SAP Note
2271345 - Cost-Optimized SAP HANA Hardware for Non-Production Usage
Component: HAN-DB (SAP HANA > SAP HANA Database), Version: 7, Released On: 03.07.2020
Symptom
You want to install SAP HANA on cost-optimized hardware infrastructure for running HANA in non-production use case
scenarios.
Other Terms
Supported SAP HANA hardware for non-production use case scenarios, SAP HANA tailored data center integration delivery
method, certified SAP HANA hardware
Reason and Prerequisites
This document provides a set of guidelines to help SAP HANA customers to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for non-
production systems, improve flexibility, and accelerate SAP HANA adoption and rate of innovation. The cost of non-
production landscape can be significant, since on average SAP landscapes have 3 to 9 additional non-production systems for
every production system. SAP understands that for some customers, performance may not be a critical factor for their non-
productive use. That’s why we developed this set of guidelines targeting these customers that are willing to sacrifice on SAP
HANA performance in order to lower their non-production hardware cost. Please note, performance related support will only
be provided on production grade hardware (See SAP HANA Hardware Directory site for hardware configurations supported
for production systems).
Solution
By issuing this SAP Note, SAP provides a set of guidelines for customers who wish to cost-optimize their hardware
infrastructure when deploying HANA in non-production scenarios. This document contains a set of guidelines that apply only
to hardware vendors and customers that are implementing SAP HANA systems for non-production scenarios. For production
use case scenarios, customers should choose from a certified HANA hardware listed on SAP HANA Hardware Directory site.
For non-production scenarios, customers can cost-optimize their deployment infrastructure by following the relaxed set of
guidelines listed below for major SAP HANA infrastructure components, including Processor, Memory, Storage, Network, and
Operating System.
See attached FAQ, slide deck titled "Cost-optimized SAP HANA Hardware for Non-production" for more details.
Compute server/processor guidelines for SAP HANA in non-production
SAP HANA on Intel platform CPU guidelines
For non-production usage, SAP has relaxed the processor requirements to include low-end family of E7 processors that
are less expensive (e.g. Westmere EX Xeon E7-x8xx or IvyBridge EX Xeon E7-x8xx V2, or Haswell EX Xeon E7-x8xx V3, or
Broadwell EX Xeon E7-x8xx V4). Since in non-production scenarios performance is not a significant factor, customers can
either use:
Lower-cost enterprise class servers based on any Intel Xeon EX E7 v1/v2/v3/v4 family of processors (in scale-up, scale-
out deployment model), or
Intel Xeon EX E5 v2/v3/v4 commodity hardware (2 socket, in scale-up deployment model only) for HANA entry-level
systems on commodity Intel Xeon E5 CPU-based hardware.
Please note, for production usage - SAP HANA on Intel platform is only supported on the high-end Intel Xeon EX E7
family of processors (see SAP HANA Hardware Directory site for an up-to-date list of certified HANA appliance servers based
on Intel E7 processor family). Also supported for production usage are HANA entry-level server configurations based on Intel
Xeon EX E5 commodity processors (see Supported HANA Entry-level E5 systems site for more details).
SAP HANA on IBM Power platform CPU guidelines
For non-production usage, relaxations are documented in SAP Note 2055470 in section "Non-Production relaxations of
the requirements for SAP HANA on IBM Power Servers"
For production usage, SAP HANA on IBM Power platform is supported as documented in SAP Note 2188482.
Guidelines for core to memory ratio for SAP HANA in non-production
For non-production usage, SAP has always had less stringent requirements for core-to-memory ratio: In general, customers
were allowed to double the core-to-memory ratio than that in production.
In 2014, SAP has further relaxed the requirements so that customers can use as much main memory as possible in a host
machine for any non-production usages. Please note, although core-to-memory ratio is not enforced for non-production
usages, the more relaxed core-to-memory ratio, the less performance will the system provide.
If you'd like to have the same perfromance in your test environment as the one you have in your production environemnt,
then SAP recommends that for your non-production memory configurations you stick to the same core to memory ratio used
for certified HANA configurations.
Note: For HANA on Power platform in non-production, although there is no restrictions with regards to the maximum
memory per HANA LPAR core, the minimum core count per HANA LPAR is 2.
Storage and Networking Guidelines for SAP HANA in non-production
Minimum storage-to-memory ratio requirement is relaxed to 2x for non-production usage. Our testing indicates that at least
2x is needed to run SAP HANA successfully.
Note: For HANA on Power in non-production, the overall storage size for HANA data and log may be limited to 2 times the
size of the memory available per HANA LPAR.
As performance KPIs are not enforced for non-production usage, SAP HANA users can use any local or shared storage with
standard disks. SAP still recommends the use of RAID 1 or higher for data loss protection.
For non-production scenarios, customers can use any commodity networking components in their network environment: The
only requirement is the existence of 2 network ports to allow a separated HDB net communication over dedicated wires. This
is important for security reasons. In case commodity hardware with only one network port is used, the customer might need to
perform additional steps to ensure baseline security.
Operating System Guidelines for SAP HANA in non-production
For SAP HANA on Intel platform, the same OS versions that are supported in production are supported in non-
production scenarios. As of Oct 18, 2016 - supported OS versions include SUSE Linux 11.x, 12, 12 SP1, or RHEL 6.5, 6.6, 6.7,
7.2.
For SAP HANA on Power platform, the same OS versions that are supported in production are supported in non-
production scenarios. For details see SAP Note 2235581 - SAP HANA: Supported Operating Systems
See attached FAQ, slide deck titled "Cost-optimized SAP HANA Hardware for Non-production" for more details.
Attributes
Key Value
Other Components SAP HANA > SAP HANA Database > SAP HANA DI (HDI): diserver, HDI plugins& client libs (HAN-DB-DI)
This document refers to
SAP Note/KBA Component Title
2188482 HAN-DB SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems: Supported hardware and features
1788665 HAN-DB SAP HANA Support for virtualized / partitioned (multi-tenant) environments
Attachments
File Name File Mime Type
Size
FAQ v4.0 - Cost-Optimized SAP HANA Infrastructure for 56 application/vnd.openxmlformats-
Non-Production Usage.docx officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
v4 SAP HANA Cost-optimized Hardware for Non- 264 application/vnd.openxmlformats-
Production.pptx officedocument.presentationml.presentation
