SAP Certified Technology Specialist: SAP HANA Inst...
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In the summer of 2014, I wrote a blog about the SAP Certified Technology Specialist - SAP HANA Installation certification. The blog has received over 20.000 views - many thanks to all of my readers! - and judging by the comments and messages I have received it has helped quite a few students to pass the exam.
At the time, the certification matched SAP HANA SPS 06 and 07. Today, the most recent SAP HANA release is SPS 11. So I figured it to be a good time to provide an update for this blog and yesterday I dropped by the certification test center and managed to pass the certification ( :wink: ). In this blog, I will share with you my experiences.
Cut Score: 68% (141), 65% (142), 60% (151) => Note that the cut score is going down. This exam is getting easier! :wink:
Duration: 90 minutes
The prerequisite for the Technology Specialist certification is ownership of the Technology Associate certificate: E_HANATEC141, E_HANATEC142, or E_HANATEC151; it sits on top. They are not linked, so any combination is fine, e.g. a combination of TEC141 and INS151 is valid.
Topic Areas
There are 40 questions divided over 6 topic areas with the relative weight. I will discuss each topic area in more detail below.
System Landscape Planning (6 -10 questions)
Installation and Uninstall Procedures (6 -10 questions)
Post-installation (6 -10 questions)
Hardware and Operating System Verification (3-5 questions)
Scale Out Scenarios (3-5 questions)
Administration Tools (3-5 questions)
Resources
As main resource training HA200 - SAP HANA - Installation & Operations is listed. This 5-day training covers not only installation but also architecture, administration tools, backup and recovery, operations, security, user management, etc. The training is also the main resource for the Technology Associate certification, so it probably is a good investment of your time. However, it is not a requirement.
To help you prepare for the exam, I have recorded a number of tutorial videos about SAP HANA installations. The playlist SAP HANA Installations SPS 11 discusses concepts and shows how to install and update the SAP HANA server, studio and client, add components, and perform post-installation configuration.
Unfortunately, but very reasonably, those that have passed the exam are not allowed to share the questions with anyone else, so I can't share any particular question with you here. However, a close study of the mentioned resources should provide you with enough knowledge to successfully pass the exam.
Product Availability Matrix
The Product Availability Matrix (PAM) on the SAP Support Portal provides information about SAP software product versions, including availability and end of maintenance dates, upgrade paths, and technical release information (database platforms, Java version, operating systems, etc.).
Below a video that shows how you can download SAP HANA software from the SWDC (Software Download Center).
This video shows where to find documentation and some of the key topics from the Master Guide.
Chapter 2 - Concepts and Requirements for an SAP HANA System
The second chapter discusses system concepts and system types, deployment types, hardware and software requirements, and recommended file system layout.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand what's a host, a system, an instance, and a distributed system. What has to be the same on a distributed system?
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you know what purpose the SAP HANA Storage Connector API serves; read for example SAP HANA TDI - Storage Requirements.
Below a video that discusses these concepts and shows default file system layout.
Chapter 3 - Using the SAP HANA Platform LCM Tools
The third chapter introduces the different flavours of the lifecycle management (LCM) tools: command line, windows, and web; and how they can be used; interactive, batch, or a combination. This clearly is an important chapter and you can expect a few question on this tool.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand what tasks can be performed by the different versions of the lifecycle manager installer (installation medium and resident HDBLCM); where are they located?
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand the different program interaction modes and what takes precedence: parameter file or call options?
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand how the web version of HDBLCM works, how to access it (URL, ports), how to troubleshoot (e.g. under what account it runs and required privileges), what lifecycle management tasks it supports, etc.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand how to perform a centralised execution of platform LCM tasks.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand what role the SAP Host Agent has for LCM tasks.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand the difference between platform lifecycle management with HDBLCM and application lifecycle management with HALM.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand the difference between the platform lifecycle management tool HDBLCM - the wrapper tool - and the different command line tools that are called by HDBLCM, e.g. hdbinst, hdbuinst, hdbupd, etc.
Below a video that shows the different versions of the SAP HANA Platform Lifecycle Management tool (command-line, windows, web).
Below a video that shows the lifecycle management tool in batch mode with a parameter file.
Chapter 4 - Installing an SAP HANA System
The fourth chapter documents the actual SAP HANA installation. This obviously is also an important chapter!
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand how to run HDBLCM with a parameter file, minimum required parameters and which parameters do not have a default value.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand how you can specify passwords with a batch installations.
Below a video that shows the SAP HANA installation in command line and Windows mode.
Chapter 5 - Updating the SAP HANA System
The fifth chapter documents the update of the SAP HANA system and SAP HANA system components like the SAP HANA client, SAP HANA studio, Application Function Libraries (AFL) ,etc.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: As of SPS 09, updating the SAP HANA system can be performed as the system administrator user <sid>adm.
Below a video that shows an update of the SAP HANA system in command line, Windows, and web mode.
Chapter 6 - Managing SAP HANA System Components
The sixth chapter documents how to install, update or uninstall SAP HANA system components.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand what tasks can be performed by the different versions of the lifecycle manager installer (installation medium and resident HDBLCM).
Below a video that shows how to add the AFL component using the platform lifecycle management tool in command line, Windows, and web mode.
Chapter 7 - Uninstalling the SAP HANA System
The seventh chapter documents how to uninstall SAP HANA components.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you know the prerequisites to uninstall an SAP HANA system.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: How do you uninstall the SAP Host Agent or the SMD agent?
Below a video that shows how to uninstall an SAP HANA system.
Chapter 8 - Managing the SAP HANA System After Installation
The eighth chapter documents some common post-installation tasks like enabling data volume encryption.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you understand what you can encrypt with data volume encryption.
Below a video that shows how DVE works.
SAP HANA Studio Installation Guide
This is a small guide compared with the server installation guide and documents what is SAP HANA studio and how to install, update, or uninstall it on the three supported platforms: Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you know on which platforms SAP HANA studio is supported.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you are familiar with the featured installation option and what purpose it serves.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Make sure you know how you can perform an installation using an update site.
The video below shows how to install SAP HANA studio on the Windows platform.
The video below shows how to install SAP HANA studio on the Mac OS X platform.
The video below shows how to install SAP HANA studio using an update site.
The video below shows how to install SAP HANA studio as a plugin for Eclipse
SAP HANA Administration Guide
This is very complete and therefore voluminous guide: 1175 pages for the SPS 11 release.
On the topics list for the installation certification it listed, however, as an additional resource only for the topic Scale Out Scenarios, which has a relative weight of 8-12% (± 4 questions). So I would not recommend to spend too much time on this guide.
Chapter 5 - Availability and Scalability
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Understand (high-level) the concepts of system and storage replication and the tool used (hdbnsutil)
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Understand (high-level) the concepts of backup and (disaster) recovery.
:!: QUESTION ALERT: Understand how you can configure the network for multiple hosts.
Thanks a lot, Denys! All the documentation you put out there as well as the Hana Academy videos you present are extremely valuable tools for whoever is interested in diving into the SAP Hana realm.
Thanks very much for this. I discovered this latest version two days before I took the exam (yesterday) and I believe that it was a major factor in my passing.
Just one comment (as a DBA) though and that is that we need a technical path a bit like Oracle (OCA, OCP etc.). I say this (and again as a DBA) that I would like to see questions on (for example) things such as SDA, replication, containers etc. at a "nitty gritty" level.
Hi Denys, Thank you for sharing the knowledge and guidance on SAP HANA. I cannot appreciate enough on your efforts.
I recently passed my HANATEC Associate level for SPS10. Now, preparing for INS. Could you suggest me the best options available to play with various installation options as we dont have HANA yet on our landscape.
There is not need to go though the Administration Guide for the HANAINS exam (HANATEC covered this ... 😉 ) - if you have some experience with installing and/or watch the videos with blog you should have a good picture about the type of questions you can expect.
Thanks a lot for summarising all the course content and information needed for E_HANAINS151 in one place. I will highly recommend this blog for anyone who is going for the exam.
I cleared C_HANATEC_10 on 19/05/2016 and Cleared E_HANAINS151 on 24/05/2016
SAP activated Hanatec 11 on the next day of I clearing Hanatec 10 () despite confirming that there will be NO hanatec 11
Thanks a lot for summarising all the course content and information needed for E_HANAINS151 in one place. I will highly recommend this blog for anyone who is going for the exam.
I cleared C_HANATEC_10 on 15/04/2016 and cleared E_HANAINS151 today with 90% success, it was very easy, I found the C_HANATEC_10 more difficult.
To my knowledge, the restriction concerns support.
The Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) program states that SAP supports SAP HANA installations performed on certified hardware and by certified engineers. I am not aware of any relation between your certification and HANA versions: as long as your certification is valid, you can install any version.
Hi Denys,
Thanks for your answer. I'll ask my SAP Customer support kolleague if he can get any more Infromation about this topic.
Do you by chance, have any more infomration about how long the certifications are valid?
Is this a timeperiod of 2 years starting from certification date?
As a rule, SAP considers certifications on the two most recent solution release levels to be current and valid, but this can vary for some solutions. You can find a list of currently valid certifications in the By Role section of the Training and Certification Shop catalog.
For the TDI program, the conditions are still the same.
As of C_HANATEC_11 the TDI installation questions a part of the regular certification and the participants who pass the C_HANATEC_11. In HA200 Col12 and HA200 Col13 this is mentioned in the course materials.
You might want to follow the following blog, I understood there will an update for HANATEC_13 soon: