Storage
Mobility
Protection
Analysis and control
TOPICShare
Some of the largest businesses run SAP applications. Increasingly, customers are running mission-critical SAP applications on Google Cloud to take advantage of the platform’s secure, modern, and reliable global infrastructure as well as its capabilities in AI, ML, and analytics.
Every enterprise customer is different, and each has its unique journey to the cloud when it comes to migrating SAP applications. NetApp and Google have teamed up to simplify this journey by offering customers best practices that are tied to reference architectures underpinned by NetApp® Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud. As customers look to transform their SAP landscapes, Cloud Volumes Service helps them to modernize using Google Cloud’s highly secure and highly available infrastructure. Read on to find out more about how Google Cloud and NetApp are perfectly matched to supercharge (and automate!) your SAP deployments.
A Seamless Path to SAP Data Management in the Cloud
Many customers that have on-premises SAP deployments are looking to simplify operations and move to the cloud quickly. With a hybrid SAP landscape, there needs to be a seamless path for data management across all terrain. Other customers simply want to minimize and eliminate extraneous on-premises infrastructure used for sporadic, non-production requirements such as development, quality of service, and training. Still others want to undertake virtualized SAP deployments in the cloud to avoid distributed landscapes, spread across on-premises and cloud environments.
In those scenarios—on-premises, existing hybrid, and new SAP deployments—customers need to think about their requirements for no-impact testing, training, and prototype development. SAP landscape deployments can even be automated using the Terraform API. Afterall, the goal is to integrate with Google Cloud services for a consistent experience without sacrificing performance or data management capabilities.
Meeting SAP Performance Requirements in Cloud
To understand the specific storage requirements and different use cases for SAP, we need to take a closer look at the types of SAP deployments.
SAP Storage Performance Requirements and Certification
The table above shows typical file systems that are used by an SAP application server, an SAP/AnyDB database server (such reference architectures as Oracle, SQL, DB2, ASE, and MaxDB), and an SAP HANA server. The colors indicate the typical performance requirement for these type of file systems. Green indicates a low performance requirement for standard file systems that hold binaries, log and trace files, or configuration files. In contrast, SAP HANA data and log volumes require higher storage performance; therefore, they are displayed in red (requirements relative to traditional databases).
Secure Backup of Your Databases and SAP Deployments
But apart meeting the performance and availability requirements of a number of workloads, Cloud Volumes Service goes above and beyond to improve backup and recovery. Using NetApp SnapshotTM technology in CVS, users saw an approximately 99% decrease in the time it took to create a backup of their entire SAP database. In layman’s terms, CVS took a job that used to take close to three hours to complete (file-based backup), and completed it in two minutes. That’s 2.3TB in two minutes.
That means that you not only get your backup done faster, but your company’s SAP database, which is core to revenue and operations, doesn’t have to be offline for those three hours. Two minutes is all it takes to ensure that your company’s SAP databases are safe and secure in the event of failure.
If you ever need to restore the data from the backup, we’ve improved that figure, too. Using Cloud Volumes Service, restore takes one hour. Without CVS, restore takes around five hours to complete. That’s four hours of downtime eliminated.
Automated SAP HANA Deployment and Business Processes: Machine Learning
Users seeking increased ease of use and simplicity in their SAP management will find that Cloud Volumes Service gets rid of much of tedium (and the headache) of SAP operation. For instance, SAP landscape deployments can be automated using the Terraform API, which deploys the infrastructure components of SAP. This API does the legwork for you, removing the need for any manual tooling.
Once you’ve begun to manage your SAP applications in the cloud, Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud begins to learn: its machine learning capabilities mean that it can do much of the day-to-day legwork for you, according to the processes and procedures you yourself have implemented.
Among other capabilities, machine learning in Cloud Volumes Service enables automated invoice recognition and processing, accelerating logistics at your operation and freeing up resources for other tasks. This machine learning feature is unique to CVS for Google Cloud, and has unlimited potential to simplify the way your company operates.
The Upshot: Cloud Volumes Service Simplifies SAP Management
Cloud Volumes Service is the only enterprise-grade, fully managed offering for SAP that’s also cloud native. NetApp has refined its operating system for Cloud Volumes Service, streamlining more than two decades of work with SAP applications.
The advantages of running SAP databases on Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud include:
- Unique in-platform machine learning and automated deployment through APIs streamline logistics.
- 99% decrease in the time it takes to create a backup of your entire SAP database, and an 80% decrease in the time it takes to restore your database from a backup.
- No need to deploy and manage individual persistent disks for each HANA instance in a single or multi-host deployment, resulting in significantly lower management overhead.
- Exceptional performance (128 Mb/s for the Extreme tier) for SAP databases on Google Cloud.
- Data protection for SAP file shares, including interfaces, transports, binary, and log files.
- Application consistent backups of HANA with available API calls.
- Simplified provisioning and management of highly available and high-performing file shares.
- Instant copies accelerate project delivery.
One of Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud’s unique offerings is its capability to change performance on demand without impacting availability to the application or causing disruption. Thus, if users need Extreme performance for just two hours a day and Standard performance for the remainder, they can use API calls or a scheduler in Linux to automate that process, resulting in significant cost savings at scale.
Want to Learn More About SAP Deployments With Cloud Volumes Service?
Read the latest info on using SAP with Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, including a wealth of resources for your cloud journey.