This section describes the checks you can perform before you report an SAP HANA issue with your PowerFlex HCI SAP HANA solution to SAP Support.
As part of the SAP HANA HCI certification requirements, SAP requires a method to detect if an SAP HANA VM is running in a certified hyperconverged environment on the vSphere hypervisor and the PowerFlex platform. SAP HANA Studio and the SAP HANA cockpit cannot report the hardware vendor and type when SAP HANA is running under VMware. It is important to report to SAP that SAP HANA is running on a PowerFlex HCI system.
A proven method to identify a certified PowerFlex system environment is to identify the ESXi host model. All PowerFlex hosts have a model name that starts with the “Dell Inc. PowerFlex-“ prefix. The following hostnames are valid:
Look up the hostname of a PowerFlex system in the Summary tab of the vSphere UI. The following figure shows an example:
Figure 13. vSphere UI Summary page: System models
Ensure that you report the physical host model name (BIOS name) from within the SAP HANA VMs.
The following VM option must be set for all SAP HANA VMs:
SMBIOS.reflectHost=TRUE
Set this option on the VM as follows:
Before reporting a problem to SAP, check the physical health of the PowerFlex hardware. PowerFlex Manager provides management of IT operations for the PowerFlex system, increasing the system’s efficiency by reducing time-consuming manual operations.
PowerFlex Manager includes the following features:
Using PowerFlex Manager, you can define and capture infrastructure requirements to support a specific business outcome. After the process is defined, it can be easily repeated through automation.
You can use the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) dashboard to verify the health of the system. The following figure shows an example of an iDRAC health check report:
Figure 14. iDRAC health check report
Ensure that all hardware-related issues are fixed before reporting an SAP HANA problem to SAP.