To achieve optimal storage performance, set the following Linux kernel settings in the SAP HANA VM:

• transparent_hugepage=never
• numa_balancing=disabled
• elevator=noop
• vmw_pvscsi.cmd_per_lun=254
• vmw_pvscsi.ring_pages=32

In a SUSE Linux VM, you can set these parameters using yast2 and the System Bootloader settings for the kernel parameters. For more information, see the VMware Knowledge Base article KB2053145: Large-scale workloads with intensive I/O patterns might require queue depths significantly greater than Paravirtual SCSI default values.

To achieve maximum SAP HANA scalability and performance on the P-Series models, change the default maximum I/O size of the Linux kernel from 1,280 KB to 512 KB using UDEV. Depending on your operating system, create a 71-block-max-sectors.rules file under /etc/udev/rules.d by adding the following command:

SLES:

ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="block", RUN+="/bin/sh -c '/bin/echo 512 > /sys%p/queue/max_sectors_kb'"

RHEL:

ACTION=="add|change", SUBSYSTEM=="block", ATTR{queue/max_sectors_kb}+="512"

A reboot is required to activate this setting.