Resource Partitioning on Hitachi Virtual Storage
Platform Gx00 for SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter
Integration
Lab Validation Report
By Kengo Miyazawa and Stephan Kreitz
July 2016
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Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 2
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 Models ............................................................. 3
SAP HANA Certified Enterprise Storage Gx00 Models .................................................................. 3
Hitachi Storage Partitioning ............................................................................................................ 4
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning ......................................................................................................... 6
Hitachi Compute Blade Server Deployment Models ...................................................... 7
Hitachi Compute Blade 2500 .......................................................................................................... 7
Virtualized SAP HANA Deployments............................................................................................... 7
SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration .................................................................... 9
Storage Setup for SAP HANA TDI .................................................................................................. 9
Hitachi Storage Partitioning Use Cases........................................................................... 11
Separation of Production and Non-production SAP HANA Nodes .............................................. 11
Separation of Production and Non-production SAP HANA Nodes,
and SAP Application Servers ........................................................................................................ 13
Engineering Validation ....................................................................................................... 15
Hardware Setup ............................................................................................................................ 15
Test Setup..................................................................................................................................... 18
Test Summary ............................................................................................................................... 20
Conclusion........................................................................................................................... 21
1
Resource Partitioning on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00
for SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration
Lab Validation Report
Throughout the enterprise, different end users seek access to different data sets, depending on their department, role,
function, and so on. As concerns over data privacy and compliance issues have grown, organizations have addressed
them by deploying multiple storage systems to physically separate storage resources.
While multiple storage systems may address data privacy concerns, purchasing and managing these separate storage
systems is expensive and inefficient. Purchasing separate storage increases capital expenditures (CAPEX), and operating
expenses (OPEX) of disparate storage systems takes up valuable rack space and increases energy costs.
As storage needs grow, each storage system must be grown separately, limiting enterprise-wide scale-up and scale-out
options, and adding expense.
As storage systems are added, administration costs rise as well, because separate storage systems often have their own
unique administration tools, user lists, and authentication and access control mechanisms. As a result, with so many
different systems to manage, using multiple storage systems creates more opportunities for security to be compromised.
Rather than using multiple storage solutions for physical separation of data, partitioning allows for multiple tenants to
safely coexist on a single storage system. Partitioning allows multitenancy without the risk of activities in one storage
region affecting performance, while allowing for availability or privacy in others. A storage system that supports resource
partitioning provides many benefits:

Multitenancy protects privacy and compliance without requiring separate storage systems.

Efficient storage scalability gives the ability to scale-up to meet business needs throughout the enterprise.



Integration with enterprise authentication and access control systems such as Microsoft® Active Directory® and
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) reduce administration overhead.
Unified management of a single storage system provides better security.
Improved datacenter efficiency eliminates unnecessary capex and operating expenditures associated with purchasing
and operating several different storage systems.
In a modern SAP landscape, SAP HANA builds the foundation for SAP applications as a high performance in-memory
database or even as application platform. Business critical applications like SAP HANA require data security as well as
performance guarantees that are provided by using Hitachi enterprise storage for SAP HANA and Hitachi Compute Blade
server technology for running full SAP landscapes.
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2
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide help and guidance to customers who want to achieve maximum separation of
their different workloads on their Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for their SAP HANA landscape in a SAP HANA Tailored
Datacenter Integration (TDI) environment.
Hitachi storage allows organizations to use partitioning to enable multitenancy in the storage environment in a manner
that protects data for applications, storage administrators, applications, and business units.
Unified management eases the administrative burden, and by consolidating multiple storage systems, you reduce CAPEX
and OPEX while improving security and manageability.
This document is applicable for the following SAP HANA certified enterprise storage models from the Hitachi Virtual
Storage Platform family:

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G200 (VSP G200)

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G400 (VSP G400)

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G600 (VSP G600)

Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform G800 (VSP G800)
In the case of SAP HANA scale-out deployments, two Hitachi NAS Platform 4060 (HNAS) servers can be used to provide
a highly available NFS-based shared file system for SAP HANA configuration files, binaries, and trace files.
Using the Virtual Storage Platform family of enterprise storage products with SAP HANA has the following benefits:

Increased performance for SAP HANA data load

Scalable deployments of SAP HANA

Disaster recovery with minimal performance impact to the production instance

Workload separation using Hitachi storage partitioning features

Consolidation using Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) pools
This technical paper assumes you have familiarity with the following:

Storage area network (SAN) based storage systems

General storage concepts

General network knowledge

SAP HANA Platform

SAP HANA TDI

Common IT storage practices
Note — Testing of this configuration was performed in a lab environment. Many things affect production
environments beyond prediction or duplication in a lab environment. Follow the recommended practice of conducting
proof-of-concept testing for acceptable results in a non-production, isolated test environment that matches your
production environment before your production implementation of this solution.
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Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 Models
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 models are based on industry-leading enterprise storage technology. With flashoptimized performance, these systems provide advanced capabilities previously available only in high-end storage arrays.
With the Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 models, you can build a high performance, software-defined infrastructure to
transform data into valuable information.
Hitachi Storage Virtualization Operating System provides storage virtualization, high availability, superior performance,
and advanced data protection for all Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 models. This proven, mature software provides
common features to consolidate assets, reclaim space, extend life, and reduce migration effort. New management
software improves ease of use to save time and reduce complexity. The infrastructure of Storage Virtualization Operating
System creates a management framework for improved IT response to business demands.
SAP HANA Certified Enterprise Storage Gx00 Models
VSP G200
VSP G200 entry level storage system includes advanced SVOS capabilities in this affordable platform. It offers a choice of
internal capacity expansion of up to 12 or 24 drives, the ability to add more external storage trays, and easy setup and
management for virtual applications. Advanced SVOS virtualization capabilities protect business-critical data.
VSP G400
VSP G400 midrange platform helps reduce operational costs with an efficient unified architecture. Consolidate file, block,
and object data for extensive cost savings. Simplify operations for all data types with one interface and consistent
workflows. Reduce storage expense by reclaiming space and increasing utilization. Midsized organizations can choose
this model to be their primary storage system.
VSP G600
VSP G600 extends the performance and capacity scalability of VSP G400 for organizations powering additional virtualized
applications. Deploy more storage solutions with this validated application integration. Manage more data types from a
simple, unified interface. Deliver central, consistent storage services to all data consumers. Accelerate multiple
applications with this flash optimized architecture available tiered or all flash.
VSP G800
VSP G800 entry enterprise platform is designed to consolidate the business-critical data from multiple applications and
virtual servers. Implement dual datacenter replication for high availability business continuation. Securely partition
information assets for multiple tenants. Utilize crash-consistent snapshots for application-aware backup, recovery and
failover. Designed for organizations seeking enterprise functionality for regional deployments.
VSP G1000
VSP G1000 enterprise platform enables the continuous operations, self-managing policy-driven management, and agile IT
that today’s new breed of cloud applications demand. Global storage virtualization enables an always-on infrastructure
with enterprise-wide scalability. An ideal solution for applications that require zero recovery point and recovery time
objectives, VSP G1000 redefines mission-critical storage virtualization and resets expectations for the datacenter.
Out of the five members of the VSP family (VSP G1000, VSP G800, VSP G600, VSP G400, and VSP G200), validation of
this reference architecture was done with SAP HANA Platform nodes on VSP G600, VSP G400, and VSP G200. These
three storage platforms have similar high availability features and run on the same family microcode as VSP G1000 (VSP
G1000 was released and certified by SAP for use as enterprise storage for SAP HANA before the VSP midrange models).
The VSP G1000 hardware architecture is more resilient than the VSP midrange models.
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Figure
1 shows VSP storage arrays in the order of increasing performance and storage capacity.
Figure 1
Hitachi Storage Partitioning
Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 storage systems can connect to multiple hosts and can be shared by multiple
users, divisions in a company, or by multiple companies, which can result in conflicts among users. For example, if a host
issues many I/O requests or reads or writes a large amount of data, the I/O performance of other hosts may be affected.
Even more, many storage administrators from different organizations can access the storage system. Managing the entire
storage system can become complex and difficult. Private data might be accessed by other users, or a volume in one
organization might be destroyed by mistake by a storage administrator in another organization.
To avoid such problems, use Hitachi Resource Partition Manager software to set up resource groups that allow you to
manage one storage system as if it were multiple virtual private storage systems. The storage administrators in each
resource group can access only their assigned resources and cannot access other resources. Configuring resource
groups prevents the risk of data leakage or data destruction by another storage administrator in another resource group.
Resources such as logical devices (LDEVs), parity groups, external volumes, ports, or host groups can be assigned to a
resource group. These resources can be combined to flexibly compose a virtual private storage system.
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5
Figure
2 shows an overview of multiple hosts connected to a single VSP without any partitioning, sharing all resources of
multi-processing units (MPU) and the cache.
Figure 2
Using resource groups to partition the resources into up to four separate partitions, it is possible to ensure performance
and isolation of different hosts or host groups as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
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Hitachi
Dynamic Provisioning
On Hitachi storage systems, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning provides wide striping and thin provisioning functionalities.
Using Dynamic Provisioning is like using a host-based logical volume manager (LVM), but without incurring host
processing overhead. It provides one or more wide-striping pools across many RAID groups. Each pool has one or more
dynamic provisioning virtual volumes (DP-VOLs) of a logical size you specify (up to 60 TB created against it without
allocating any physical space initially).
Deploying Dynamic Provisioning avoids the routine issue of hot spots that occur on logical devices (LDEVs). These occur
within individual RAID groups when the host workload exceeds the IOPS or throughput capacity of that RAID group.
Dynamic Provisioning distributes the host workload across many RAID groups, which provides a smoothing effect that
dramatically reduces hot spots.
Consistent Performance at a Lower Cost
Dynamic provisioning enables you to maintain optimal QoS for your SAP deployment while still lowering overall storage
costs. In addition, it transparently spreads the many individual I/O workloads typical of a SAP deployment across multiple
physical disks. Such I/O workload balancing eliminates I/O bottlenecks across multiple applications while automatically
tuning performance. The bottom line: better overall performance and more predictable performance at a lower overall
cost.
When to use Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning
Dynamic Provisioning is a best fit in an open-systems environment in the following scenarios:

When the aggregation of storage pool capacity usage across many volumes provides the best opportunity for
performance optimization.

For stable environments and large consistently growing files or volumes.

When device addressing constraints are a concern.
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Hitachi Compute Blade Server Deployment Models
In combination with Hitachi Compute Blade server technology, the Hitachi VSP family offers a strong hardware setup for
running SAP landscapes.
Hitachi Compute Blade 2500
Hitachi Compute Blade 2500 delivers enterprise computing power and performance with unprecedented scalability and
configuration flexibility. Lower your costs and protect your investment.
Flexible I/O architecture and logical partitioning allow configurations to match application needs exactly with Hitachi
Compute Blade 2500. Multiple applications easily and securely co-exist in the same chassis.
Add server management and system monitoring at no cost with Hitachi Compute Systems Manager. Seamlessly integrate
with Hitachi Command Suite in Hitachi storage environments.
Hitachi Compute Blade 520X server blades provide a high performance server platform for running SAP HANA. Using
symmetric multi-processing (SMP) technology to combine multiple server blade resources into a single server,
configurations from 2-socket servers up to 8-socket servers are available. 520H server blades are available for entry level
SAP HANA systems in TDI environments. For SAP HANA appliances as well as for TDI configurations, pre-configured and
tested configurations are available from Hitachi Data Systems running SAP HANA on bare metal and virtualized
environments.
For SAP Application servers and the various other components of a SAP landscape, the full range of Compute Blade
server blades are available to fit the special needs of the specific applications.
Virtualized SAP HANA Deployments
In addition to bare metal configurations and solutions, Hitachi Data Systems offers pre-configured solutions for virtualized
HANA systems based on either Hitachi logical partitioning technology or the VMware ESXi server.
Hitachi Unified Compute Platform for the SAP HANA Platform with Logical Partitioning
The logical partitioning feature from Hitachi partitions the physical resources of one single-blade or multi-blade server
logically into independent server environments called LPARs (logical partitions).
CPUs, memory, and I/O devices can be assigned in dedicated mode to LPARs to create fully isolated server environments
for SAP HANA single node installations within each LPAR running on the same physical host without any noisy neighbor
effects between the different server environments.
520X B2 server blades must be set to LP mode in order to enable logical partitioning capabilities. LPARs using one, two or
four CPU sockets in dedicated mode, accessing the CPU sockets’ local memory bank, can be created for running
production SAP HANA instances. Combined with dedicated HBA cards for each LPAR, and separated controller ports and
RAID groups in Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the LPAR manager enables the consolidation of multiple production SAP
HANA instances on the same physical server using a single Virtual Storage Platform.
LPAR in combination with VSP resource groups offers the capability to provide end-to-end partitioning of server and
storage resources creating fully separated environments across the whole hardware stack.
Unified Compute Platform for SAP HANA Running on VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere is a virtualization platform that provides a datacenter infrastructure. It features vSphere Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS), high availability, and fault tolerance.
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8
VMware
vSphere has the following components:






ESXi
A hypervisor that loads directly onto a physical server. It partitions one physical machine into many virtual machines
that share hardware resources.
vCenter Server
vCenter Server can manage the vSphere environment through a single user interface. With vCenter, additional
features are available such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler, High Availability,
and Fault Tolerance.
VMware vSphere 5.5
An enterprise virtualization solution to create a dynamic and flexible datacenter with integrated management and
reporting capability for a high level of server, service, and client uptime.
The Unified Compute Platform for the SAP HANA Platform running on VMware vSphere solution combines the benefits of
the UCP for SAP HANA appliance with the flexibility and manageability of the VMware vSphere solution.
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9
SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration
Unlike a SAP HANA appliance in which all hardware components are pre-configured by the hardware vendor, SAP HANA
tailored datacenter integration (TDI) deployments are customized solutions where the customer can choose any of the
certified SAP HANA server vendors along with any certified SAP HANA enterprise storage to implement SAP HANA. This
provides customers an opportunity to leverage their existing hardware and reduce TCO.
Using this reference architecture, SAP HANA solutions can be deployed using any certified SAP HANA server vendors
and Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00. A list of SAP certified servers that are available for SAP HANA appliances can
be found in the SAP Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware Directory. SAP only allows using homogeneous
compute server hardware from a single hardware partner in a SAP HANA tailored datacenter integration. Also, if a
certification provided by SAP is for a specific operating system, only that operating system can be used for SAP HANA
implementation. Engineering validation for this solution has been performed using Hitachi Data Systems server blades.
Every SAP certified enterprise storage platform must meet TDI storage KPI requirements set by SAP. Testing showed that
the storage design of Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform for the SAP HANA Platform meets the TDI requirements from SAP
up to a maximum number of nodes as listed in the SAP Certified and Supported SAP HANA® Hardware Directory. It is not
mandatory for customers to use the same storage design as was used for storage KPI testing, and this is demonstrated in
this reference architecture guide. Refer to the SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration FAQ for more details about TDI.
During validation, the scalability and storage KPI testing was performed using the SAP HWCCT tool (Please refer to SAP
Note 1943937 - Hardware Configuration Check Tool - Central Note).
Note - Since the release of SAP HANA TDI in November 2013 several versions of the HWCCT have been published. To
check whether or not the hardware configuration of your SAP HANA TDI infrastructure meets KPIs from SAP, it is
crucial that you use the same version of the HWCCT used during the certification of the hardware (compute servers
and storage system) for your tests. SAP Note 1943937 describes how to determine the right version of the HWCCT for
your tests.
Storage Setup for SAP HANA TDI
SAP HANA appliance configurations often use dedicated disks and RAID groups for the SAP HANA data and log volumes
as well as for the operating system and the HANA shared volume. This separation of disks grants isolation of the volumes
at the cost of flexibility and efficient usage of the available disk space, often leaving some space on the RAID groups fully
unused.
In SAP HANA TDI environments, Hitachi enterprise storage for SAP HANA provides much more flexibility, efficiency, and
security by offering the support of a range of storage features and products that are not available for all SAP HANA
appliances.
Intelligent provisioning of disk space is required to ensure that all parts of an SAP landscape have exactly the amount of
space they need to function correctly. Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning enables you to make sure the right amount and the
right type of storage is online to maximize performance and efficiency in your environment.
To further enhance performance, Hitachi Dynamic Tiering guarantees that critical production data is available on the
fastest and nearest storage tier. It stores less frequently accessed data on more cost-effective storage media.
Hitachi TrueCopy (synchronous) or Hitachi Universal Replicator (asynchronous) software ensure that all data is protected
both on-site and off-site, and provide disaster recovery for SAP environments.
9
10 SAP HANA TDI setups, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) pools and the Hitachi VSP enterprise storage family
For
provide the flexibility to size volumes for multiple SAP HANA nodes and an efficient use of the available disk space. With
reduced disk requirements HDP pools grant disk performance for a good number of production SAP HANA systems at
lower cost following some basic best practices:


Create an HDP pool with a minimum of two parity groups whenever possible
A parity group should be dedicated to one Pool only, and should not be used for other purposes if one of its logical
devices is a Pool Volume

HDP pools should be configured as RAID-6

Distribute the parity groups across at least two disk trays

Create four volumes (VVOLs) for each HANA log volume and distribute them across the various multi-processing units
(MPUs)

Create four volumes for each HANA data volume and distribute them across the various MPUs

Use full allocation to provision volumes whenever possible


SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration on Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform Gx00 using Hitachi Dynamic
Provisioning Pools provides a reference architecture for SAP HANA nodes and the VSP Gx00 family.
For non-production SAP HANA systems, HDP pools allow maximum allocation of the available disk space for
consolidation of many QA, test, and development systems of different sizes. Since there are no performance
requirements for non-production systems, Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning provides the flexibility a test and
development landscape requires, often in combination with virtualization solutions at the server level such as Hitachi
logical partitioning technology.
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11
Hitachi Storage Partitioning Use Cases
Hitachi storage partitioning can be applied to many different scenarios separating workloads, data, and even drive types
and configurations. In this paper two use cases that have also been verified in a lab environment will be explained in more
detail. The focus of these use cases is SAP HANA production systems.
For the test setup described in the next section, a VSP G400 was used. Because of this, the overview and numbers in this
section are based on VSP G400 as well. Increasing the number of HANA nodes on single partitions apply for the larger
members of the VSP Gx00 family.
Separation of Production and Non-production SAP HANA Nodes
This use case describes the consolidation of multiple production SAP HANA nodes and a larger number of nonproduction SAP HANA nodes on a single storage array. Figure 4 shows the setup without any storage partitioning
configured. Even with separated RAID groups or HDP pools, the workload of the QA and development systems will affect
the performance of the production HANA nodes.
Figure 4
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12
Figure
5 shows the same setup after configuring storage partitioning and thus providing full isolation of the production
HANA systems. With this isolation, enough resources are available for the production nodes, yet it is still possible to
operate a larger number of QA and development systems on the second partition.
Figure 5
Running QA and development systems within a separate partition provides the flexibility required for such systems by
having the benefit and efficiency of HDP pools on the storage side as well as Hitachi logical partitioning or VMware server
virtualization.
This is possible while still dedicating the bigger part of the storage resources to production SAP HANA systems running
on bare metal Hitachi Compute Blade 2500 or even in a virtualized server environment according to best practices for
virtualized SAP HANA systems.
Tests have shown that also for production systems HDP pools allow consolidation at the storage level reducing cost and
disk overhead while still granting high performance to fulfill all requirements of production SAP HANA systems in a TDI
environment.
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13
Separation
of Production and Non-production SAP HANA Nodes,
and SAP Application Servers
This use case adds a third partition to the scenario providing a partition for SAP Application Servers and other SAP
chassis components in a SAP landscape. Figure 6 shows the overview without storage partitioning.
Figure 6
13
14 workload of the QA and development systems will have an impact not only on the performance of the SAP HANA
The
systems but also on the SAP Application Servers connecting to these HANA systems. Configuring storage partitioning, as
shown in Figure 7, will remove the impact between the different application workloads of SAP HANA, classic SAP
applications, and QA and development systems containing both SAP HANA and non- SAP HANA systems.
Figure 7
Tests with both dedicated RAID groups and HDP pools for the production SAP HANA and SAP Application servers are
described in the next section.
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15
Engineering Validation
The main focus of the validation testing in the Hitachi Data Systems labs was on the production SAP HANA nodes fulfilling
TDI KPIs according to the SAP HANA Enterprise Storage certification. HWCCT revision 97.3 was used for the scalability
testing on VSP G400 because the same version was originally used for the Enterprise Storage certification with the HANAHWC-ES 1.0 scenario.
The cache write pending and MPU utilization were also considered, and the cutoff was set at a maximum of 60% usage
for storage best practices. Testing without storage partitioning shows the impact of the additional systems connected to
the VSP G400 on the performance of the production HANA nodes. Configuring storage partitioning allows the production
nodes to achieve KPIs without any impact from the additional system.
Hardware Setup
The use cases described in the last section have been tested with two different disk layouts for the first partition with the
SAP HANA production nodes.
Disk layout 1 uses dedicated RAID groups for each SAP HANA node, and disk layout 2 uses two HDP pools for all SAP
HANA nodes The first HDP pool provides volumes for the operating system, the HANA shared volumes, and the HANA
data volumes. The second HDP pool provides the HANA log volumes. The detailed disk layout for each test case is found
in the following sections.
Table 1 shows the hardware configuration for the test setup.
Table 1. Hardware Configuration
Hardware
Server
Test Case 1
Test Case 2
Test Case 3
Test Case 4
Server
Chassis
CB 2500
1
1
1
1
Blade
520X B2
4
4
4
4
CPU
E7-8880v3
Haswell-EX
8
8
8
8
Memory
128 GB
memory
4 LPAR (HANA 4 LPAR (HANA 3 LPAR (HANA
Prod)
Prod)
Prod)
1 LPAR
(AppServer)
3 LPAR (HANA
Prod)
1 LPAR
(AppServer)
64 GB
memory
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
40 GB
memory
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
6 LPAR
(QA/Dev)
8
8
8
HBA
Fibre Channel 8
16 Gb/sec 2port
15
16
Table
1. Hardware Configuration (Continued)
Hardware
Storage
Test Case 1
Test Case 2
Test Case 3
Test Case 4
Controller
VSP G400
1
1
1
1
CHB
Fibre Channel 8
16 Gb/sec 2port
8
8
8
Cache
8 GB DIMM
16
16
16
16
DKB
12 GB SAS
4
4
4
4
96
72
104
96
72
48
72
56
8
8
8
8
16
16
24
32
10
3
11
4
1
3
1
4
HDD
Total HDDs
2.5inch
600 GB
SAS(10krpm)
900 GB
1.2 TB
RAID
6D+2P
Configuration
14D+2P
(RAID6)
Figure 8 shows an overview of the Fibre Channel cabling. All 16 server HBA ports are directly connected to the VSP G400
storage ports without any SAN infrastructure. For further consolidation, SAN switches can be used; however, it has to be
verified that all KPIs are fulfilled on the production nodes.
Figure 8
This setup is the same throughout all the test configurations and has does not change in between the various test runs.
16
17 HANA QA and Development Systems
SAP
The partition for the QA and development HANA nodes always uses the same number of HANA systems and the same
disk configuration. HDP pools are used for the operating system, HANA shared volumes, and HANA data volumes of all
SAP HANA systems and for the HANA log volumes. Figure 9 shows an overview of the QA and development setup.
Figure 9
Table 2 shows the detailed configuration of the QA and development SAP HANA server providing 12 HANA systems on a
4-socket server using Hitachi logical partitioning.
Table 2. QA and Development Server Configuration
Hardware
Server Chassis
CB 2500
1
Server Blade
CB520X B2
2
CPU
E7-8880v3 Haswell-EX
4
(2.30GHz 18 core)
HBA
Fibre Channel 16 G2port(FIVE-FX)
4
17
18
Table
3 shows the storage configuration for the QA and development LPARs.
Table 3. QA and Development Partition Storage Configuration
Hardware Configuration
Number of QA/DEV HANA Systems
12
Memory capacity
6 × 64 GB and 6 × 40 GB
RAID groups in HDP
pools


Pool 1: OS, HANA
shared, and HANA
data volume
1 × RAID6 (14D+2P)
Pool 2: HANA log
volume
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HDD type
1.2 TB SAS
900 GB SAS
Performance is not measured on these systems; however, the same HWCCT configuration is used on all of these systems
to generate significant workload.
Test Setup
The test procedure for this validation is focused on the production SAP HANA nodes fulfilling SAP HANA TDI KPIs.
HWCCT revision 97.3 was executed in parallel on the production nodes in partition 1 as well as on all other nodes at the
same time.
Test 1: Use Case 1 – Using Dedicated RAID groups
For use case 1 the four production HANA systems in partition 1 are setup with separate dedicated RAID groups for each
system. Having dedicated disks removes the impact on concurrent I/O on the RAID group level from different HANA
volumes and the other HANA nodes. Table 4 lists the hardware configuration for the systems in partition 1.
Table 4. Hardware Configuration for Production SAP HANA Systems Test 1
Hardware Configuration
Number of Production HANA Systems
4
Memory capacity
128 GB per system
Shared RAID groups

RAID groups per system


HDD type
OS and HANA
shared
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HANA data volume
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HANA log volume
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
600 GB SAS
See the section SAP HANA QA and Development Systems for the second partition setup.
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19 2: Use Case 1 – Using HDP Pools
Test
Test 2 has the same test setup on the server side as test 1, but it uses a consolidated disk layout based on HDP pools
instead of dedicated RAID groups for each system. Table 5 shows the setup where all systems in partition 1 use the same
HDP pools for their HANA volumes.
Table 5. Hardware Configuration for Production HANA Systems Test 2
Hardware Configuration
Number of Production HANA Systems
4
Memory capacity
128 GB per system
RAID groups in HDP
pools


Pool 1: OS, HANA
shared, and HANA
data volume
2 × RAID6 (14D+2P)
Pool 2: HANA log
volume
2 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HDD type
600 GB SAS
Partition 2 remains unchanged throughout the tests.
Test 3: Use Case 2 – Using Dedicated RAID groups
For Test 3 a third partition is introduced to the test setup. Partition 1 holds three production HANA systems, while the new
second partition holds one system that stands for the classic SAP application server. The last partition again holds the
same twelve QA and development systems causing the noisy workload in this partition. Table 6 shows the hardware setup
of the production HANA system on partition 1.
Table 6. Hardware Configuration Production HANA Systems Test 3
Hardware Configuration
Number of Production HANA Systems
3
Memory capacity
128 GB per system
Shared RAID groups

RAID groups per system


OS and HANA
shared
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HANA data volume
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HANA log volume
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HDD type
600 GB SAS
Partition 2 stands for the classic SAP workload partition and uses the storage layout as shown in Table 7.
Table 7. SAP Classic Partition RAID Configuration
Volume
RAID Configuration
OS and HANA shared
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P) with 1.2TB SAS
HANA data
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P) with 600 GB SAS
HANA log
1 × RAID6 (6D+2P) with 600 GB SAS
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20 system in partition 2 is considered and measured as a production system using HWCCT since it can also be seen as
The
having additional HANA systems in this partition, even if the workload for non-HANA systems is usually different from
HANA systems.
Test 4: Use Case 2 – Using HDP Pools
Test 4 is based on Test 2.
Table 8. Hardware Configuration Production HANA Systems Test 4
Hardware Configuration
Hardware Configuration
Number of Production HANA Systems
3
Memory capacity
128 GB per system
RAID groups in HDP
pools


Pool 1: OS, HANA
shared, and HANA
data volume
2 × RAID6 (14D+2P)
Pool 2: HANA log
volume
2 × RAID6 (6D+2P)
HDD type
600 GB SAS
This test setup uses HDP pools for the second partition as well as shown in Table 9.
Table 9. SAP Classic Partition HDP Pool Configuration
Volume
HDP Pool Configuration
OS, HANA shared, and HANA data
HDP pool with 1 × RAID6 (14D+2P) on 1.2TB SAS drives
HANA log
HDP pool with 1 × RAID6 (6D+2P) on 600 GB SAS drives
The same test conditions as Test 4 apply here.
Test Summary
Testing was done twice for all of the tests, using HWCCT revision 97.3, on all involved systems, for all of the above test
cases. The first test was done without partitioning of storage resources, and the second time the described partitioning
scheme was used.
Analysis of the first test run showed that the QA and development systems generated a heavy I/O load on the storage that
lead to the test failing at least some SAP KPIs. On the storage side it was observed that a high cache write pending rate
and MPU usage rate was reached multiple times during the complete test run.
Running the same test case with partitioning in test run 2 shows the isolation between the partitions and impact was
observed between the partitions. Partition 1 for Test 1 and Test 2, and partitions 1 and 2 for Test 3 and Test 4 passed SAP
TDI KPIs without any impact from the QA and development partition. Storage resources were constantly below the upper
thresholds and within recommended bounds.
High cache write pending and MPU usage rates could still be seen on the QA and development partition which is
expected behavior and does not cause any issues because there are no performance requirements for the systems on
this partition.
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Conclusion
The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) family provides a high performance platform for SAP HANA landscapes and
adds significant benefits in reliability, security, and consolidation by providing unique features such as Hitachi storage
partitioning and Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning pools. With the right grouping of resources within the VSP configuration,
performance can be guaranteed where it is really needed while still offering the possibility of consolidation and costreduction, especially for less critical non-production systems.
In combination with Hitachi Compute Blade logical partitioning technology, Hitachi storage partitioning offers the
capability for an end-to-end partitioning of server and storage resources.
Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning pools add additional cost reduction possibilities when consolidating multiple production
and non-production systems on a single Hitachi VSP enterprise storage array without impact on the production SAP
HANA systems. HDP pools have great potential for consolidation and can offer the same or even improved I/O
performance due to better scaling on several RAID groups compared to a dedicated RAID group setup. This can prove
especially valuable when running multiple systems on the same HDP pool at different peak times in regards to I/O
workload.
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