Illustrating Post-Installation Steps

After the installation has finished successfully, the SAP HANA system is operating in generic mode. You do not need to start the SAP HANA system, but you do need to follow the post-installation instructions in the SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide and the SAP installation notes.

• SAP Note 1730932: Using backup tools with Backint for HANA

  If you want to use a backup tool from a third-party supplier to create backups for the data and redo logs of your SAP HANA system, check the available solutions in SAP Certified Solutions directory (search term: backint). Here you can see which backup tools are certified for Backint in combination with SAP HANA. Choose the name of a hardware partner to view the released versions under SAP Certified Solutions Directory.

• SAP Note 2559588: Increasing the security level of sapstartsrv within SAP HANA Database and corresponding tool settings that need to be adapted.

  In case you want to secure webmethods, the note describes prerequisites and limitations of parameter service/protectedwebmethods.

• Create personal Linux operating system user accounts assigned to the individual members of the corresponding SAP HANA team. In this way the transparency is increased, and you are not forced to use the standard user <sid>adm created by the installation.

• SAP Note 2382421: Optimizing the Network Configuration on HANA- and OS-Level

  It is explained that the default Linux and SAP HANA configuration might not necessarily be optimized for the needs of the internal SAP HANA communication. Hence, it is recommended to optimize related parameters to allow for a smooth, error-free inter-node and inter-service communication.

• SAP Note 2383191: SAP HANA requirements to solve Linux OS vulnerabilities

  Explains how to proceed on an SAP HANA system when a security vulnerability at Linux OS level has been detected and a fix was released by the Linux OS vendor.

• SAP Note 2383191: SAP HANA requirements to solve Linux OS vulnerabilities

  For a security vulnerability detected at Linux OS level, there is a fix which was released by the Linux OS vendor. This note provides background information and a manual how to fix the issue.

• Take care about the virtualization environment according to the respective operating system in use:

  • SAP Note 2284516: SAP HANA virtualized on SUSE Linux Enterprise hypervisors

  • SAP Note 2599726: SAP HANA on Red Hat Virtualization

• SAP Note 1829651: Time zone settings in HANA scale out landscapes

  If you are running a SAP HANA scale out landscape and see different time zone settings for the <sid>adm user for at least one server, correct this failure which may be caused by an inconsistency in the installation process.

• A backup of the operating system should be done as soon as possible. Backups are the responsibility of the backup group.

• Configure/check the backup settings:

  • basepath_databackup: Parameter to set the data backup location

  • basepath_logbackup: Parameter to set the log backup location

  • log_mode: Parameter to set the database log mode

• SAP HANA Security Guide: This guide is the entry point for all information relating to the secure operation and configuration of the on-premise deployment of SAP HANA. The lesson Explaining Encryption covers how to encrypt the SAP HANA data and log volume, as well as backups.

• SAP Note 2493657: How do I deactivate the SYSTEM User?

  According to security guidelines, the database superuser SYSTEM should be deactivated within the SAP HANA SYSTEMDB, as well as in every tenant database.

• For all the database administrators, create personal user accounts on the SAP HANA databases that they need to perform the respective assigned administrative tasks.

• The SAP HANA system has to be customized on the level of the databases. There is a wide range of possible configurations. As a customer you might want to get recommendations and hints on how to improve different areas of the SAP HANA databases:

  • SAP Note 2600030: Parameter Recommendations in SAP HANA Environments

    This SAP Note provides an overview of current recommendations in order to bypass known issues. Involved system components are set according to the best practices.

  • SAP Note 1969700: SQL Statement Collection for SAP HANA

    An SQL script collection is attached to this note for SAP. The SQL script "HANA_Configuration_MiniChecks…" verifies that the important SAP HANA parameter values conform to SAP recommendations. Many further scripts are part of the collection and can be used for various scenarios.

  • SAP Note 1730999: Configuration changes to SAP HANA system

    Changes to configuration parameters of the SAP HANA database, operating system parameters, ports, and so forth have to be verified and released by SAP. This note is explaining the background, and refers to specific topics by pointing to further relevant notes.

  • global_allocation_limit: Parameter to limit the database memory allocation for SAP HANA.

• SAP Note 1977584: Technical Consistency Checks for SAP HANA Databases

  To pro-actively check the SAP HANA consistency, it is a good idea to execute this check which detects inconsistencies and to what extent corruptions exist.

• If required, update the SAP HANA database system to the latest revision.

As with all SAP products, you need a license from SAP to run SAP HANA.

There are two types of permanent license keys available for SAP HANA: unenforced and enforced

• Unenforced license key

  The operation of SAP HANA is not affected if its memory consumption exceeds the licensed amount of memory

• Enforced license key

  The database is locked down when the current memory consumption of SAP HANA exceeds the licensed amount of memory, plus some tolerance. If this happens, either SAP HANA needs to be restarted, or a new license key that covers the amount of memory in use needs to be installed.

If the database goes into lock-down mode, it might be for one of the following reasons:

• Due to the same conditions as the system database

• The amount of licensed memory for the enforced license was exceeded

If the effective enforced license key is installed in the tenant database, it takes precedence over the license key installed in the system database. The tenant database remains in lock-down mode, even if there is a valid license key available in the system database.

In lock-down mode, it is not possible to query the database. Only a user with the system privilege LICENSE ADMIN can connect to the database and execute license-related queries, such as, obtain previous license data, install a new license key, and delete installed license keys. The database cannot be backed up in lock-down mode.

Additional licenses are required for certain applications running on the SAP HANA database, as well as certain SAP HANA options and capabilities. For more information, see SAP Note 1644792.

Only a system with a valid license, that is not locked down, can be backed up. The license is also backed up and then restored with Recovery. When the recovery of the backup is performed on the same system, there is no change in system ID and hardware key; the license key from the backup is recovered and used for license check. If the backup is too old, the license key from the backup might have expired. In this case, the database is locked after recovery and you need a new valid license key to unlock the database.

For all tasks around license management in the SAP HANA database, you need the system privilege LICENSE ADMIN.

The licensed memory is the amount of memory that a customer wants to assign to a particular SAP HANA instance. In the context of requesting a license key via the wizard, the customer must enter the amount of memory required. The bought amount of memory can be assigned to a particular SAP HANA instance or distributed to different ones. According to the customer decision, the specified number is put into the generated license key file. Once the license key is installed into the designated SAP HANA instance, the number is set in the SAP HANA instance and is shown in SAP HANA cockpit.

Memory allocation in SAP HANA uses a pool concept. The memory is pre-allocated from the operating system to gain performance on actual allocations done in SAP HANA database code.

The global_allocation_limit parameter is used to limit the amount of memory that can be used by the database. The value is the maximum allocation limit in MB. By default, the global_allocation_limit parameter has a value of 0. Depending on the amount of physical memory available in the SAP HANA server, the memory manager then allocates the memory according to the following rules:

• 90% of the first 64 GB of available physical memory

• 97% of each further GB

The following table contains licensing-related SAP Notes for further reference.