SAP HANA Tutorial, Material and Certification Guide

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Understand HANA SPS and supported Operating Systems

HANA Revision Strategy

SAP is shipping regular corrections and updates. Corrections are shipped in the form of Revisions and Support Packages of the product’s components. New HANA capabilities are introduced twice a year in form of SAP HANA Support Package Stacks (SPS). The Datacenter Service Point (DSP) is based upon the availability of a certain SAP HANA revision, which had been running internally at SAP for production enterprise applications for at least two weeks before it is officially released.

Supported Operating Systems

According to SAP Note “2235581 – Supported Operating Systems” the following two Linux distributions can be used with the SAP HANA Platform.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications (SLES for SAP)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA (RHEL for SAP HANA)

All information in this document refers to these two products from SUSE and Red Hat only.

Several additional notes applies, when selecting an Operating System release for SAP HANA.

HANA SPS Revision Notes: HANA revision (x) requires a minimum OS release (y)
Hardware that has been certified within the SAP HANA hardware certification program has been certified for a list of available combinations on a specific operating system version. See SAP Certified Appliance Hardware for SAP HANA
Only host types released by SAP hardware partners are suitable for using SAP software productively on Linux
SAP cannot support software from third-party providers (e.g. OS) which is no longer maintained by the manufacturer

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP (SLES for SAP)

With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP (SLES for SAP) there are major releases 11 & 12 with their appropriate service packs. Several Service Packs (SP) are available in an SUSE release and it is possible to stay with a specific SP until its support ends. The general support for a Service pack ends at a defined date. These “general end” dates are communicated on SUSE Web pages.

With an RTC (Release To Customer) dates of HANA SPS there are supported SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP (SLES) versions available which can be combinations for a supported stack. When a new SAP HANA SPS is released new “SLES for SAP” versions are available to build a supported combination:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA (RHEL for SAP HANA)

Starting with SAP HANA Platform SPS 08 Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA is supported for SAP HANA. Red Hat follows an approach with major & minor releases. With Extended Update Support (EUS) for specific RHEL for SAP HANA releases it is possible to remain on a specific minor release even if there is already a subsequent minor release available.

You can find more details about Life Cycle on Red Hat Enterprise Linux product web pages. When a new SAP HANA SPS is released new RHEL for SAP HANA versions are available which can be used as a supported stack:

HANA SPS & OS version timeline

We see a timeline of HANA SPS and available OS releases from SUSE and Red Hat. The next overview and all earlier timelines shows lifecycles of HANA and SLES/RHEL and not an official support status for HANA releases.

The marked intersections show those points in time when there is a supported release from the OS vendors at the RTC date of a new HANA SPS.

Older operating system releases are not longer supported and disappear in the timeline after SUSE’s “general support end” for “SLES for SAP” or Red Hat’s “EUS” end date and will be replaced with a new OS version or service pack.

OS Validation

End of Life of an OS

The sample on the next picture shows SLES for SAP 11 SP3 that has a general support end date in January 2017. This is a point in time when validation stops for that OS release and upcoming HANA SPS are no more supported on SLES for SAP 11 SP3.

Sunrise of an OS

If a new OS release is available, SAP is planning to support it with the next upcoming HANA SPS. The following sample timeline shows SLES for SAP 11 SP4, which was available before HANA SPS11 was released. Following SPS are also supported on SLES for SAP 11 SP4 since it has not reached its general support end date yet.