Installing SAP HANA

Introduction

Your SAP application requires a database management system in order to run. In an on-premise environment, you must install the database before you can install the application.

To install an SAP HANA database, you go through three steps:

Requirements Analysis
Installation Preparation
Performing the Installation

1. Requirements Analysis

Before installing SAP HANA, there are vital questions that you must ask. These include (but are not limited to):

What is the system going to be used for?
Are you using this database for an SAP application or a data warehouse? Is it being used in association with other applications, or alone?
Is the system to be used for production?
Productive systems must follow organizational standards: hardware and operating system guidelines, network standards, security standards, encryption policies, user management policies, and so on. Non-productive or temporary (sandbox) systems have fewer restrictions.
What computer resources will the system require?
How much computing power do you need? How much data will you store in the database? How active will the system be in terms of concurrent users and concurrent processes and so on? How much will the data grow over time?
Will failover/disaster recovery be implemented?
If the database is a productive database, you may need to implement additional components to protect against catastrophic situations. How much safety do you need?
Where will the database be accessed from?
Will all your database access be within the enterprise? Will it be from a particular location or many locations? Will there be any external access over the internet?

The installation process begins with collecting data to answer these questions. You need to answer all the questions before you can start the installation.

2. Installation Preparation

Sizing is the first step in preparing for an SAP HANA installation. You need to determine the amount of resources that will be required for your SAP HANA database. For this task, SAP provides numerous resources including product-specific sizing guides and the SAP Quick Sizer tool.

The SAP Quick Sizer is a tool developed by SAP to help collect and document specific sizing metrics. These inputs are used to translate your business requirements into technical requirements. The Quick Sizer calculates requirements such as:

Memory requirements
Disk requirements
CPU requirements
Network requirements

These calculations require inputs such as the estimated quantity of data to be stored in the database, the applications that will be deployed, the anticipated number of users and their projected activity level, year-over-year growth estimates, etc., along with an acceptable margin of error. For more information about sizing, visit https://help.sap.com and search SAP Quick Sizer.

For an on-premise SAP HANA database, the customer is responsible for all hardware decisions, purchasing, delivery, and installation. SAP provides a list of specifications, supported vendors, and hardware options for you to choose from.

For cloud systems, the cloud vendor provides the hardware and software. The customer is responsible for subscribing to the necessary resources. Again, you must meet SAP specifications.

In both cases, SAP HANA runs on the Linux operating system. There are two versions of Linux that are supported: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

3. Performing the Installation

An SAP HANA installation is performed with the tools provided by SAP. These tools are downloaded along with the software from SAP's Web site.

The SAP HANA installation tools consist of two programs: HDBLCM and HDBLCMGUI. HDBLCM is a command-line program for performing the installation. HDBLCMGUI is a graphical version of the same program. You can use either one to run the installation.

As a System Administrator, you will run the installation program. That program will ask for all the information that you collected in the previous steps. Then, it will install the software. It is a simple process if you can answer all the questions.

After the installation is completed, you have an SAP HANA server up and running on your system. It is now ready for configuration, security administration, and an application to be installed.

Summary

You are now able to summarize the steps necessary to install SAP HANA.