Identifying the Linux Operating System Requirements

Depending on the CPU architecture used, SAP HANA is available on the SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux. Before starting the SAP HANA installation, make sure that you have followed the recommendations made in the SUSE (SLES) and Red Hat (RHEL) specific SAP Notes.

With the introduction of SAP HANA 2.0, the supported operating systems list was extended to include SUSE SLES 12 SPx or SLES for SAP Applications 15 SPx and Red Hat. RHEL 7.3 or newer and RHEL 8.x.

To make sure that the Linux operating system is configured according to the SAP standards, use the recommended OS setting given in the SAP Notes from the following list.

For an SAP HANA system on IBM Power servers, the following operating system is available for SAP HANA 2.0:

• SAP Note 2055470 – HANA on POWER Planning and Installation Specifics – Central Note
• SAP Note 2188482 – SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems: Allowed Hardware
• SAP Note 2554012 – FAQ: SAP HANA big-endian to little-endian Migration for IBM Power
• SAP Note 2537080 – Migrate SAP HANA 1.0 on IBM Power Systems big-endian to SAP HANA 2.0 on IBM Power Systems little-endian
• SAP Note 2684254 – SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS settings for SLES 15 / SLES for SAP Applications 15
• SAP Note 2205917 – SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS settings for SLES 12 / SLES for SAP Applications 12
• SAP Note 3108302 – SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS Settings for RHEL 9
• SAP Note 2777782 – SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS Settings for RHEL 8
• SAP Note 2292690 – SAP HANA DB: Recommended OS settings for RHEL 7

Hint

SAP strongly recommends using "RHEL for SAP Solutions" or "SLES for SAP Applications" due to their additional features, optimized setup for SAP applications, and extended support cycles.

In general, the Linux distributions support many file systems. Depending on the application that you run on the Linux OS, not every file system is supported. In the SAP environment, the supported file system types depend on the used application, for example, ABAP or Java application server, or used database, for example, SAP HANA or MS-SQL server. For non-SAP applications, the recommendations are supplied by the respective third-party application vendors. This applies in particular to the SAP HANA database system.

Only file systems that were tested successfully are supported for SAP HANA. Supported file systems can be found in the SAP Note 2622671 – SAP HANA Certified and Supported Hardware.

The file system recommendations are only valid for the SAP HANA data volume, log volume, and backup volume. Make sure that you follow these recommendations to avoid problems like performance degradations, inconsistencies, or terminations.

The figure, Single-Host System, shows the file system layout for a single-host system. The file systems Installation Path, Data path, and Log path are located on the shared storage, which makes it easier to expand this configuration to a multi-host SAP HANA system.

The figure, Multi-Host System, shows the file system layout for a multi-host system. Here, all hosts connect to the shared storage file system Installation Path so that they all use the same SAP HANA kernel and configuration setting. In the shared storage file system Data path and Log path, every host connects to a separate mnt0000x directory. Which hosts connects to which directory is handled by partition numbers that were created during the installation. This partition assignment isn't fixed, because in a high-available scenario, the standby host needs to take over the partition number of the failing host.

The figure, Disk Space Layout, shows a list of the most important file systems to include on an SAP HANA host. As these values can change over time, it is important that you always check the current SAP HANA installation guides and SAP installation notes.

For patching, you will need approximately 5 GB free space in your working directory.

Hint

SAP strongly recommends that you keep the data and log volumes on different disks.