SAP HANA on IBM Power10

VishwaGopalkris · ‎03-17-2023

Rollout of Partner Technology Innovation for SAP Customers

IBM Power systems and SAP HANA Technology Innovation Network recently rolled out Power10 support for SAP HANA 2.0 (SAP HANA). This informational blog will discuss keynotes from the Power10 technology validation for SAP HANA.

Partner hardware builds the technical foundation of the SAP HANA environment, be it cloud or on-premises deployment and is a crucial aspect for joint customer success. This is even more relevant now with more and more SAP customers on their business transformation journeys and looking for SAP S/4HANA and the RISE with SAP solution to support them in becoming intelligent and sustainable enterprises. SAP HANA Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI) Phase 4 onwards, IBM Power systems have been supported for SAP HANA. Also, for RISE with SAP, IBM Power systems are available under the expanded premium supplier option on IBM Cloud. Power10 is the latest innovation from IBM Power systems on 7nm Processor technology with significant improvement over its predecessor Power9. With support for Power10, SAP is passing the benefits of performance improvement, reliability and TCO reduction to SAP HANA customers. Also, Power10 validation is the first step toward the next generations of IBM Cloud offerings, and customers should stay tuned in this space as there is more to come.

The Power10 technology validation project was done to ensure that partner innovations meet our promise of quality and stability for customers and that the interplay between the latest SAP technology and partner offering is optimized. During the validation process, SAP and IBM jointly worked on simulating representative OLAP, OLTP, mixed load scenarios, and the selection of SAP HANA-specific regression tests. Simulation testing also included but was not limited to power-specific features such as Shared, Dynamic LPAR, Virtual Persistent Memory, and Live Partition Mobility. Joint SAP and IBM testing findings are updated in the SAP Notes 2188482, 2055470 and 2230704. Key Highlights are summarized below.

Power10 shows no regression in comparison with same-sized Power9 configurations. Power10 requires SMT-4 enabled to support a better balance for different workloads based on internal testing. The scalability behaviour of Power10 follows a similar pattern as Power9 (refer to comments in the Power9 section below). IBM & SAP request that an extra review takes place when sizing systems for mixed load/OLTP to account for spikes or demanding workloads. Expert sizing is recommended for OLTP & Mixed Load configurations larger than 92 cores. Supported HANA versions are SAP HANA 2.0 SPS05 at revision level 57 or later.

With TDI Phase 5, sizing relevant information and derived SAPS obtained via the latest sizing tools must be considered. Customers can use the CPU sizing information derived from their production workload to determine the required number of cores.

Power10: The maximum of 40TB for OLAP workload must not be exceeded. For OLTP workload, up to 32TB can be used.

Test with SAP BW edition for SAP HANA shows scalability for OLAP: Power 10 system up to 20TB is allowed for L class sizing and up to 40TB for M & S class sizing.

If an application allows scale-out of HANA, the number of nodes in a cluster solution is limited to 16 for SAP HANA on IBM Power10. For Power10 scale-out for OLAP workloads, the recommended maximum node size is 8TB. Optionally, customers can contact SAP and IBM for larger node size requirements.

Table 1 has the list of supported Power10 systems that are added to the SAP HANA Hardware Directory.

Table 1: Supported Power 10 systems for SAP HANA

Partner Instance Name	Cores	Deployment	CPU Architecture
E1080	240	TDI	IBM Power10
E1050	72	TDI	IBM Power10
S1024, L1024	36	TDI	IBM Power10
S1022, L1022, S1022s	36	TDI	IBM Power10

In conclusion, with the recent Power10 support rollout for SAP HANA and the joint SAP and IBM validation project SAP is bringing partner innovations with a quality commitment to SAP customers. Refer to SAP Notes 2188482, 2055470 and 2230704 and SAP HANA Hardware Directory for further details of SAP HANA support for IBM Power systems.