Enterprise Readiness with SAP HANA – Storage & System Replication between data centers

Having covered the Build phase in our last blog on system replication within the data center, we will now cover in this blog the phase on running the data center. The run phase focuses on helping IT managers to operate and execute the data center readiness stages of disaster recovery, monitoring and administration, as well as security and auditing. In this blog, we will focus specifically on the storage and system replication technologies currently available for the IT manager.

Storage & System Replication

For large enterprises running multiple data centers, SAP HANA has two disaster recovery features: storage replication and system replication. These are based on the current offerings SAP HANA already has at the node level, which we covered in the previous blog. The table below provides a brief overview between the two offerings and their implications.

Enterprise Readiness with SAP HANA – Host Auto-failover, System Replication, Storage Replication

Continuing on from the earlier blog on Backup & Recovery that we covered last year, we will focus on the Building phase for data centers as we continue this topic in 2017. This segment will focus on what happens inside the data center, and specificically the high availability capabilities and options by SAP HANA, which can be deployed according to the IT managers’ landscape requirements. Of particular focus would be the System Replication feature, which will be explained in detail.

Choosing the right HANA Database Architecture

I have realized that especially after the recent release of “more advanced” S/4 HANA products, the SAP community is now more focused on cloud, on premise or hybrid deployment options and it seems to me that the actual underlying SAP HANA database architecture is usually overlooked even though it is the core of the entire implementation. In case you end up with wrong HANA database architecture, it would be really hard to have a proper high-availability and disaster recovery setup in your landscape no matter where you deployed it – cloud or on premise. And remember, when it comes to architecting SAP HANA, there are 3 key elements must be considered carefully; scalability, effectiveness and fault tolerance. In this article, I aim to provide detailed information regarding the current available SAP HANA database architecture and deployment options.

Fiori Launchpad in SAP HANA 2.0 SP01

SAP Fiori launchpad is the strategic single point of entry for SAP business applications and analytics. It offers a role-based, personalized and real-time access for end users.

If you are not familiar with Fiori UX and Fiori Launchpad you can find more information here.

How to send data from Apache NIFI to HANA

NIFI is a great apache web based tool, for routing and transformation of data. Kind of an ETL tool. In my scenario, I am trying to fetch tweets from the Tweeter API, and after that, I wanted to save them to hadoop, but also, filter them and save them to HANA for doing Sentiment Analysis

My first idea was to save them to hadoop, and then fetch them to HANA, but after discovering NIFI, it was obvious that the best solution was to fetch the tweet, then format the json file, and then insert it on HANA.

Why nifi? the answer is simple, it is very intuitive and simple to use. Also very simple to install, and it is already integrated with twitter, hadoop, and JDBC. So it was the obvious choose for my idea.-

New in SAP HANA, express edition: Streaming Analytics

SAP HANA smart data streaming (SDS) is HANA’s high speed real-time streaming analytics engine.  It lets you easily build and deploy streaming data models (a.k.a. projects) that process and analyze incoming messages as fast as they arrive, allowing you to react in real-time to what’s going on. Use it to generate alerts or initiate an immediate response. With the Internet of Things (IoT), common uses include analyzing incoming sensor data from smart devices – particularly when there is a need to react in real-time to a new opportunity – or in anticipation of a problem.

Using Data Management Strategies to Simplify the Move to S/4HANA

When it comes to considering the move to S/4HANA, many companies are concerned by the short-term pain points that accompany the transition – even though the future benefits are so clear. While SAP provides many tools and support to make the transition as seamless as possible, many companies prefer to delay the transition and wait and see what the future holds. But “wait and see” is not a very viable business strategy.

Organizations must look for ways to simplify the move to S/4HANA and increase the ROI. The same strategies are applicable when migrating BW and/or Business Suite systems from any legacy database to SAP HANA.

Unpivot Data In HANA Using a Graphical Calculation View

UNPIVOT data is a common requirement especially when we try to covert MS SQL query into SAP HANA data model. I ran into one such requirement, we had ETL data from MS SQL server to SAP HANA Enterprise and while converting one MS SQL model into HANA model I came across a Select query in MS SQL server where they were using UNPIVOT in Select statement.

I am using a simple example to explain how we can UNPIVOT data in HANA using Graphical Calculation View.

What is really changing with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01?

This new release includes enhancements for database management, data management, analytical intelligence and application development.

This release also includes another important change which will have a greater influence on the landscape configuration and sizing of SAP HANA and will definitely encourage people to become more creative and flexible with the technical architecture.

Starting with SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01, multitenant database containers (MDC) will be the only operational mode for SAP HANA systems. This means that if you upgrade to SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01, you will no longer be able to run a single-container HANA system.

SAP HANA Express: Exposing Predictive Analytics through oData

The prerequisites for your SAP HANA instance:

• A tenant DB, which you can create with the following command.

CREATE DATABASE DB1 SYSTEM USER PASSWORD Initial1;

alter system start database DB1;

• While we are abiding by better practices, it’s a good idea to create a Developer user instead of using the SYSTEM user for development.
• A user with the proper permissions to execute the PAL functions and DROP/CREATE ANY in a schema (different from the AFL schema, please). The following is a sample list of roles taking into account what this blog needs, but you need to restrict permissions depending on your needs (you will also need CATALOG READ and the proper package privileges):

LEARN WITH US : S/4HANA Analytics!!

What it is?

S/4 HANA stands for Simple 4th Generation Business suite solutions from SAP which will run on SAP HANA. SAP HANA is one of the preferred product among the companies seeking for an optimized enterprise solution because the product has come a long way from its previous predecessors which had its transaction processing and analytical processing in different platforms, that meant more time on data output and decision making.

It is very well known as The Next Generation Business Suite and it is greatest innovation since R3 and ERP from the SAP world. It unites the software and people to build businesses to run on real-time, networked and in simple way. It has got built-in analytics for hybrid transactional and analytical applications.

S/4HANA OP FIORI Apps: How to configure FIORI Apps?

At times, users come across many issues like system alias, services activation, server errors while testing Fiori apps in S/4HANA OP landscape. The issues are generally due to incomplete configuration.

Based on my learning, I am listing down the steps one can follow to setup Fiori apps in S/4HANA OP Landscape.

As OData services exists in gateway system, all the settings listed below are applicable to Gateway system.

Multi-container database mode is the new default

Multi-tenancy features, also known as “multiple database containers” or MDC have been available in SAP HANA for several years already. With the new SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01 release, all systems now run in multi-container database mode. All new systems are installed in multi-container database mode, and existing single-container systems are converted during the upgrade to SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 01.

Advantages of multi-container database mode

Systems running in multi-container database mode can very easily be extended by adding new tenant databases. Being able to run and manage multiple tenant databases in one system helps you to lower capital expenditure, simplify database management, or for example build multi-tenant cloud applications.

SAP PDMS 1.0 FP02 On-premise edition 1.0 (Configuration – Pt.2)

In the first part of my documentation (pt.1), I have explained and showed in detail how to proceed  with the mandatory landscape and component setup of the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution.
In this second part (pt.2) I will explain and show how to configure the applications regarding:

• Thing Model Service
• Data Science Service
• Insight Provider (Map, Asset Explorer, Components, Key Figures)

SAP PDMS 1.0 FP02 On-premise edition 1.0 (Installation – Pt.1)

SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service, on-premise edition supports customers with a unified solution for operators looking to identify issues in large fleets of machines as well as to improve after-sales services and optimize service planning for individual machines.

The following image gives you an overview of what business users see when they work with the asset health control center, to get further detailed information about an asset health status, business users can go to the asset health fact sheet:

The First Predictive BSM Solution for SAP HANA

SAP has reviewed and qualified Centerity Monitor as suitable for use in SAP solution environments

Technology cooperation between SAP Co-Innovation Labs and Centerity brings holistic Business Service Monitoring (BSM) capabilities to the entire SAP environment including SAP ERP, SAP Infrastructure, and SAP HANA. Centerity Monitor has been tested by SAP Labs and this post describes that testing process and SAP’s conclusions.

SQL Clients and SAP HANA 2.0

So recently I’ve been playing around a lot with our “Server Only” version of the SAP HANA, express edition (HXE). Now with that server only version I am mainly focused on just using more of the Database features than anything else. Trying SQL and working with the PAL libraries.

With our activities and ability to quickly load HXE into the Google Cloud Platform I also thought how else could I speed of some of my time. I mean I am only working with SQL on some of these things so could I use the JDBC driver and find a tool that would do nicely for it?

I’ve now tried a good half a dozen or so and decided that the current one I will play with the next few weeks would be DBeaver.

How to configure transports of XS Classic native applications

I recently needed to configure the transports of Delivery Units between a SAP HANA, express edition, (HXE)  instance in Amazon Web Services and one of my tenant databases in another HXE instance in Google Cloud Platform.

My destination HXE instance (some kind of QA environment) was originally a server-only to which I added the XS classic tools as explained in this how-to guide . The source instance plays the Dev environment in this scenario.  I wanted to transport from Dev into QA without manually exporting and importing Delivery Units.

In order to configure the transports and access the ALM tools you will need the following roles in the source/Dev system:

• sap.hana.xs.lm.roles::Administrator
• hana.xs.admin.roles::HTTPDestAdministrator
• hana.xs.admin.roles::RuntimeConfAdministrator

HANA Rules Framework (HRF)

HANA Rules Framework (HRF)

SAP HANA Rules Framework provides tools that enable application developers to build solutions with automated decisions and rules management services, implementers and administrators to set up a project/customer system, and business users to manage and automate business decisions and rules based on their organizations’ data.

In daily business, strategic plans and mission critical tasks are implemented by a countless number of operational decisions, either manually or automated by business applications. These days – an organization’s agility in decision-making becomes a critical need to keep up with dynamic changes in the market.

Paddling Upstream: How to find all HANA views that use a particular table/column

Requirement:

Find all HANA views that use a particular table/column.

If a field is dropped/modified from a table, identify the upstream model impacts.

Problem Faced:

Our team’s analytics was based on tables from multiple source systems.

There were instances where fields were being dropped from source tables as a part of continuous changes.

HANA Express Edition on an UBUNTU 16.04 LXC Container

I’m assuming you have a working Ubuntu 16.04 Server or Desktop installation, and you have the installation files by hand.
What we’ll do is:

• Install required packages, 
• create a network bridge, 
• do some LXC config stuff, 
• create a LXC container and 
• install HANA Express Edition in that container. 

What we’ll get is:

• A Hana Express Edition working in a Linux Contianer, 
• all advantages of an isolated Virtual Machine, 
• a much smaller VM memory footprint, 
• and near bare metal speed.

R Integration with SAP HANA

Here are the prerequisites you must have before trying your hands on “R”

HBDCLIENT

HDServer

R-ODBC Package

R Studio

Setup the Data source (in this case SAP HANA DB Server)

Go to Service Marketplace -> Software Downloads -> Support Packages and Patches -> A-Z –> H–> SAP HANA PLATFORM EDITION” –> SAP HANA PLATFORM EDIT. 1.0” –> Entry by Component” –> HANA client

HANA – table unload priorities

Many people still think all data in HANA which exists in the data area also loaded into memory all the time. Of course there are some techniques which influence the unload / placement of tables e.g. data aging and the non-active data concept of BW. Usually unloads happen based on a “least recently used” (LRU) approach, so the columns having not being used for the longest time are unloaded first. So HANA decides when it makes sense to unload some tables to free memory.

But what about your own tables? Can you also take influence when data are unoaded? For general information you can refer to 2127458 – FAQ: SAP HANA Loads and Unloads. Ok you can manually unload or load tables. But you want to do this automatically and want to understand when tables are loaded or unloaded.