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SAP HANA supports backup to a file system or the use of SAP-certified third-party tools. Dell Technologies supports data-protection strategies for SAP HANA backup using Dell EMC Data Domain systems and Dell EMC NetWorker software. Although you can back up an SAP HANA database to a directory on the Isilon storage system, backing up the SAP HANA database to the storage system on which the primary persistence resides is not recommended. If you plan to back up SAP HANA to a directory on a different Isilon storage system, see the information about sizing the backup file system in the SAP HANA Storage Requirements paper. The capacity depends not only on the data size and the frequency of change operations in the database, but also on the number of backup generations that are kept on disk.
NAS connectivity
The Network File System (NFS) protocol is used when SAP HANA clients mount remote directories on the Isilon storage system. The two major versions of NFS are NFSv3 and NFSv4. NFSv3 is the most popular protocol, while NFSv4 is designed as a stateful protocol to provide additional functions such as file locking.
Note: Because Isilon has been certified by using NFSv3, this guide only addresses the NFSv3 protocol.
As a best practice, connect the SAP HANA hosts to the Isilon system by using a redundant private storage network infrastructure.
For more information about configuring and troubleshooting Isilon scale-out NAS external networking, see the Isilon Network Design Considerations White Paper. The white paper also provides information about the network architecture design to address availability considerations (no single point of failure) and bandwidth requirements.
For information about implementing NFS with Isilon, see Isilon OneFS NFS Design Considerations and Best Practices.
The following figure shows a sample network topology, with eight SAP HANA hosts that are connected over a dedicated private storage network to a four-node Isilon F800 storage system:
All the components in the storage network require configurations that use MTU size 9000 (jumbo frames).
Storage network connections for SAP HANA hosts
SAP HANA hosts require network interfaces for the management network and the SAP HANA-specific networks for client connections, internode, system replication, and backup. In addition, each SAP HANA host requires a dedicated network connection to the storage network switches with a 10 GbE or 40 GbE link speed. The connection should be redundant, that is, it should have at least two NICs. The 25 GbE network interfaces on the SAP HANA hosts require four 25 GbE NICs bonded to a 100 GbE aggregate. Switches that support 100 GbE are also required.
With 10 GbE or 40 GbE on the SAP HANA hosts, you can optionally configure active/active interface groups on the SAP HANA hosts to use network bonding (bonds), where multiple network interfaces are aggregated into a single logical bonded interface. Hosts that are configured with bonds require Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MLAG) and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) on the switches.
The following figure shows a sample network topology, with the two network ports bonded on the SAP HANA host and MLAG with LACP on the switches:
Figure 5. Sample network topology with host bond and MLAG/LACP on the switches
The switches in the storage network must support 40 GbE connections to the Isilon storage system and link speeds of 10 GbE, 25 GbE, or 40 GbE from the SAP HANA hosts.
With 25 GbE host networks that are bonded to 100 GbE aggregates, the switches must support 100 GbE. You must have a redundant dedicated storage network in place that has enough ports to connect all the Isilon external network interfaces and two network connections per SAP HANA host.
If the data center has a hierarchical network design with core, distribution, and access switches, the link from the core to the distribution to the access switches must be capable of processing the throughput from the access switches with the Isilon connections.
Each Isilon node provides two interfaces for external networking. A four-node Isilon cluster provides eight external network interfaces. For optimal performance, the SAP HANA client connections and the mounts of the SAP HANA disk partitions (data and log) must be evenly distributed across all available Isilon interfaces. You can achieve this distribution by using dedicated Isilon interface IP addresses for the mounts of each SAP HANA disk partition. In SAP HANA scale-out deployments, the mounts on the SAP HANA clients are:
<Isilon-IP-address1>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/data01 /hana/data/<SID>/mnt00001
<Isilon-IP-address1>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/log01 /hana/log/<SID>/mnt00001
<Isilon-IP-address2>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/data02 /hana/data/<SID>/mnt00002
<Isilon-IP-address2>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/log02 /hana/log/<SID>/mnt00002
<Isilon-IP-address3>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/data03 /hana/data/<SID>/mnt00003
<Isilon-IP-address3>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID>/log03 /hana/log/<SID>/mnt00003
and so on.
With multiple single-host (scale-up) SAP HANA installations, each SAP HANA client must use a dedicated Isilon IP address for the mounts, as follows:
SAP HANA scale-up 1:
<Isilon-IP-address1>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID1>/data /hana/data/<SID1>/mnt00001
<Isilon-IP-address1>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID1>/log /hana/log/<SID1>/mnt00001
SAP HANA scale-up 2:
<Isilon-IP-address2>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID2>/data /hana/data/<SID2>/mnt00001
<Isilon-IP-address2>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID2>/log /hana/log/<SID2>/mnt00001
SAP HANA scale-up 3:
<Isilon-IP-address3>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID3>/data /hana/data/<SID3>/mnt00001
<Isilon-IP-address3>:/ifs/home/hana/<SID3>/log /hana/log/<SID3>/mnt00001
and so on.