Terraform: SAP HANA scale-up deployment guide

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This deployment guide shows you how to deploy a SAP HANA system on Google Cloud by using Terraform and a configuration file to define your installation. The guide helps you configure Compute Engine virtual machines (VMs) and persistent disks, as well as the Linux operating system, to achieve the best performance for your SAP HANA system. The Terraform configuration file incorporates best practices from both Compute Engine and SAP.

Use this guide to deploy either a single-host scale-up or a multi-host scale-out SAP HANA system that does not include standby hosts.

If you need to include SAP HANA automatic host failover, use the Terraform: SAP HANA scale-out system with host auto-failover deployment guide instead.

If you need to deploy SAP HANA in a Linux high-availability cluster, use one of the following guides:

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure that you meet the following prerequisites:

  • You have a Google Cloud account and project.
  • Virtual Private Cloud networking is set up with firewall rules or other methods to control access to your VMs.

  • You have access to the SAP HANA installation media.

  • If OS login is enabled in your project metadata and you are deploying scale-out nodes, you need to disable OS login temporarily until your deployment is complete. For deployment purposes, this procedure configures SSH keys in instance metadata. When OS login is enabled, metadata-based SSH key configurations are disabled, and this deployment fails. After deployment is complete, you can enable OS login again.

    For more information, see:

Setting up your Google account

A Google account is required to work with Google Cloud.

  1. Sign up for a Google account if you don't already have one.
  2. Log in to the Google Cloud console, and create a new project.
  3. Enable your billing account.
  4. Configure SSH keys so that you are able to use them to SSH into your Compute Engine VM instances. Use the Google Cloud CLI to create a new SSH key.
  5. Use the gcloud CLI or Google Cloud console to add the SSH keys to your project metadata. This allows you to access any Compute Engine VM instance created within this project, except for instances that explicitly disable project-wide SSH keys.

Creating a network

For security purposes, create a new network. You can control who has access by adding firewall rules or by using another access control method.

If your project has a default VPC network, don't use it. Instead, create your own VPC network so that the only firewall rules in effect are those that you create explicitly.

During deployment, VM instances typically require access to the internet to download Google Cloud's Agent for SAP. If you are using one of the SAP-certified Linux images that are available from Google Cloud, the VM instance also requires access to the internet in order to register the license and to access OS vendor repositories. A configuration with a NAT gateway and with VM network tags supports this access, even if the target VMs do not have external IPs.

To create a VPC network for your project, complete the following steps:

  1. Create a custom mode network. For more information, see Creating a custom mode network.

  2. Create a subnetwork, and specify the region and IP range. For more information, see Adding subnets.

Setting up a NAT gateway

If you need to create one or more VMs without public IP addresses, you need to use network address translation (NAT) to enable the VMs to access the internet. Use Cloud NAT, a Google Cloud distributed, software-defined managed service that lets VMs send outbound packets to the internet and receive any corresponding established inbound response packets. Alternatively, you can set up a separate VM as a NAT gateway.

To create a Cloud NAT instance for your project, see Using Cloud NAT.

After you configure Cloud NAT for your project, your VM instances can securely access the internet without a public IP address.

Adding firewall rules

By default, an implied firewall rule blocks incoming connections from outside your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network. To allow incoming connections, set up a firewall rule for your VM. After an incoming connection is established with a VM, traffic is permitted in both directions over that connection.

You can also create a firewall rule to allow external access to specified ports, or to restrict access between VMs on the same network. If the default VPC network type is used, some additional default rules also apply, such as the default-allow-internal rule, which allows connectivity between VMs on the same network on all ports.

Depending on the IT policy that is applicable to your environment, you might need to isolate or otherwise restrict connectivity to your database host, which you can do by creating firewall rules.

Depending on your scenario, you can create firewall rules to allow access for:

  • The default SAP ports that are listed in TCP/IP of All SAP Products.
  • Connections from your computer or your corporate network environment to your Compute Engine VM instance. If you are unsure of what IP address to use, talk to your company's network administrator.
  • Communication between VMs in the SAP HANA subnetwork, including communication between nodes in an SAP HANA scale-out system or communication between the database server and application servers in a 3-tier architecture. You can enable communication between VMs by creating a firewall rule to allow traffic that originates from within the subnetwork.
  • SSH connections to your VM instance, including SSH-in-browser.
  • Connection to your VM by using a third-party tool in Linux. Create a rule to allow access for the tool through your firewall.

To create the firewall rules for your project, see Creating firewall rules.

Creating a Cloud Storage bucket for the SAP HANA installation files

The installation files that contain the SAP HANA binaries must be stored in a Cloud Storage bucket before you can use Terraform to install SAP HANA. Terraform expects the files in the file formats provided by SAP. Depending on your version of SAP HANA, the file format might be a .zip file or .exe and .rar files.

To download the SAP HANA installation files, create a bucket, and upload the files to the bucket as follows:

  1. From SAP Software Downloads, download all parts of the Linux x86_64 distribution of SAP HANA Platform Edition 1.0 or 2.0, as well as any applicable revision upgrades to your local drive.

    If your SAP Support Portal account does not allow access to the software and you believe that you should be entitled to the software, contact the SAP Global Support Customer Interaction Center.

  2. Use the Google Cloud console to create a Cloud Storage bucket for storing the SAP HANA installation files. Note that the bucket name must be unique across Google Cloud.

    • During bucket creation, choose Standard for your storage class.

  3. Configure bucket permissions. By default, as owner of the bucket, you have read-write access to the bucket. To give access to other principals, see Using IAM permissions.

  4. In the Google Cloud console, in the Cloud Storage bucket page, choose Upload Files to upload the SAP HANA software and any upgrade revision files to your bucket from your local media:

    Upload Files

  5. Note the name of the bucket that you uploaded the binaries to. You need to use it later when you install SAP HANA.

Creating a VM with SAP HANA installed

The following instructions use Terraform to install SAP HANA on one or more VM instances with all of the persistent disks that SAP HANA requires. You define the values for the installation in a Terraform configuration file.

The following instructions use Cloud Shell, but are generally applicable to the Google Cloud CLI.

  1. Confirm that your current quotas for resources such as persistent disks and CPUs are sufficient for the SAP HANA system you are about to install. If your quotas are insufficient, deployment fails. For the SAP HANA quota requirements, see Pricing and quota considerations for SAP HANA.

    Go to Quotas

  2. Open the Cloud Shell or, if you installed the Google Cloud CLI on your local workstation, open a terminal.

    Open Cloud Shell

  3. Download the sap_hana.tf configuration file to your working directory by running the following command in the Cloud Shell or your terminal:

    wget https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/latest/terraform/sap_hana/terraform/sap_hana.tf

  4. Open the sap_hana.tf file in Cloud Shell code editor or, if you are using your terminal, the text editor of your choice.

    To open the Cloud Shell code editor, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the Cloud Shell terminal window.

  5. In the sap_hana.tf file, update the following argument values by replacing the brackets and their contents with the values for your installation.

    Some of the argument values that you specify for the SAP HANA system, such as values for sap_hana_sid, sap_hana_sidadm_password, or sap_hana_system_password, are subject to rules that are defined by SAP. For more information, see the Parameter Reference in the SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide.

    To specify passwords in the configuration file, you must either use secrets or, specify passwords in plain text. For more information, see Password management.

    If you want to create a VM instance without installing SAP HANA, delete all of the lines that begin with sap_hana_.

    Argument Data type Description
    source String

    Specifies the location and version of the Terraform module to use during deployment.

    The DEPLOYMENT_TYPE.tf configuration file includes two instances of the source argument: one that is active and one that is included as a comment. The source argument that is active by default specifies latest as the module version. The second instance of the source argument, which by default is deactivated by a leading # character, specifies a timestamp that identifies a module version.

    If you need all of your deployments to use the same module version, then remove the leading # character from the source argument that specifies the version timestamp and add it to the source argument that specifies latest.

    project_id String Specify the ID of your Google Cloud project in which you are deploying this system.
    instance_name String Specify a name for the host VM instance. The name can contain lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. The VM instances for the worker and standby hosts use the same name with a w and the host number appended to the name.
    machine_type String Specify the type of Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) on which you need to run your SAP system. If you need a custom VM type, then specify a predefined VM type with a number of vCPUs that is closest to the number you need while still being larger. After deployment is complete, modify the number of vCPUs and the amount of memory.
    zone String Specify the zone in which you are deploying your SAP system. The zone must be in the same region that you selected for your subnet.
    subnetwork String Specify the name of the subnetwork that you created in a previous step. If you are deploying to a shared VPC, then specify this value as SHARED_VPC_PROJECT_ID/SUBNETWORK. For example, myproject/network1.
    linux_image String Specify the name of the Linux operating system image on which you want to deploy your SAP system. For example, rhel-8-4-sap-ha or sles-15-sp3-sap. For the list of available operating system images, see the Images page in the Google Cloud console.
    linux_image_project String Specify the Google Cloud project that contains the image that you have specified for the argument linux_image. This project might be your own project or a Google Cloud image project. For a Compute Engine image, specify either rhel-sap-cloud or suse-sap-cloud. To find the image project for your operating system, see Operating system details.
    sap_hana_deployment_bucket String To automatically install SAP HANA on the deployed VMs, specify the path of the Cloud Storage bucket that contains the SAP HANA installation files. Do not include gs:// in the path; include only the bucket name and the names of any folders. For example, my-bucket-name/my-folder.

    The Cloud Storage bucket must exist in the Cloud project that you specify for the project_id argument.
    sap_hana_sid String To automatically install SAP HANA on the deployed VMs, specify the SAP HANA system ID. The ID must consist of three alpha-numeric characters and begin with a letter. All letters must be in uppercase.
    sap_hana_sidadm_uid Integer Optional. Specify a value to override the default value of the SID_LCadm user ID. The default value is 900. You can change this to a different value for consistency within your SAP landscape.
    sap_hana_instance_number Integer Optional. Specify the instance number, 0 to 99, of the SAP HANA system. The default is 0.
    sap_hana_sidadm_password String To automatically install SAP HANA on the deployed VMs, specify a temporary SIDadm password for the installation scripts to use during deployment. The password must contain at least 8 characters and include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and a number.

    Instead of specifying password as plain text, we recommend that you use a secret. For more information, see Password management.

    sap_hana_sidadm_password_secret String Optional. If you are using Secret Manager to store the SIDadm password, then specify the Name of the secret that corresponds to this password.

    In Secret Manager, make sure that the Secret value, which is the password, contains at least 8 characters and includes at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and a number.

    For more information, see Password management.

    sap_hana_system_password String To automatically install SAP HANA on the deployed VMs, specify a temporary database superuser password for the installation scripts to use during deployment. The password must contain at least 8 characters and include at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and a number.

    Instead of specifying password as plain text, we recommend that you use a secret. For more information, see Password management.

    sap_hana_system_password_secret String Optional. If you are using Secret Manager to store the database superuser password, then specify the Name of the secret that corresponds to this password.

    In Secret Manager, make sure that the Secret value, which is the password, contains at least 8 characters and includes at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, and a number.

    For more information, see Password management.

    sap_hana_scaleout_nodes Integer To deploy SAP HANA in a multi-host scale-out architecture, specify the number of worker hosts that you need. The default value is 0.

    Terraform creates the worker hosts in addition to the primary HANA instance. For example, if you specify 3, then four SAP HANA instances are deployed in a scale-out cluster.
    sap_hana_shared_nfs String Optional. For a multi-host scale-out deployment that uses an NFS solution to share the /hana/shared volume with the worker hosts, specify the NFS mount point for that volume. For example, 10.151.91.122:/hana_shared_nfs.

    For more information, see File sharing solutions for multi-host scale-out deployments.

    This argument is available in sap_hana module versions 202302060649 or later.
    sap_hana_backup_nfs String Optional. For a multi-host scale-out deployment that uses an NFS solution to share the /hanabackup volume with the worker hosts, specify the NFS mount point for that volume. For example, 10.216.41.122:/hana_backup_nfs.

    For more information, see File sharing solutions for multi-host scale-out deployments.

    This argument is available in sap_hana module versions 202302060649 or later.
    sap_hana_shared_nfs_resource Map/Object Optional. To deploy a Filestore instance that shares the /hana/shared/ volume with the hosts in your multi-host scale-out SAP HANA system, specify the name of the file share that you set in the definition of your google_filestore_instance resource. To view an example, see the sample configuration in this guide.

    For more information, see File sharing solutions for multi-host scale-out deployments.

    This argument is available in sap_hana module versions 202302060649 or later.
    sap_hana_backup_nfs_resource Map/Object Optional. To deploy a Filestore instance that shares the /hanabackup volume with the hosts in your multi-host scale-out SAP HANA system, specify the name of the file share that you set in the definition of your google_filestore_instance resource. To view an example, see the sample configuration in this guide.

    For more information, see File sharing solutions for multi-host scale-out deployments.

    This argument is available in sap_hana module versions 202302060649 or later.
    sap_hana_backup_size Integer Optional. Specify size of the /hanabackup volume in GB. If you don't specify this argument or set it to 0, then the installation script provisions Compute Engine instance with a HANA backup volume of two times the total memory.

    sap_hana_backup_size is ignored when you specify a value for sap_hana_backup_nfs or sap_hana_backup_nfs_resource.
    sap_hana_sapsys_gid Integer Optional. Overrides the default group ID for sapsys. The default value is 79.
    network_tags String Optional. Specify one or more comma-separated network tags that you want to associate with your VM instances for firewall or routing purposes.

    If you specify public_ip = false and do not specify a network tag, then make sure to provide another means of access to the internet.

    nic_type String Optional. Specify the network interface to use with the VM instance. You can specify the value GVNIC or VIRTIO_NET. To use a Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC), you need to specify an OS image that supports gVNIC as the value for the linux_image argument. For the OS image list, see Operating system details.

    If you do not specify a value for this argument, then the network interface is automatically selected based on the machine type that you specify for the machine_type argument.

    This argument is available in sap_hana module versions 202302060649 or later.
    disk_type String Optional. Specify the default type of persistent disk or Hyperdisk that you want to deploy for all the SAP volumes in your deployment. The default value is pd-ssd. The following are valid values for this argument: pd-ssd, pd-balanced, hyperdisk-extreme, and pd-extreme.

    Note that when you specify the value hyperdisk-extreme, the /usr/sap directory is mounted on a separate balanced persistent disk (pd-balanced). This is because /usr/sap directory doesn't require as high a performance as the /hana/data or /hana/log directory. In SAP HANA scale-up deployments, a separate balanced persistent disk is also deployed for the /hana/shared directory.

    You can override this default disk type and the associated default disk size and default IOPS using some advanced arguments. For more information, navigate to your working directory, then run the terraform init command, and then see the /.terraform/modules/SAP_HANA_MODULE/variables.tf file. Before you use these arguments in production, make sure to test them in a test environment.

    use_single_shared_data_log_disk Boolean Optional. The default value is false, which directs Terraform to deploy a separate persistent disk or Hyperdisk for each of the following SAP volumes: /hana/data, /hana/log, /hana/shared, and /usr/sap. To mount these SAP volumes on the same persistent disk or Hyperdisk, specify true.
    include_backup_disk Boolean Optional. This argument is applicable to SAP HANA scale-up deployments. The default value is true, which directs Terraform to deploy a standard HDD persistent disk to host the /hanabackup directory. The size of this disk is determined by the sap_hana_backup_size argument.

    If you set the value for include_backup_disk as false, then no disk is deployed for the /hanabackup directory.

    public_ip Boolean Optional. Determines whether or not a public IP address is added to your VM instance. The default value is true.
    service_account String Optional. Specify the email address of a user-managed service account to be used by the host VMs and by the programs that run on the host VMs. For example, svc-acct-name@project-id.iam.gserviceaccount.com.

    If you specify this argument without a value, or omit it, then the installation script uses the Compute Engine default service account. For more information, see Identity and access management for SAP programs on Google Cloud.

    sap_deployment_debug Boolean Optional. Only when Cloud Customer Care asks you to enable debugging for your deployment, specify true, which makes the deployment generate verbose deployment logs. The default value is false.
    reservation_name String Optional. To use a specific Compute Engine VM reservation for this deployment, specify the name of the reservation. By default, the installation script selects any available Compute Engine reservation based on the following conditions.

    For a reservation to be usable, regardless of whether you specify a name or the installation script selects it automatically, the reservation must be set with the following:

    • The specificReservationRequired option is set to true or, in the Google Cloud console, the Select specific reservation option is selected.
    • Some Compute Engine machine types support CPU platforms that are not covered by the SAP certification of the machine type. If the target reservation is for any of the following machine types, then the reservation must specify the minimum CPU platforms as indicated:
      • n1-highmem-32: Intel Broadwell
      • n1-highmem-64: Intel Broadwell
      • n1-highmem-96: Intel Skylake
      • m1-megamem-96: Intel Skylake
      • The minimum CPU platforms for all of the other machine types that are certified by SAP for use on Google Cloud conform to the SAP minimum CPU requirement.

    The following example shows a completed configuration file that directs Terraform to deploy an n2-highmem-32 virtual machine with a scale-out SAP HANA system that includes a master SAP HANA instance with three worker hosts, and Filestore Basic instances that share the /hana/shared and /hanabackup volumes with the worker hosts. The hosts run the operating system SLES for SAP 15 SP2.

    #
resource "google_filestore_instance" "hana_shared_nfs" {
  name = "fs-basic-shared"
  tier = "PREMIUM"
  project = "example-project-123456"
  location = "us-central1-f"
  file_shares {
    name = "hana_shared_nfs"
    capacity_gb = 2600
  }
  networks {
    network = "example-network"
    modes   = ["MODE_IPV4"]
  }
}

resource "google_filestore_instance" "hana_backup_nfs" {
  name = "fs-basic-backup"
  tier = "PREMIUM"
  project = "example-project-123456"
  location = "us-central1-f"
  file_shares {
    name = "hana_backup_nfs"
    capacity_gb = 2600
  }
  networks {
    network = "example-network"
    modes   = ["MODE_IPV4"]
  }
}

#...
module "sap_hana" {
  source = "https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/latest/terraform/sap_hana/sap_hana_module.zip"
  #
  # By default, this source file uses the latest release of the terraform module
  # for SAP on Google Cloud. To fix your deployments to a specific release
  # of the module, comment out the source property above and uncomment the source property below.
  #
  # source = "https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/YYYYMMDDHHMM/terraform/sap_hana/sap_hana_module.zip"
  # ...
  project_id = "example-project-123456"
  zone = "us-central1-f"
  machine_type = "n2-highmem-32"
  subnetwork = "example-subnet-us-central1"
  linux_image = "sles-15-sp2-sap"
  linux_image_project = "suse-sap-cloud"

  instance_name = "hana-scaleout"
  sap_hana_shared_nfs_resource  = resource.google_filestore_instance.hana_shared_nfs
  sap_hana_backup_nfs_resource  = resource.google_filestore_instance.hana_backup_nfs

  # sap_hana_shared_nfs = "10.151.91.122:/hana_shared_nfs"
  # sap_hana_backup_nfs = "10.216.41.122:/hana_backup_nfs"

  sap_hana_deployment_bucket = "mybucketname"
  sap_hana_sid = "AB2"
  sap_hana_instance_number = 12
  sap_hana_sidadm_password = "TempPa55word"
  sap_hana_system_password = "TempPa55word"
  sap_hana_scaleout_nodes = 3
  sap_hana_sidadm_uid = 11
  # ...
}

  6. To initialize your current working directory and download the Terraform provider plugin and module files for Google Cloud:

    terraform init

    The terraform init command prepares your working directory for other Terraform commands.

    To force a refresh of the provider plugin and configuration files in your working directory, specify the --upgrade flag. If the --upgrade flag is omitted and you don't make any changes in your working directory, then Terraform uses the locally cached copies, even if latest is specified in the source URL.

    terraform init --upgrade

  7. Optionally, to create the Terraform execution plan:

    terraform plan

    The terraform plan command shows the changes required by your current configuration. If you skip the terraform plan command, then the terraform apply command computes the plan before applying it.

  8. To apply the execution plan:

    terraform apply

    When you are prompted to approve the actions, enter yes.

    The terraform apply command sets up the Google Cloud infrastructure and then invokes another script that configures the operating system and installs SAP HANA.

    While Terraform has control, status messages are written to the Cloud Shell. After the scripts are invoked, status messages are written to Logging and are viewable in the Google Cloud console, as described in Check the logs.

    Time to completion can vary, but the entire process usually takes less than 30 minutes.

Verifying deployment

To verify deployment, you check the deployment logs in Cloud Logging and check the disks and services on the VMs of primary and worker hosts.

Check the logs

  1. In the Google Cloud console, open Cloud Logging to monitor installation progress and check for errors.

    Go to Cloud Logging

  2. Filter the logs:

    Logs Explorer

    1. In the Logs Explorer page, go to the Query pane.

    2. From the Resource drop-down menu, select Global, and then click Add.

      If you don't see the Global option, then in the query editor, enter the following query:

      resource.type="global"
"Deployment"

    3. Click Run query.

    Legacy Logs Viewer

    • In the Legacy Logs Viewer page, from the basic selector menu, select Global as your logging resource.

  3. Analyze the filtered logs:

    • If "--- Finished" is displayed, then the deployment processing is complete and you can proceed to the next step.

    • If you see a quota error:

      1. On the IAM & Admin Quotas page, increase any of your quotas that do not meet the SAP HANA requirements that are listed in the SAP HANA planning guide.

      2. Open Cloud Shell.

        Go to Cloud Shell

      3. Go to your working directory and delete the deployment to clean up the VMs and persistent disks from the failed installation:

        terraform destroy

        When you are prompted to approve the action, enter yes.

      4. Rerun your deployment.

Check the configuration of the VM and SAP HANA system

  1. After the SAP HANA system deploys without errors, connect to each VM by using SSH. From the Compute Engine VM instances page, you can click the SSH button for each VM instance, or you can use your preferred SSH method.

    SSH button on Compute Engine VM instances page.

  2. Change to the root user.

    sudo su -

  3. At the command prompt, enter df -h, and then make sure that you see an output similar to the following, with the volumes and sizes that you expect.

    The following is an example output from the master node of a sample scale-out system that has three worker nodes. Note that there are no volumes for /hana/shared and /hanabackup because these volumes are hosted on Filestore instances.

    example-vm:~ # df -h
Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                           126G  8.0K  126G   1% /dev
tmpfs                              189G     0  189G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                              126G   18M  126G   1% /run
tmpfs                              126G     0  126G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda3                           30G  6.5G   24G  22% /
/dev/sda2                           20M  2.9M   18M  15% /boot/efi
10.65.188.162:/hana_shared_nfs     2.5T   41G  2.4T   2% /hana/shared
/dev/mapper/vg_hana_usrsap-usrsap   32G  265M   32G   1% /usr/sap
/dev/mapper/vg_hana_data-data      308G   10G  298G   4% /hana/data
/dev/mapper/vg_hana_log-log        128G  7.8G  121G   7% /hana/log
10.160.217.66:/hana_backup_nfs     2.5T     0  2.4T   0% /hanabackup
tmpfs                               26G     0   26G   0% /run/user/472
tmpfs                               26G     0   26G   0% /run/user/900
tmpfs                               26G     0   26G   0% /run/user/1000

  4. Switch to the SAP admin user:

    su - SID_LCadm

    Replace SID_LC with the SID value that you specified in the configuration file. Use lowercase for any letters.

  5. Ensure that SAP HANA services, such as hdbnameserver, hdbindexserver, and others, are running on the instance:

    HDB info

If any of the validation steps show that the installation failed:

  1. Resolve any errors.

  2. Open Cloud Shell.

    Open Cloud Shell

  3. Go to the directory that contains the Terraform configuration file to deploy SAP HANA.

  4. To delete the deployment:

    terraform destroy

    When you are prompted to approve the action, enter yes.

  5. Rerun your deployment.

Validate your installation of Google Cloud's Agent for SAP

After you have deployed a VM and installed your SAP system, validate that Google Cloud's Agent for SAP is functioning properly.

Verify that Google Cloud's Agent for SAP is running

To verify that the agent is running, follow these steps:

  1. Establish an SSH connection with your host VM instance.

  2. Run the following command: 

    systemctl status google-cloud-sap-agent

    If the agent is functioning properly, then the output contains active (running). For example: 

    google-cloud-sap-agent.service - Google Cloud Agent for SAP
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/google-cloud-sap-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active:  active (running)  since Fri 2022-12-02 07:21:42 UTC; 4 days ago
Main PID: 1337673 (google-cloud-sa)
Tasks: 9 (limit: 100427)
Memory: 22.4 M (max: 1.0G limit: 1.0G)
CGroup: /system.slice/google-cloud-sap-agent.service
       └─1337673 /usr/bin/google-cloud-sap-agent

If the agent isn't running, then restart the agent.

Verify that SAP Host Agent is receiving metrics

To verify that the infrastructure metrics are collected by Google Cloud's Agent for SAP and sent correctly to the SAP Host Agent, follow these steps:

  1. In your SAP system, enter transaction ST06.

  2. In the overview pane, check the availability and content of the following fields for the correct end-to-end setup of the SAP and Google monitoring infrastructure:

    • Cloud Provider: Google Cloud Platform
    • Enhanced Monitoring Access: TRUE
    • Enhanced Monitoring Details: ACTIVE

Installing SAP HANA Studio on a Compute Engine Windows VM

You can connect from a SAP HANA instance outside of Google Cloud or from an instance on Google Cloud. To do so, you might need to enable network access to the target VMs from within SAP HANA Studio.

To install SAP HANA Studio on a Windows VM on Google Cloud, use the following procedure.

  1. Use the Cloud Shell to invoke the following commands.

    Open Cloud Shell 

    export NETWORK_NAME="[YOUR_NETWORK_NAME]"
export REGION="[YOUR_REGION]"
export ZONE="[YOUR_ZONE]"
export SUBNET="[YOUR_SUBNETWORK_NAME]"
export SOURCE_IP_RANGE="[YOUR_WORKSTATION_IP]"
    gcloud compute instances create saphanastudio --zone=$ZONE \
--machine-type=n1-standard-2  --subnet=$SUBNET --tags=hanastudio \
--image-family=windows-2016  --image-project=windows-cloud \
--boot-disk-size=100 --boot-disk-type=pd-standard \
--boot-disk-device-name=saphanastudio
    gcloud compute firewall-rules create ${NETWORK_NAME}-allow-rdp \
--network=$NETWORK_NAME --allow=tcp:3389 --source-ranges=$SOURCE_IP_RANGE \
--target-tags=hanastudio

    The above commands set variables for the current Cloud Shell session, create a Windows server in the subnetwork that you created earlier, and create a firewall rule that allows access from your local workstation to the instance through the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

  2. Install SAP HANA Studio on this server.

    1. Upload the SAP HANA Studio installation files and the SAPCAR extraction tool to a Cloud Storage bucket in your Google Cloud project.
    2. Connect to the new Windows VM by using RDP or your preferred method.
    3. In Windows, with administrator permissions, open the Google Cloud CLI Shell or other command-line interface.

    4. Copy the SAP HANA Studio installation files and the SAPCAR extraction tool from the storage bucket to the VM by entering the gsutil cp command in the command interface. For example:

      gsutil cp gs://[SOURCE_BUCKET]/IMC_STUDIO2_232_0-80000323.SAR C:\[TARGET_DIRECTORY] &
gsutil cp gs://[SOURCE_BUCKET]/SAPCAR_1014-80000938.EXE C:\[TARGET_DIRECTORY]

    5. Change the directory to your target directory.

      cd C:\[TARGET_DIRECTORY]

    6. Run the SAPCAR program to extract the SAP HANA Studio installation file.

      SAPCAR_1014-80000938.EXE -xvf IMC_STUDIO2_232_0-80000323.SAR

    7. Run the extracted hdbinst program to install SAP HANA Studio.

Enable SAP HANA Fast Restart

Google Cloud strongly recommends enabling SAP HANA Fast Restart for each instance of SAP HANA, especially for larger instances. SAP HANA Fast Restart reduces restart time in the event that SAP HANA terminates, but the operating system remains running.

As configured by the automation scripts that Google Cloud provides, the operating system and kernel settings already support SAP HANA Fast Restart. You need to define the tmpfs file system and configure SAP HANA.

To define the tmpfs file system and configure SAP HANA, you can follow the manual steps or use the automation script that Google Cloud provides to enable SAP HANA Fast Restart. For more information, see:

For the complete authoritative instructions for SAP HANA Fast Restart, see the SAP HANA Fast Restart Option documentation.

Manual steps

Configure the tmpfs file system

After the host VMs and the base SAP HANA systems are successfully deployed, you need to create and mount directories for the NUMA nodes in the tmpfs file system.

Display the NUMA topology of your VM

Before you can map the required tmpfs file system, you need to know how many NUMA nodes your VM has. To display the available NUMA nodes on a Compute Engine VM, enter the following command:

lscpu | grep NUMA

For example, an m2-ultramem-208 VM type has four NUMA nodes, numbered 0-3, as shown in the following example:

NUMA node(s):        4
NUMA node0 CPU(s):   0-25,104-129
NUMA node1 CPU(s):   26-51,130-155
NUMA node2 CPU(s):   52-77,156-181
NUMA node3 CPU(s):   78-103,182-207
Create the NUMA node directories

Create a directory for each NUMA node in your VM and set the permissions.

For example, for four NUMA nodes that are numbered 0-3:

mkdir -pv /hana/tmpfs{0..3}/SID
chown -R SID_LCadm:sapsys /hana/tmpfs*/SID
chmod 777 -R /hana/tmpfs*/SID
Mount the NUMA node directories to tmpfs

Mount the tmpfs file system directories and specify a NUMA node preference for each with mpol=prefer:

mount tmpfsSID_UC0 -t tmpfs -o mpol=prefer:0 /hana/tmpfs0/SID_UC
mount tmpfsSID_UC1 -t tmpfs -o mpol=prefer:1 /hana/tmpfs1/SID_UC
mount tmpfsSID_UC2 -t tmpfs -o mpol=prefer:2 /hana/tmpfs2/SID_UC
mount tmpfsSID_UC3 -t tmpfs -o mpol=prefer:3 /hana/tmpfs3/SID_UC
Update /etc/fstab

To ensure that the mount points are available after an operating system reboot, add entries into the file system table, /etc/fstab:

tmpfsSID_UC0 /hana/tmpfs0/SID_UC tmpfs rw,relatime,mpol=prefer:0
tmpfsSID_UC1 /hana/tmpfs1/SID_UC tmpfs rw,relatime,mpol=prefer:1
tmpfsSID_UC1 /hana/tmpfs2/SID_UC tmpfs rw,relatime,mpol=prefer:2
tmpfsSID_UC1 /hana/tmpfs3/SID_UC tmpfs rw,relatime,mpol=prefer:3

Optional: set limits on memory usage

The tmpfs file system can grow and shrink dynamically.

To limit the memory used by the tmpfs file system, you can set a size limit for a NUMA node volume with the size option. For example:

mount tmpfsSID_UC0 -t tmpfs -o mpol=prefer:0,size=250G /hana/tmpfs0/SID_UC

You can also limit overall tmpfs memory usage for all NUMA nodes for a given SAP HANA instance and a given server node by setting the persistent_memory_global_allocation_limit parameter in the [memorymanager] section of the global.ini file.

SAP HANA configuration for Fast Restart

To configure SAP HANA for Fast Restart, update the global.ini file and specify the tables to store in persistent memory.

Update the [persistence] section in the global.ini file

Configure the [persistence] section in the SAP HANA global.ini file to reference the tmpfs locations. Separate each tmpfs location with a semicolon:

[persistence]
basepath_datavolumes = /hana/data
basepath_logvolumes = /hana/log
basepath_persistent_memory_volumes = /hana/tmpfs0/SID_UC;/hana/tmpfs1/SID_UC;/hana/tmpfs2/SID_UC;/hana/tmpfs3/SID_UC

The preceding example specifies four memory volumes for four NUMA nodes, which corresponds to the m2-ultramem-208. If you were running on the m2-ultramem-416, you would need to configure eight memory volumes (0..7).

Restart SAP HANA after modifying the global.ini file.

SAP HANA can now use the tmpfs location as persistent memory space.

Specify the tables to store in persistent memory

Specify specific column tables or partitions to store in persistent memory.

For example, to turn on persistent memory for an existing table, execute the SQL query:

ALTER TABLE exampletable persistent memory ON immediate CASCADE

To change the default for new tables add the parameter table_default in the indexserver.ini file. For example:

[persistent_memory]
table_default = ON

For more information on how to control columns, tables and which monitoring views provide detailed information, see SAP HANA Persistent Memory.

Automated steps

The automation script that Google Cloud provides to enable SAP HANA Fast Restart makes changes to directories /hana/tmpfs*, file /etc/fstab, and SAP HANA configuration. When you run the script, you might need to perform additional steps depending on whether this is the initial deployment of your SAP HANA system or you are resizing your machine to a different NUMA size.

For the initial deployment of your SAP HANA system or resizing the machine to increase the number of NUMA nodes, make sure that SAP HANA is running during the execution of automation script that Google Cloud provides to enable SAP HANA Fast Restart.

When you resize your machine to decrease the number of NUMA nodes, make sure that SAP HANA is stopped during the execution of the automation script that Google Cloud provides to enable SAP HANA Fast Restart. After the script is executed, you need to manually update the SAP HANA configuration to complete the SAP HANA Fast Restart setup. For more information, see SAP HANA configuration for Fast Restart.

To enable SAP HANA Fast Restart, follow these steps:

  1. Establish an SSH connection with your host VM.

  2. Switch to root: 

    sudo su -

  3. Download the sap_lib_hdbfr.sh script:

    wget https://storage.googleapis.com/cloudsapdeploy/terraform/latest/terraform/lib/sap_lib_hdbfr.sh

  4. Make the file executable:

    chmod +x sap_lib_hdbfr.sh

  5. Verify that the script has no errors: 

    vi sap_lib_hdbfr.sh
./sap_lib_hdbfr.sh -help

    If the command returns an error, contact Cloud Customer Care. For more information about contacting Customer Care, see Getting support for SAP on Google Cloud.

  6. Run the script after replacing SAP HANA system ID (SID) and password for the SYSTEM user of the SAP HANA database. To securely provide the password, we recommend that you use a secret in Secret Manager.

    Run the script by using the name of a secret in Secret Manager. This secret must exist in the Cloud project that contains your host VM instance.

    sudo ./sap_lib_hdbfr.sh -h 'SID' -s SECRET_NAME

    Replace the following:

    • SID: specify the SID with uppercase letters. For example, AHA.
    • SECRET_NAME: specify the name of the secret that corresponds to the password for the SYSTEM user of the SAP HANA database. This secret must exist in the Cloud project that contains your host VM instance.

    Alternatively, you can run the script using a plain text password. After SAP HANA Fast Restart is enabled, make sure to change your password. Using plain text password is not recommended as your password would be recorded in the command-line history of your VM.

    sudo ./sap_lib_hdbfr.sh -h 'SID' -p 'PASSWORD'

    Replace the following:

    • SID: specify the SID with uppercase letters. For example, AHA.
    • PASSWORD: specify the password for the SYSTEM user of the SAP HANA database.

For a successful initial run, you should see an output similar to the following:

INFO - Script is running in standalone mode
ls: cannot access '/hana/tmpfs*': No such file or directory
INFO - Setting up HANA Fast Restart for system 'TST/00'.
INFO - Number of NUMA nodes is 2
INFO - Number of directories /hana/tmpfs* is 0
INFO - HANA version 2.57
INFO - No directories /hana/tmpfs* exist. Assuming initial setup.
INFO - Creating 2 directories /hana/tmpfs* and mounting them
INFO - Adding /hana/tmpfs* entries to /etc/fstab. Copy is in /etc/fstab.20220625_030839
INFO - Updating the HANA configuration.
INFO - Running command: select * from dummy
DUMMY
"X"
1 row selected (overall time 4124 usec; server time 130 usec)

INFO - Running command: ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('global.ini', 'SYSTEM') SET ('persistence', 'basepath_persistent_memory_volumes') = '/hana/tmpfs0/TST;/hana/tmpfs1/TST;'
0 rows affected (overall time 3570 usec; server time 2239 usec)

INFO - Running command: ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('global.ini', 'SYSTEM') SET ('persistent_memory', 'table_unload_action') = 'retain';
0 rows affected (overall time 4308 usec; server time 2441 usec)

INFO - Running command: ALTER SYSTEM ALTER CONFIGURATION ('indexserver.ini', 'SYSTEM') SET ('persistent_memory', 'table_default') = 'ON';
0 rows affected (overall time 3422 usec; server time 2152 usec)

Setting up the Google monitoring agent for SAP HANA

Optionally, you can set up the Google monitoring agent for SAP HANA, which collects metrics from SAP HANA and sends them to Cloud Monitoring. Cloud Monitoring allows you to create dashboards for your metrics, set up custom alerts based on metric thresholds, and more. For more information on setting up and configuring the Google monitoring agent for SAP HANA, see the SAP HANA Monitoring Agent User Guide.

Connecting to SAP HANA

Note that because these instructions don't use an external IP for SAP HANA, you can only connect to the SAP HANA instances through the bastion instance using SSH or through the Windows server through SAP HANA Studio.

  • To connect to SAP HANA through the bastion instance, connect to the bastion host, and then to the SAP HANA instance(s) by using an SSH client of your choice.

  • To connect to the SAP HANA database through SAP HANA Studio, use a remote desktop client to connect to the Windows Server instance. After connection, manually install SAP HANA Studio and access your SAP HANA database.

Performing post-deployment tasks

Before using your SAP HANA instance, we recommend that you perform the following post-deployment steps. For more information, see SAP HANA Installation and Update Guide.

  1. Change the temporary passwords for the SAP HANA system administrator and database superuser. For example:

    sudo passwd SIDadm

    See Reset the SYSTEM User Password of the System Database.

  2. Install your permanent SAP HANA license. If you do not, SAP HANA might go into database lockdown after the temporary license expires.

    For more information from SAP about managing your SAP HANA licenses, see License Keys for the SAP HANA Database.

  3. Update the SAP HANA software with the latest patches.

  4. Install any additional components such as Application Function Libraries (AFL) or Smart Data Access (SDA).

  5. Configure and backup your new SAP HANA database. For more information, see the SAP HANA operations guide.

What's next

  • If you need to use NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud instead of persistent disks for your SAP HANA directories, see the NetApp Cloud Volumes Service deployment information in the SAP HANA planning guide.
  • For more information about VM administration of and monitoring, see the SAP HANA Operations Guide.