SAP HANA installations require a file system to store the SAP HANA binary, trace, and configuration files. This file system is mounted under the /hana/shared mount point.

In SAP HANA scale-up (single-node) deployments, this mount point can reside on the local system device. SAP HANA requires approximately the same RAM memory capacity that is used for the /hana/shared file system.

SAP HANA scale-out deployments require a shared file system that is mounted on every SAP HANA node in the cluster. The file system stores the binary, trace, and configuration files.

In physical environments, this file system is provided as a network file system (NFS) that is shared by storage systems with network-attached storage (NAS) capabilities. Examples include Dell Unity XT, PowerStore, and PowerScale (formerly Isilon) systems. If a NAS array is not available, vSphere with native Linux functionality offers an alternative. A Linux VM (non-SAP HANA node) running an NFS server process provides the NFS share. The NFS server process exports a file system that is mounted on all the SAP HANA cluster nodes, and vSphere Fault Tolerance provides reliability.

For information about setting up an NFS server on a Linux VM, see the VMware Virtualized SAP HANA with Dell EMC Storage Deployment Guide.