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HayBouten
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert

During my SAP TechEd in 2021 - Live Learning Sessions - SAP HANA Cloud basics and administration tools you submitted many questions, due to time restrictions I wasn't able to answer them.

Here is the list with questions and my answers.

Question 1: Is this session being recorded?
Answer 1: Yes, you can find the recording here. Live Learning Sessions - SAP TechEd in 2021 (on24.com) 

Question 2: What is exactly a Data Lake?
Answer 2:  The official SAP definition: "A SAP HANA Cloud, Data Lake efficiently and securely stores, manages, and analyzes large amounts of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. The data lake instance manages access to files in the data lake through Files component and can be used for high performance analysis on petabyte volumes of relational data with data lake IQ." 
So basically it is a disk based database that can store large amounts of data in a very cost efficient ways. 

Question 3: (a)How frequently will the DB upgrade happen? (b)Is SAP responsible for that?
Answer 3a: SAP HANA Cloud components follow a quarterly release cycle (QRC). QRC2/2021 means it was released within the second quarter of year 2021. In between QRC releases, patches that contain bug fixes and security improvements are made available.
So you will get a new version every 3 months, and in between patches that fix bugs and improve the security.
Answer 3b: SAP provides the new QRC releases and patches, but you as an database administrator will initiate the start of the patch. This means you are in control when the update takes pace. The update procedure is fully automated, and SAP makes sure that this automated procedure runs without any issues. 
There is one exception. When you neglect to apply the new QRC release for more than 6 months, SAP will automatically update your SAP HANA Cloud database instance to the latest patch version of the current QRC-1.
So when you are running QRC1 for 7 months, and you don't update the database, the automatic update will update your database to the latest version of QRC2, even when there is a QRC3 already available.

Question 4: Can we use SAP HANA Cloud DB as backend of SAP System for example SAP Solution Manager.
Answer 4: I think for SAP Solution Manager and a SAP HANA Cloud database there is better solution called SAP Focused Run.

Question 5: Is there High Availability for SAP HANA Cloud?
Answer 5: Yes, there are several layers of HA for SAP HANA Cloud. First the Kubernetes cluster in the SAP BTP Cloud Foundry, If the SAP HANA Cloud container dies, the Kubernetes cluster will start a new container. On SAP HANA Cloud database level, you can also add 1 or 2 replicas in different availability zones. When a SAP HANA Cloud with replicas fails, the takeover can be automatic, because the endpoint doesn't change the connected application will be redirected to the replica. 

Question 6: What is the advantage at customers perspective going to hyperscalers of Google etc instead of SAP data centers?
Answer 6: The freedom of choice. If all your other cloud applications are running at a certain hyperscalers, then SAP doesn't force you to go into the SAP data centers, you can have the same functionality at your preferred hyperscaler.

Question 7: How SAP HANA Cloud can extract data from an on-prem S/4HANA system?
Answer 7: There are several options in SAP BTP to extract data from an on-prem S/4HANA system. For SAP HANA Cloud using the SAP HANA Smart Data Access (SDA) using the SAP Cloud Connector or the DP agent.

Question 8: Is SAP HANA Cloud binded to a subaccount?
Answer 8: Yes, the SAP HANA Cloud lives as a service in the Cloud Foundry Organization and space where you created it, but the communication to the SAP HANA Cloud isn't limited to the subaccount.

Question 9: Do we have any restrictions for SAP HANA DB at Cloud.
Answer 9: For SAP HANA Cloud Trial there is a fixed size of 30GB RAM, 120GB disk, and 2 vCPUs. On SAP BTP production, the SAP HANA Cloud database instance size depends on the provider (SAP, Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Alibaba) but it ranges into the multiple terabytes.

Question 10: Is it compulsory that SAP HANA Cloud needs to be deployed on SAP BTP, or can SAP HANA Cloud be deployed on any cloud infrastructure without having to deploy SAP BTP.
Answer 10: As far as I know SAP HANA Cloud is bound to SAP BTP, as it is part of the services provided by SAP BTP.

Question 11: Are there any tools available for migrating from neo HANA service to SAP HANA Cloud? What is the impact?
Answer 11: Yes, there is help available. See Migrating Cloud Integration from the Neo Environment to the Multi-Cloud Foundation - SAP Help Portal 
Also read this blog: Migrate from Neo to Cloud Foundry – SAP Cloud Integration | SAP Blogs

Question 12: Why should we migrate from SAP HANA service on neo to SAP HANA Cloud.
Answer 12: Because the Multi-Cloud has more to offer and is built to be more flexible and modern techniques 

Question 13: What is the difference between SAP HANA and SAP HANA Cloud.
Answer 13: The SAP HANA Cloud database is like a tenant when your compare it to SAP HANA 2.0 on-premises. The SAP HANA Cloud code is also adapted to run optimal in a Kubernetes cluster in Cloud Foundry,

Question 14: Is the SAP HANA Admin responsibility reduced in SAP HANA Cloud?
Answer 14: Yes it is, but you also get new task. Please read by BLOG on this topic Is there a life for an SAP HANA database administrator in the cloud?

Question 15: Managed Services - Which Cloud infrastructures are supported and recommended.
Answer 15: Supported hyperscalers are Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and SAP. You can use any of these, select the one that you prefer.

Question 16: What is the cloud infrastructure on which SAP HANA Cloud is deployed by default? - the trial that is available through SAP BTP.
Answer 16: For SAP BTP production, you can choose from all the supported hyperscalers. During deployment of SAP HANA Trial, you can choose the region closest to you and there are three regions available. Two AWS and one Azure.

This completed the lists of questions asked during the SAP Live Learning session - SAP HANA Cloud basics and administration tools. I grouped a few questions together, as they were content wise the same.

Also visit the SAP Learning Journey I created, it will give also lots of details and will answer many of your question. Provisioning and Administration with SAP HANA Cloud

Thanks for attending the SAP Live Learning Session.

-- Hay