Install NetApp Snap Creator Framework 4.1.2 & HANA plug-in on Cisco 2-node HANA Appliance

[Hanu]

Hello,

We have a 2-node SAP HANA Appliance running on SUSE Linux SLES 11 SP3. We are implementing backups/restores using 'NetApp Snap Creator Framework 4.1.2' software. We have some questions regarding the installations on the HANA appliance:

1. We have two management servers (mgmtsrv01 & mgmtsrv02) on the 2-node HANA appliance.

As per the 'Snap Creator Framework 4.1.2 - SAP HANA Plug-in Operations Guide' on page 10:

==================
In a multinode SAP HANA environment, you should not install the Agent on the database
host; the Agent needs to be installed on a separate host that has network connectivity to the
database host and the Snap Creator Server host.
==================

And on page 11 of the same guide, as a multi-node example shown, it says:

==================
In this configuration, the SAP HANA database runs on a 3+1 database node configuration and all
Snap Creator software components—Server, Agent, and plug-in—are installed on the same host.
==================

Is it Ok, to install the Snap Creator Server, Snap Creator Agent and SAP HANA Client on the same management server - 'mgmtsrv01'?

And, can we install the same software on 'mgmtsrv02' as a backup, in case 'mgmtsrv01' goes down?

2. One of the pre-requisites for installing Snap Creator Framework software is Java JRE 1.6 u24 or higher. There is no Java installed on the management servers (mgmtsrv01, mgmtsrv02).

We are planning on installing the latest version of Java (1.8 u71) from 'Java.com' website. Is this Ok?
The HANA nodes have Java version - JRE 1.6.0 IBM J9 2.4 Linux AMD64-64.

3. In the 'Snap Creator Framework 4.1.2 - Installation Guide', Hardware requirements section on page '9', the recommended Memory is 4GB.
On the management servers (mgmtsrv01 & mgmtsrv02) we only have 3GB allocated. Should we bump up the memory to 4GB?

Thanks in advance,
Hanu.

[btobias]

Hi Hanu,

to your questions:

1) yes, you can install all SC components and the HANA SQL client on the same server. And yes, you can have a second instance installed on your standby management server. Just make sure you don't have active backup schedules on both SC instance. You can prepare the backup schedule on the second management instance, of course.

2) I'm pretty sure the Java 8 version should work for SC.

3) You should be fine with the 3GB. Are the management servers virtual machines? If yes, you can probably increase the memory pretty easily if you're running into memory-related issues.

Best regards,

Toby

SAP Solutions Architect, NetApp

[KHR]

Thanks for your reply, Toby! Sorry, I haven't checked the NetApp community site for some time. I took the post off after I created it, but was not aware that it still got posted. Anyway, we had to abandon the idea of installing Snap Creator on the management servers, because in our appliance, there is no interface setup to access the hana nodes, meaning, I cannot ping or access the hana nodes from the management servers. That's how the Cisco Appliance was setup.

So, we ended up installing Snap Creator (both Server & Agent) on a Windows Jump sever. HANA Client, HANA Studio & NetApp OnCommand System Manager were also installed on the same Windows server. I was able to setup, configure and successfully run backups and restore/recovery with no problems.

However, when I wanted to run the bash script mentioned in the document - 'TR-4313 HANA Backup and Recovery Using Snap Creator August 2015 pages 29-30', to clean up old log backups in the HANA database, I run into issues.

I edited the configuration files as menitoned in the guide. Here is the config:

On the Server config:
PRE_MOUNT_CMD01=SERVER:echo "This is run on the SC server"
POST_NTAP_CMD01=/usr/sap/<SID>/del_log_files.sh

On the Agent config:
command: /bin/su - pw1adm -c "/usr/sap/<SID>/del_log_files.sh"

When I run the backups they fail becasue it cannot find the path specified. Since, the Agent is running on the Windows server and the script is residing on Linux, it cannot find the path. Plus, I'm not passing any credentials to logon to the target HANA node to run the script.

Since, ours is a multi-node (2-node) HANA system, the Snap Creator Agent is not recommended to be installed on the HANA nodes as per the NetApp doc - 'Sanp Creator Framework 4.1.2 - SAP HANA Plug-in Operations Guide, June 2015, pages 10-11'. And we don't have any additional Linux boxes in our environment to install the Snap Creator Agent.

So, how can I run the bash script to clean up old log backups, with the setup we have?

A bigger question for us is - what is the NetApp’s best practice in implementing this kind of solution. It is important, because we will also be implementing Disaster Recovery setup using Asynchronous replication at a COOP site as described in the guide - 'TR-4279 HANA Disaster Recovery using Asynchronous Storage Replication March 2014'. The COOP site will have an identical 2-node system as production. Thanks.