Configure guest OS on Compute Engine bare metal instances

This guide shows you how to configure the guest operating system (OS) on Compute Engine bare metal instances for the optimal running of SAP HANA workloads, by using Google Cloud's Agent for SAP.

To seamlessly perform the required guest OS configurations on bare metal instances such as X4, you run the configureinstance command of Google Cloud's Agent for SAP.

This guide is meant for SAP Basis and SAP system administrators who want to run their SAP workloads on Compute Engine bare metal instances.

Before you begin

Configure the guest OS on your bare metal instance

  1. Connect to your bare metal instance by using SSH or your preferred method.

  2. Check whether the OS on your bare metal instance is optimally configured to run SAP HANA workloads:

    sudo /usr/bin/google_cloud_sap_agent configureinstance -check
    

    The command output informs if any OS configurations are needed. For information about the OS packages that X4 instances need to run SAP HANA, see the following file in the agent's read-only repository on GitHub: GoogleCloudPlatform/sapagent/internal/onetime/configureinstance/configurex4.go.

  3. If the preceding command output mentions that OS configurations are required, then apply them:

    sudo /usr/bin/google_cloud_sap_agent configureinstance -apply
    
  4. Restart your bare metal instance.

  5. Optionally, to view information about the OS configurations that the agent performed on your bare metal instance, see the following log file:

    /var/log/google-cloud-sap-agent/configureinstance.log

Disable hyperthreading for an X4 instance

In some scenarios, you can improve the performance of OLTP based SAP HANA workloads by disabling hyperthreading on the underlying X4 instances. For more information, see Hyperthreading.

To disable hyperthreading for your X4 instance by using Google Cloud's Agent for SAP, complete the following steps:

  1. Connect to your X4 instance by using SSH or your preferred method.

  2. Disable hyperthreading for your X4 instance:

    sudo /usr/bin/google_cloud_sap_agent configureinstance -apply -hyperThreading="off"
    
  3. Restart your X4 instance.