New HPE platforms optimized for the future of SAP HANA and S4/HANA

[ComputeExperts]

HPE is advancing its solution portfolio for SAP HANA with new platforms optimized for the database tier and mission critical workloads. Get major performance gains with these highly secure and scalable servers.

Some of the top requirements we hear from SAP customers embarking upon or continuing the journey to S4/HANA, as they select the foundational infrastructure to power these critical workloads, include room for data growth, higher performance, and strong security. At the same time, they are also making a choice about whether to move the SAP environments to the public cloud or adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, be it on-premises or in a co-location model.

To meet these needs, we’re advancing our portfolio of solutions optimized for SAP HANA with new scale-up servers that deliver higher performance, a larger memory footprint and end-to-end security — all available in an as-a-service model and powered by our HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform. 

Let’s look at how these innovations will continue to meet the evolving demands of SAP HANA environments of all sizes.

Advance the SAP HANA database tier with scale-up platforms

New scale-up platforms featuring the latest powerful 4th Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors will address your need for higher performance, a larger shared memory footprint to accommodate your growing critical data, and end-to-end security to protect it.

• The recently announced HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen 11 server — compute engineered for your hybrid world — with its intuitive cloud operating experience, uncompromising security, and optimized performance – is ideal for the database tier of business-critical SAP HANA environments, and is SAP-certified for SAP HANA environments of up to 8TB of memory in a compact 2U form factor.

With these new, powerful high-density platforms you will be able to:

• Increase compute performance for SAP HANA workloads:  leveraging Intel’s 4th Gen Xeon® Scalable processors – with its new processor design and increase in cores, up to 60 cores per processor — the HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen11 enables a significant bump in performance over the HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen10.  Plus, the availability of PCIe 5.0 removes bottlenecks and increases data throughput, thus increasing data management speed and providing highly scalable I/O for storage, memory and networking.
• Support larger data sets in SAP environments and process data faster: The HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen11 server utilizes ultra-fast DDR5 DIMMs with speeds up to 4800 MT/s and 16 DIMM slots per processor, which results in an impressive 50% increase in memory bandwidth compared with prior generations of this server. Combined with Intel’s 4th Gen Xeon® Scalable processors, this translates to faster processing and increased responsiveness with regards to in-memory database performance.
• Protect critical SAP applications and data from threats to hardware, and risks from third-party software and other devices: HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen11 servers are engineered with a fundamental security approach to defend against increasingly complex threats through an uncompromising focus on constant security advancements that are built into our DNA: from silicon to software, from the factory to the cloud. They utilize HPE Silicon Root of Trust, providing a zero-trust architecture at the silicon level and ensuring all server essential firmware is free from malware or compromised code. Other security features include Intel Software Guard Extensions and Intel Boot Guard.

In addition, HPE will launch a new scale-up, mission critical platform designed to power the most vital, demanding SAP HANA and S4/HANA workloads. Arriving later in 2023, this platform will address the relentless increase in data growth and deliver an unmatched combination of reliability, security, and performance at the maximum scale and memory allowed by SAP. 

Considering SAP’s recommendation[i] to scale up the hardware as far as possible, before scaling out, in order to maximize performance and throughput, this platform will be able to meet the needs for high performance in SAP HANA environments of any size, delivering up to 16-sockets and 32 TB of shared memory in a single system. At the same time, customers will be able to grow their environments at their own pace, with a proven modular architecture that scales seamlessly from a cost-efficient 4-socket entry point to 16 sockets in a single-system — avoiding the need to overprovision.

This new platform is designed to support the largest SAP HANA use cases in the market, building upon our leadership in delivering the highest scalability and largest memory footprint in the industry-standard x86 architecture, upheld with the HPE Superdome Flex family.[ii]

Support the SAP application tier and small databases  

Complementing these scale-up platforms, we announced in January two smaller 2-processor servers — the HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11 and HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 – both of which are suitable for powering the SAP application tier and small databases in VMware environments, as well as equipping service providers with SAP HANA offerings. In fact, the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 is SAP-certified with up to 4TB of memory, making it an ideal candidate for small to medium SAP HANA databases.

See the SAP certification status for these servers at SAP.com.

Leverage the cloud experience while retaining control of your critical SAP applications and data

As with other workloads, customers have several options to deploy their SAP environments, including running them in the public cloud. However, unlike other applications, SAP is often at the center of the most critical enterprise processes and data for the business. Therefore, many companies are reluctant to move this type of vital environment to the public cloud, yet they see value in the flexibility of a cloud approach. For them, we offer our solutions via HPE GreenLake, delivering all the benefits of the hybrid cloud experience, yet allowing customers to retain full control of their most valuable assets: their data.

With this comprehensive new portfolio, HPE continues to meet the needs of SAP customers of all sizes and your growing S4/HANA environments. Having delivered thousands of SAP HANA projects across the globe[iii] , and with our own experience of a large SAP migration project, we have a deep understanding of the infrastructure capabilities required to succeed in these critical business transformation projects.    

Learn more at SAP Sapphire events

If you plan to attend SAP Sapphire in Orlando or Barcelona, meet us there to understand how our solutions and services — including these new platforms, can help you accelerate your S4/HANA transformation. We will have experts on hand to meet with you one-to-one, and you can find all the details in this blog.

Stay tuned for further announcements about the new HPE scale-up platform based on 4th-Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, designed to continue our leadership in scalability and performance for the most demanding SAP HANA environments.

• Event details: SAP Sapphire Orlando, May 16–17, 2023
• Event details: SAP Sapphire Barcelona, May 24–25, 2023
• Read the HPE blog on HPE ProLiant DL360 and DL380

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Meet Diana Cortes, HPE Marketing Manager, Data Solutions

Diana has spent the past 24 years working with the technologies that power the world's most demanding IT environments and is interested in how those technologies impact business. A native of Colombia, Diana has held a variety of regional and global roles with HPE in the U.S., U.K., and Sweden. She is based in Stockholm, Sweden. She holds an MBA from Georgetown University. Connect with Diana on LinkedIn. 

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[i] Source: HPE Sales, 2015-2022

[i] Source: SAP HANA Administration Guide, Scaling SAP HANA section

[ii] Source: Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware