Linux – Memory Management insights

Nowadays the Linux memory management of a SAP system (application server) or SAP HANA system getting more important since the clear roadmap of SAP (Linux as only OS for HANA) is showing that the amount of Linux installations is rising steeply.

One of the worst things which could happen to such a system in context of performance is swapping or paging. But is swapping and paging the same?

Hana Development – Where are you going?

I have a question for you: Are you happy with the SAP Hana development tools?

If not, what can be done about it? I have a proposal…and would ask for your help

In case you find that an interesting thought, please comment, add your own ideas and requirements, spread the word, like it,… any help is appreciated. Without you, the idea will not progress.

HANA – Savepoint details

There are a lot of sources where you can find some rudimentary information about how a HANA savepoint is working or which event is triggering one. But not really how the different phases are working or which dependencies are there and how you can determine the thread details. In context of a customer issue I have done some researching and reengineering.

4 Best Practices for Securing Your SAP HANA Database

Databases hold the proverbial keys to modern business processes. These systems contain vast amounts of highly valuable and often sensitive data. This makes database systems a prime target for attackers. Comprehensive security processes and configurations are vital to prevent possible attacks.

AppToAppSSO between SAP Cloud Platform and SAP HANA DB

Introduction

HTML5 or Java based application deployed in SAP Cloud Platform fetch data from backend source, display it in application. There are different methods to establish connection between two applications in SCP. One such method is using destination which is a service offered by SAP Cloud platform.

Using Destination in SCP you can connect Application hosted on SCP with other application or DB using HTTP, LDA, MAIL & RFC.

Load flat file decimal values to ADSO (SAP BI) and access in SAP HANA Cal view ( eclipse/H Studio)

We had a requirement to load GAS emission data into SAP BI, as the business does a lot of manual calculations in excel, to get the emission factor which is dependent on multiple values. They first need to sum up the values, do a standard deviations, SQRT of some NO2, Co2, IC4 values, divide it by some factor etc., which is a heavy excel based lookups and calcuations.

How to Use SAP HANA Cockpit Capture APP and Workload Analysis APP Together

Introduction

SAP HANA Cockpit Workload Analysis APP is a very useful tool to analyze SAP HANA DB workload. By default, it utilizes the thread samples automatically collected with 10 seconds interval. On the other hand, Workload Analysis APP could also analyze workload collected by Capture APP. This post introduces an example to analyze the captured workload using Workload Analysis APP.

HANA Multitier System Replication – HOW TO Configure/ Take-Over / Fail-Back Setup

I was searching for step by step HANA multi-Tier Replication fail-over and fail -back procedure for DR scenario . I read all the blog post related to multi-tier Replication, but I could not find any blog post mentioning the steps for DR scenario where both primary and secondary will not be available at same time. so thought of writing my experience on this.

Flowgraphs in XSA (express edition H2SPS04)

Recently I was looking into flowgraphs in HANA 2 XSA SPS04. Since I have background in XS, HANA Modeling, and SAP BODS, I thought this may be an easy exercise to achieve.

Before getting into the solution, let’s see what is a flowgraph? A flow graph is the diagram representation of some logic executed with 0 or more filters (input params) in order to get some output.

Using SAP HANA as a service (HaaS) with Esri ArcGIS Enterprise 10.7.1 and Pro 2.4

This means ArcGIS Enterprise can use SAP HANA Service as the underlying database to support ArcGIS’s System of Record, System of Insight and System of Engagement.  HaaS is the first-ever database as a service that is fully supported by Esri ArcGIS technology.

Basically, the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP HANA service gives you cloud instances of SAP HANA on-demand, that are managed by SAP.  It’s great if you want to stand up HANA quickly and only want to pay for what you use.

CDS based data extraction – Part I Overview

Anyone interested in the state of the art extracting data in the SAP universe and beyond? This blog (series) is meant to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, highlight the main features but also make sure you understand the meaning and implication of all available annotations related to the topic. I am aware of the fact that various documents/blogs have been published on the topic already, but for sake of completeness I will repeat parts here which you might already know.

SAP HANA XS Advanced - Cross-container access

You will learn how to set up the roles, synonyms and deployment configuration to access objects in a HANA Deployment Infrastructure (HDI) container from another HDI container.

Step 1: Create the target container as a resource

This tutorial uses the SAP HANA INteractive Education model as an example of a target HDI container. Create thistarget container by following the XSA-specific instructions found in the SHINE source code repository.

ABAP custom code adaptation for SAP HANA DB migration

Introduction

Objective of this blog is to provide a quick and short reference for custom code adaptation for SAP HANA database migration.

Scenario –  ERP system running on any DB to Business Suite on SAP HANA
Key Points to remember

HANA Studio – Convenient code snippet storage

This is a quick blog post to show a nifty place to store code snippets in HANA Studio. I’m thinking of snippets that you execute often and lose somewhere in your HANA Studio tabs, the ones where you haven’t been super diligent about saving as sql files. (Confession time, this is me, I have useful code snippets stored in lots of random places that seemed like a good place at the time.)

Note: I know HANA Studio is “dead” with HANA 2.0, however many people are still using it and are still using HANA XS Classic, so perhaps this tip will help someone have a nicer experience in the client tool.

Introduction to the Relational Data Lake Service DAT106 #SAPTechEd Recap

Presented at SAP TechEd

Below are my rough notes

How to use SAP HANA cockpit performance monitor & analysis apps to monitor/analyze heavy query issue

Introduction

There are different kinds of performance issue(high CPU/memory usage, lock wait for example) and even combination of them in SAP HANA DB due to the different use case, and it’s not easy to analyze them.

SAP HANA Hardware and Cloud Measurement Tools (HCMT) – Replacement of HWCCT Tool

Recently before installing SAP HANA on certified server, I thought of running SAP HANA Hardware Configuration Check Tool on the provisioned server. The latest available HWCCT version in service marketplace is 244 and I have used the same to perform the check.

NOTE: I have also used version 242 and the details provided below are encountered in both the version. 

First error you will encounter on running hwcct command for version 242 and 244 will be –

./hwcct: error while loading shared libraries: libhdbtmcachebase.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I was able to get this file from the existing HANA database and copied this file to the lib directory of hardwareConfigurationTool folder

NOTE: This file is only available in HANA 2.0 SPS 04. You won’t be able to find this file in lower HANA database version. 

After that, above error got resolved. But now during landscape evaluation I encountered below error –

Failed to parse system information in readMemoryDistributionInfo, size=34754

Failed to parse system information in readNetworkInfo, size=34754

Error while running HWCCT:exception 1: no.1000010 (ltt/impl/strtod.cpp:707) TID: 24197

Invalid argument

exception throw location:

1: 0x00007fff9305d610 in ltt::throwInvalidArgument(char const*, int)+0x30 at new.cpp:296 (libhdblttbase.so)

2: 0x0000000126eb0d80 in int lttStoi32<char>(char const*, unsigned long*, int) [clone .constprop.46]+0x180 at iterator_base.hpp:1060 (hwcct)

3: 0x0000000126eb290c in ValidateSystemInfo::checkFSConfig4DataLog(ltt::map<ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >, ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >, ltt::less<ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> > >, ltt::rb_tree_balancier>&) [clone .constprop.14]+0x1ec at string.hpp:603 (hwcct)

4: 0x0000000126ecab50 in ValidateSystemInfo::checkFileSystemList(ltt::vector<ltt::map<ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >, ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >, ltt::less<ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> > >, ltt::rb_tree_balancier> >&, ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >&)+0x980 at ValidateSystemInfo.cpp:1428 (hwcct)

5: 0x0000000126ecbb84 in ValidateSystemInfo::validateFilesystemConfig()+0x3e4 at memory.hpp:1258 (hwcct)

6: 0x0000000126ebd798 in ValidateSystemInfo::validate(ltt::basic_string_retval<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> > (ValidateSystemInfo::**)(), int&, ltt::basic_string<char, ltt::char_traits<char>, ltt::integral_constant<int, 64> >&)+0x1e8 at ValidateSystemInfo.cpp:1909 (hwcct)

7: 0x0000000126f007a8 in hwcctTests::EvalOS::runTest()+0x1698 at LandscapeTest.cpp:197 (hwcct)

8: 0x0000000126ead3f8 in main+0xf58 at HwcctHelper.cpp:112 (hwcct)

9: 0x00007fff93452140 in System::mainWrapper(int, char**, char**, void*)+0x50 at SystemMutex.cpp:203 (libhdbbasis.so)

10: 0x00007fff926a3920 in generic_start_main.isra.0+0x140 (libc.so.6)

11: 0x00007fff926a3b1c in __libc_start_main+0xac (libc.so.6)

12: 0x00007fff93445544 in __libc_start_main+0xa4 at IsInMain.cpp:78 (libhdbbasis.so)

exception type information:

- 0: public ltt::invalid_argument@0x7fff930de780 SI

- 0: public ltt::logic_error@0x7fff930deac0 SI

- 0: public ltt::exception@0x7fff930dec40

There is no SAP Note which addresses above issue. At first I thought there might be some additional pre-requisites as I’m using recently certified SUSE version (SLES 15 SP 1) but I could not find any. I raised message to SAP and found that – Its a programming error which is reported since HWCCT 242 and 244 version.

Also SAP HANA Hardware Configuration Check Tool (HWCCT) has been end of life-cycle (EOL) on Aug 1st, 2019. So now no further releases or patches will be provided to accommodate its fix. (As per SAP)

What’s NEXT?

A new SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement tools (HCMT) is or will be introduced as a replacement of HWCCT. I could not find any official announcement of this tool but as per SAP, HCMT will be an official tool to check server before deploying HANA system in future.

HCMT is available for download in Service Market Place, so thought of giving it a try. Below is the official SAP Note for this tool –

2493172 – SAP HANA Hardware and Cloud Measurement Tools

Download the pdf attached in above SAP Note as it gives details on the usage of HCMT tool.

HCMT Overview

The SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement tool (HCMT) allows customers and partners to collect information on the infrastructure intended for SAP HANA deployment. The tool measures whether the planned hardware or cloud system complies with the requirements defined by SAP.

Furthermore, it gauges whether the system planned for SAP HANA deployment can achieve satisfactory base performance by meeting the minimum requirements defined as well as satisfactory overall performance given the intended SAP HANA usage.

The measurement results are saved into a single file, which can be uploaded to the SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement analysis for further analysis and reporting.

NOTE: SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement tools are based on the requirements of SAP HANA Platform 2.0 or newer. For older SAP HANA versions, refer to the SAP HANA Hardware Configuration Check Tool

Download

You can download the tool from the SAP Support Portal at https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/softwarecenter –> SUPPORT PACKAGES & PATCHES –> Search for: “hana optim”

Unlike HWCCT, which is ready to use just by extracting SAR file. Here, with HCMT we need to install the tool on the server.

First extract the tool using SAPCAR

It will have setup folder, navigate into the folder and install the tool using hcmtsetup command

After setup, the following folder structure is available:

The SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement tool performs a series of automated tests, for example network tests, file system consistency tests, system management BIOS tests, and CPU benchmark tests.

The duration and repeat rate of the tests depends on the type of execution plan that you intend to run.

The following execution plans are available:

executionplan.json – Default execution plan that helps you to check if the KPIs for SAP HANA certification are met.

full_executionplan.json – Performs the same tests as the default execution plan, but has a higher test repeat rate and thus a longer test duration. This test is used for SAP HANA certification.

So for people who wants to validate HANA server before installing should use executionplan.json plan to test their HANA servers

NOTE: I have executed this tool for Scale-up System 

Prerequisites

◉ You have installed the latest version of the SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement tool on the system.

◉ You have at least 20 GB of free storage space in the location where SAP HANA data can be placed during the test.

◉ When using nonvolatile memory, mounts for all hosts or an alias of the same name must be available.

◉ Port 50001 must be open for communication.

NOTE: This tool will run for a while, so make sure you run this tool in one of your jump server.

# ./hcmt -v -p <path>/setup/config/executionplan.json

Once the execution is completed it will create a file named hcmtresult-<dateandtime>.zip inside the same folder. Transfer that zip file into you desktop

We need to upload the measurement results file and analyze the results to see whether the systems meet the configuration and performance requirements.

https://hotui-supportportal.dispatcher.hana.ondemand.com/index.html

Click on “Manage Your Systems”

Click on (+) Add System

Provide details based on your usage and click Save

Click on “Upload Your Measurement Results”

If you have multiple system configured, make sure you upload measurement result to appropriate system.

Review and Submit

Analyzing the Measurement Results

SAP HANA hardware and cloud measurement analysis provides a graphical and textual representation of your measurement results. It allows you to see which parts of your system are doing well and which parts may need some changes or improvements to achieve the required performance.

You can read the pdf attached to SAP Note 2493172 on how to analyze the result..

Pro’s

1. Nice centralized repository for all of our HANA Server checks

2. Graphical insight but tedious to interpret result.

Con’s 

1. Difficult to read or get insight from the uploaded measurement as the result is not provided in the form of dashboard which can be drilled down to get more insight (like S/4HANA Readiness Check)

2. Currently there is no option to share the result to other S-User

3. I would rather prefer a quick summary in one file like below from HWCCT tool over individual selection

But as SAP suggested that this tool is still in development. So probably we can expect to get more holistic insight from this tool in future.

Join and Key in SAP HANA

In this blog, I would like to share the information on Join and Key in SAP HANA.

Explanation about Join:

What is SAP HANA Join?

Join in SAP HANA is used to Join table and information view and select values as per the requirement.

Split string into multiple rows using SQL in SAP HANA

Introduction

In this post I would like to describe options for splitting concatenated string into multiple rows using SQL in SAP HANA. Depending on which version of HANA system you are working you can choose the one which is valid.

SAP HANA EXPRESS EDITION in Yandex Cloud. Binary Installation. Step-by-step guide

About  a Cloud Trends.

A Cloud computing is a new technology trend. A lot of  guidelines about SAP in SAP Cloud Platform, Amazon AWS, Google GCP and Microsoft Azure But Cloud platforms there is much more. In this step-by-step guideline you know about newbie among Cloud Providers – about Ynadex Cloud.  Competition among cloud services is good thing for customers ! Prices are down – Quality are up.