Cloud Storage Backint agent for SAP HANA installation guide

These instructions show you how to install and configure the Cloud Storage Backint agent for SAP HANA (Backint agent) on a Compute Engine VM that has SAP HANA installed.

For an overview of the Backint agent, see Cloud Storage Backint agent for SAP HANA in the SAP HANA operations guide.

Prerequisites

Before you install the Backint agent, the following prerequisites must be met:

SAP HANA is installed. To install SAP HANA on Google Cloud, see SAP HANA Deployment Guide.

Creating a Cloud Storage bucket for backups

Before you can configure the Backint agent, you need to create a Cloud Storage bucket to hold the backups.

Depending on whether you need to be able to restore your backups to SAP HANA instances in a single region or to SAP HANA instances in other regions, you can define the bucket as either regional or multi-regional.

The Backint agent itself doesn't impose any restrictions on the type of bucket you use or where the bucket is located.

To create a Cloud Storage bucket, use the Cloud Console.

Open the Cloud Storage browser in Cloud Console.

Open the Cloud Storage browser
Click CREATE BUCKET.
Name your bucket and then click Continue.
Follow the prompts to select your bucket options.
Click Create.
To configure bucket permissions, click the permissions tab. By default, as owner of the bucket, you have read-write access to the bucket. You can also give other members in your group or individual users to access your bucket.

Installing the agent on your SAP HANA VM

The Backint agent is installed in the same shared file system as the SAP HANA database.

In an SAP HANA scale-out deployment, install the Backint agent on each node of the SAP HANA system. To simplify administration, you can store your configuration files in a shared location that is accessible to all of the nodes in your deployment, such as /hana/shared.

Connect to your VM by using SSH. From the Compute Engine VM instances page, you can click the SSH button for your VM instance, or you can use your preferred SSH method.
Switch to the SAP HANA system administrator.
```
sudo su - sidadm
```
Download and install the Backint agent.
```
curl https://storage.googleapis.com/sapdeploy/backint-gcs/install.sh | bash
```
The installation process:
- Downloads Backint agent and installs it in /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs.
- Downloads a compatible version of the Java Runtime Environment.
- Sets up an executable script that invokes the program. Do not modify the executable script.
- Upon completion, issues a message instructing you to update the parameters.txt file and to set up authentication.
If SAP HANA is not running on Google Cloud or if you need the Backint agent to use a different set of resource permissions than the host VM uses, create a service account for the Backint agent.
1. Open the IAM & admin Service accounts page in Google Cloud Console.
  
  Go to the Service Accounts page
2. Click + CREATE SERVICE ACCOUNT.
3. Specify a name for the service account and, optionally, a description.
4. Click CREATE.
5. On the Service account permissions panel, click Continue to create the service account without permissions.
6. As appropriate, grant users access to the service account.
7. Create a service account key by clicking CREATE KEY and accepting JSON as the default. A private key is saved to your computer.
8. Click Done.
Upload the private key to the SAP HANA VM.
Grant the service account permission to use the Cloud Storage bucket that you created earlier:
1. Click on your bucket name in the Cloud Storage browser.
  
  Open Cloud Storage browser
2. Click the Permissions tab.
3. Click Add members.
4. In the New members field, enter the full email address of the service account. For example:
  
  backint-test@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
Configure the Backint agent.
1. Use your preferred method to edit the parameters.txt file, which is installed in the following directory:
```
/usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt
```
  For descriptions of the configuration parameters, as well as performance recommendations, see Configuration options for the Backint agent.
2. In parameters.txt, add the name of the Cloud Storage bucket to use for the backups.
```
#BUCKET bucket-name
```
3. If you created a service account and private key for the Backint agent, add the path to the JSON file that contains the private key to parameters.txt.
```
#SERVICE_ACCOUNT /path/to/json/file/on/SAP/HANA/VM
```

Configure SAP HANA to use the Backint agent.

Use SAP HANA Studio to set the following parameters in the backup section of the global.ini configuration file to the values shown in the table.

Parameter	Value
`catalog_backup_parameter_file`	`/usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt`
`catalog_backup_using_backint`	`true`
`data_backup_parameter_file`	`/usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt`
`log_backup_parameter_file`	`/usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt`
`log_backup_using_backint`	`true`

Use SAP HANA Studio to specify the same value for both basepath_catalogbackup and basepath_logbackup in the persistence section of the global.ini file. For example:

Test the installation by creating a backup in the Cloud Storage bucket and restoring from the backup.
To support the Backint agent automatic update function, enable remote HTTP requests from the SAP HANA VM to https://www.googleapis.com/.
Optionally, enable Stackdriver Logging.
- If SAP HANA is running on Google Cloud, add the com.google.cloud.logging.LoggingHandler handler to the com.google.cloud.partners.handlers property in the /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/logging.properties file.
- If SAP HANA is running outside of Google Cloud, install Cloud SDK and configure the application-default login by using the gcloud auth application-default login command.

Troubleshooting

If errors occur during the execution of a backup or a recovery, error messages are displayed in SAP HANA Studio or SAP HANA Cockpit, so check there first for information about the cause of an error. This information might be displayed in the backup.log and backint.log trace files. Be sure to select the relevant database name when multitenant database containers (MDC) are used.

The Backint agent also writes installation and operational events to files on the SAP HANA VM in the directory /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/logs.

If the Backint agent can't connect to the Cloud Storage bucket, review the configuration steps. In particular, check the following items:

If you are using the default VM service account with the Backint agent, the access scope for Storage is listed as Read Write under Cloud API access scopes on the VM instance details page in the Cloud Console. If it is not, stop the instance and edit the access scope.
If you created a service account for the Backint agent:
- On the Permissions tab of the Bucket details page in the Cloud Console, the Storage Object Admin role is assigned to the service account.
- You created a private key, stored on the SAP HANA VM, and correctly specified the path to the JSON file in the Backint agent configuration file, /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt.
All parameters are specified correctly in both the parameters.txt Backint agent configuration file and the SAP HANA global.ini file.

If you get errors while multistreaming, change the number of streams to one (1) to see if the error is related to the number of streams.

For more information about Backint agent logging, see Logging for the Backint agent.

Support

If you cannot resolve a problem with Backint agent yourself, you can open a support incident with SAP under component BC-OP-LNX-GOOGLE.

Include the following information:

The HANA version
The parameters file used for Backint
The global.ini entries for backup
- backint_response_timeout
- data_backup_buffer_size
- parallel_data_backup_backint_channels

For more information from SAP about getting support for SAP HANA, see the "Getting Support" section in the SAP HANA Administration Guide.

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Last updated November 27, 2019.