation of SAP HANA has been supporting real-time analytics to enable operational decision making for the business in the “SAP HANA Customer Spotlight” webinar. It describes:
- What the implementation looks like
- How it has empowered the business
- Technical challenges and lessons learned along the way, including solution design, resourcing, governance, and data center readiness
- EMC IT's experience and plans for vHANA.
The video recording is located here: http://bit.ly/14g8y92
If the above link not working, then proceed for the ppt version - the entire presentation material I uploaded here : Empowering EMC IT with SAP HANA
Hope it will be useful/informative.