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Protecting SAP HANA with FlashArray//X and SAP HANA Cockpit

During the last year I have persistently explored how the SAP® HANA® in-memory data platform can be protected. Some of these explorations range from working with storage snapshots , protecting business operations through the use of ActiveCluster™ and creating resilient environments through the combination of both concepts.

Recently I have embarked on creating demonstrations on the process of creating application consistent snapshots with Pure Storage® FlashArray™ and SAP HANA Cockpit for the different types of SAP HANA systems. The simplicity and ease of creating a volume snapshot demonstrated during these processes ensures that systems administrations and business developers can focus on important business functions knowing that critical data is protected and can be recovered from in the event of an emergency.

In a previous blog post I discussed how anyone can automate the process of creating storage snapshots for SAP HANA. The demonstrations not only showcase how to manually create a storage snapshot but also how to recover from one.

It is important to note that for each demonstration the following components will be shown :

  • A deployment of SAP HANA Cockpit with each relevant SAP HANA deployment connected to it
  • Optionally an SSH terminal to connect to the operating system and run commands
  • The Pure Storage FlashArray graphical user interface

Without anything further, demonstration can be found below :

Create a storage snapshot for an SAP HANA single host/scale up system

Create a storage snapshot for an SAP HANA multi-host/scale out system

Recover an SAP HANA single host/scale up system from a storage snapshot

Recover an SAP HANA multi-host/scale out system from a storage snapshot

The following hdbsql(native sql) commands were used for some of the steps in the demonstrations.

Prepare the system for a storage snapshot :

BACKUP DATA FOR FULL SYSTEM CREATE SNAPSHOT COMMENT ‘SNAPSHOT-PureStorageSnap’;

In the event that anything goes wrong during the creation of a storage snapshot , it is marked as unsuccessful :

BACKUP DATA FOR FULL SYSTEM CLOSE SNAPSHOT BACKUP_ID <BackupId> UNSUCCESSFUL ‘optional comment’;

If everything goes as expected during the creation of a storage snapshot , it is marked as successful during the final step :

BACKUP DATA FOR FULL SYSTEM CLOSE SNAPSHOT BACKUP_ID <BackupId> SUCCESSFUL ‘optional comment’;

For scale out deployments , this command can be used to identify which data and log volumes are attached to which hosts :

SELECT HOST, STORAGE_ID, PATH, KEY, VALUE

FROM SYS.M_ATTACHED_STORAGES

WHERE KEY = ‘WWID’

AND PATH LIKE (SELECT CONCAT(VALUE,’%’)

FROM M_INIFILE_CONTENTS WHERE FILE_NAME = ‘global.ini’

AND SECTION = ‘persistence’

AND KEY = ‘basepath_datavolumes’

AND VALUE NOT LIKE ‘$%’)

The really important knowledge I took away from creating these demonstrations was that with FlashArray and the Purity operating environment it is so easy to not only take a snapshot , but there are also a number of simple and easy ways in which the snapshot can be recovered.

Additional Resources

Fast, reliable backup and built in protection for SAP HANA 

SAP HANA Protection with FlashArray 

Recovering SAP HANA MDC systems from storage snapshots