HPE Synergy 660 for SAP HANA Scale-Out: An ideal composable option

[EzmeralExperts]

SAP HANA®, short for “high-performance analytic appliance” is a data platform built for running in-memory transactional and analytical workloads. Unlike traditional databases that require these workloads to be separated, SAP HANA offers a faster and simplified architecture that consolidates both online analytic processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) landscapes into a single database. Organizations that rely on SAP HANA now have even more choices of infrastructure, including a composable solution -- the HPE Synergy 660. This solution provides customers with an ideal midsized, composable option for SAP HANA Scale-Out.

The solution has been designed to support the SAP HANA database up to 15TB. This is the first Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) solution for SAP HANA from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, giving customers a better solution with fewer cables and cards when using FCoE. The solution:

• Draws upon the best practices and design considerations from the widely popular solutions for SAP HANA based on HPE Superdome-Flex Servers. The fully redundant design for the solution prevents any single point of failure from power, networking, storage, compute, or virtual connects and composers.
• Utilizes HPE Synergy, a software-defined composable, infrastructure to deliver a simplified fabric design for SAP HANA based on FCoE, where FCoE reduces the number of Ethernet and Storage Area Network (SAN) switches required. It also reduces the number of PCI/mezzanine cards required since the CNAs carry the Ethernet and storage packets simultaneously. HPE Virtual Connect modules can carry both Ethernet and SAN traffic simultaneously, thereby eliminating the need to have two sets of switches. The HPE Synergy high density, in-frame capsulation architecture also helps to reduce the number of cables and connectors, which simplifies the design further and reduces cost.
• Simplifies provisioning and management with software-defined intelligence via HPE OneView. The HPE OneView template-driven infrastructure abstracts away the need for IT admins to understand operational minutiae of various hardware components, thereby reducing complexity and manual tasks. The overall experience from HPE Synergy allows enterprises to scale efficiently, deploy easily, and provide highly resilient and secure application delivery. HPE 3PAR Storage can also be configured through HPE OneView, which delivers a seamless, single management experience.
• Significantly reduces the data center footprint by packing 24 processors in a 10U HPE Synergy 12000 Frame with six HPE Synergy 660 blades. This CPU density is much higher than other rack mount servers and offers better performance. Although the solution comes in the form of a single rack as illustrated, it is a very flexible architecture for future expansion. Also, there is ample free space in the rack to include any other devices that cover disaster recovery requirements like backup devices (HPE StoreOnce) or to extend the HPE 3PAR Storage by adding additional drive cages and drives.
• Delivers a consistent experience by adapting hardware from other HPE solutions for SAP HANA. For example, the solution uses HPE FlexFabric switches for management and Network File Share (NFS), and it deploys HPE ProLiant DL360 for Central Management Server and SAP HANA Cockpit server. This is the same hardware as deployed in the HPE Superdome Flex-based solution. Moreover, the solution also deploys the proven HPE 3PAR Storage to meet the persistent storage requirement of the database. 

The figure below illustrates the network and storage layout of this solution.

For compute, the solution uses HPE Synergy 12000 Frame and HPE Synergy 660 servers. The HPE Synergy 660 servers are populated with four premium Intel Cascade Lake processors, each with either 1.5TB or 3.0TB memory.

Customers can start with a 2+1 (2 workers + 1 standby) scale out config and can add up to 3 additional blades to reach 5+1 (5 workers + 1 standby) scale out config.

The solution has been validated and certified on SLES 12.x, 15.x and RHEL 7.x operating systems.

To summarize, HPE Synergy offers a well-planned, fully redundant, yet simplified, compact design. It also helps reduce the number of switches, cables, transceivers, and mezzanine cards. The solution also has a lower data center footprint, and it is a natural progression from past best seller solutions from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The solution inherits the best practices of the HPE ConvergedSystem500 and HPE ConvergedSystem900 appliance solutions for SAP HANA and integrates with the latest industry trends towards software-defined intelligence.

This solution comes with a growing ecosystem of reference architectures and white papers for host-based systems replication and backup, which can be found at HPE tech library. Please reach out to your Hewlett Packard Enterprise representative for more details.

Sanjay Kumar Batra

About the author:

Sanjay has two decades of experience in the IT industry. Currently, he is a Solutions Architect with the HPE Solution Engineering Team – SAP HANA, which is focused on creating Solutions and Reference Architectures for enterprise use cases around SAP and/or SAP HANA technologies.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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