Whitepapers

This document provides a comprehensive step-by-step procedure for deploying a SAP HANA 2.0 High Availability Database cluster on Google Cloud Platform. The architecture leverages HANA System Replication (HSR) in Performance-Optimized mode, Pacemaker resource management with SAPHanaController and SAPHanaTopology resource agents, and a GCP Internal Passthrough Load Balancer for the HANA Virtual IP (VIP).

SAP HANA is an in-memory columnar database designed for high-speed analytical and transactional workloads. Unlike traditional row-store databases, HANA stores data in compressed column format in RAM, processes queries using multi-core parallelism, and eliminates most disk I/O for reads. Performance issues in HANA typically originate from memory pressure, CPU saturation, suboptimal SQL execution plans, column store fragmentation, lock contention, or disk I/O bottlenecks on the log volume. This guide provides a systematic, evidence-based approach to diagnosing and resolving HANA performance issues. All diagnostic SQL statements are designed to run with minimal system impact and can be executed via hdbsql, HANA Studio SQL Console, HANA Cockpit, or DBACOCKPIT (from the connected SAP ABAP system).

SAP HANA 2.0 follows a structured versioning model consisting of Support Package Stacks (SPS) and individual Revisions (patches) within each SPS. This document covers both types of updates: minor Revision updates (e.g., SPS07 Rev70 → Rev73) that stay within the same SPS, and major SPS upgrades (e.g., SPS06 → SPS07) that include new features and sometimes new kernel versions.

The HA cluster consists of two GCP VM instances running SAP ASCS and ERS. A GCP Internal Load Balancer (ILB) provides the virtual IP for the ASCS service. Pacemaker manages STONITH fencing via the GCP Fence Agent and orchestrates resource failover.

SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) is SAP’s unified data and analytics platform that combines SAP Datasphere (the data fabric and warehouse layer) with SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC — the BI, planning, and augmented analytics layer) into a single, coherent cloud service. For S/4HANA customers, BDC provides the authoritative path to enterprise-grade analytics — bridging transactional ERP data with business intelligence and planning without duplicating data management complexity. This document provides a complete step-by-step procedure to integrate SAP S/4HANA with SAP Business Data Cloud, covering all connectivity methods, data modeling approaches, live connections, data replication pipelines, and SAC consumption patterns. It applies equally to S/4HANA on-premise, RISE with SAP (Private Cloud Edition), and S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

SAP Cloud ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is SAP’s cloud-native ALM platform delivered as a SaaS service on SAP BTP. For SAP S/4HANA, Cloud ALM provides end-to-end monitoring capabilities that replace and extend the on-premise monitoring previously provided by SAP Solution Manager. Cloud ALM monitors technical health, business processes, integration flows, scheduled jobs, and KPIs — all from a single cloud-based operations cockpit. This document provides the complete step-by-step procedure to integrate an on-premise SAP S/4HANA system with SAP Cloud ALM, configure all relevant monitoring use cases, and operationalize the monitoring for daily operations. The integration uses SAP Cloud Connector (SCC) to establish a secure tunnel between the on-premise S/4HANA system and the Cloud ALM tenant on BTP.