File sharing solutions for SAP on Google Cloud

Google Cloud supports several file sharing solutions for SAP on Google Cloud. Which you choose depends on what you are using the file sharing solution for, whether your SAP systems extend across zones or regions, and the performance requirements of your workloads.

Supported file sharing solutions for SAP on Google Cloud

The following table shows the file sharing solutions that Google Cloud supports for SAP systems.

If you are already using one of these file sharing solutions for other purposes and the solutions meets all of the requirements of your SAP workloads, then you can use that solution for your SAP systems also.

File sharing solution Description
Filestore

Google Cloud high-performance, fully managed file storage.

For multi-zonal highly available deployments, we recommend using the Enterprise tier of Filestore (Filestore Enterprise). For information about the Filestore service tiers, see Service tiers. For a quickstart guide to Filestore Basic, see Quickstart using the Console.

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP

A full-featured, smart storage solution that you deploy and manage yourself on a Compute Engine virtual machine.

For more information about NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, see Overview of Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is a fully managed, cloud-based data storage service that provides advanced data management capabilities and highly scalable performance.

NetApp Volumes offers three service levels types: Standard, Premium, and Extreme. For most SAP use cases, you need to use the Extreme service level, but, if your use case doesn't require high performance, you can use the Standard or Premium service level.

For more information, see the comparison table inside Key features.

File sharing solutions by SAP use case

The following table lists the most common use cases for file sharing solutions in SAP landscapes and the solutions that support the use cases.

Use case Purpose Recommended solutions
Interface directory For use as a general storage location by SAP and other software systems to pass files between servers.
  • Filestore Enterprise
  • NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
  • Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Premium or Extreme service level
SAP transport directory For use as an SAP storage location by SAP systems to hold shared application files in distributed or high-availability deployments, or to transport SAP files and updates between different operational environments.
  • Filestore Enterprise
  • NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
  • Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Premium or Extreme service level
Backup directory For use by SAP or other systems as a centralized storage location for backups.
  • Filestore Enterprise
  • NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
  • Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Premium or Extreme service level
SAP HANA scaleout system directory For use within a single zone by SAP HANA scaleout systems to share binaries and configuration files between the SAP HANA nodes.
  • Filestore Enterprise or Basic
  • NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
  • Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, Premium or Extreme service level

Features supported by each file sharing solution

The following table shows the common features that SAP systems require of file sharing solutions and the solutions that support those features.

Feature Filestore Basic Filestore Enterprise NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Google Cloud NetApp Volumes
Disaster recovery Manual Manual Automated with Snapmirror Multi-region replication
High availability Zonal service, 99.9% SLA Multi-zonal service, 99.99% SLA Multi-zone HA solution;
99.99% SLA for only the Google Cloud infrastructure		 Zonal service, 99.95% SLA
Snapshots/Backup Yes Yes Yes Yes
Managed service Yes Yes No Yes
Protocols NFSv3 NFSv3 NFSv3, NFSv4.1, SMB, iSCSI NFSv3, NFSv4.1, SMB
Regional replication No No With Snapmirror Yes
Regional availability All regions All regions All regions In regions where NetApp Volumes is available. See NetApp Volumes locations.
RPO for disaster recovery Not applicable Not applicable As low as 15 minutesNote 1 As low as 10 minutesNote 1
Storage, minimum 1 TB 1 TB 100 GB volume with 638 GB system disk 1 TB
Support provider Google Cloud Google Cloud NetApp for NetApp software and Google Cloud for infrastructure Google Cloud
Throughput performance 100 MB/s R/WNote 2 120/100 MB/s R/WNote 2 Configuration dependent. See the NetApp documentation. 125 MiB/s R/WNote 3

Table notes:

  • Note 1: The times shown are approximate and depend on a variety of factors, including your system and network configuration, backup intervals, and recovery procedures.
  • Note 2: With the Filestore Basic and Enterprise tiers, the volume size affects the storage speed. The R/W throughput that is shown in the table is based on a volume size of 1 TB. For more information, see Filestore service tiers. The performance of Filestore Enterprise scales to 1,200/1,000 MiB/s with a 10 TB volume.
  • Note 3: With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, the volume size affects the storage speed. The R/W throughput that is shown in the table is for the lowest cost option and is based on a volume size of 1 TB.

About Google Cloud NetApp Volumes

Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is a fully-managed, cloud-based data storage service that you can use to create an NFS file system for SAP HANA scale-up systems on all Compute Engine instance types that are certified for use with SAP HANA.

NetApp Volumes offers the following service levels: Flex, Standard, Premium, and Extreme. With SAP HANA, you must use the Premium or Extreme service level. For more information about the service levels, see Key features.

Support for NetApp Volumes in scale-out deployments is limited to specific Compute Engine instance types, as noted in the table in Certified machine types for SAP HANA.

With NetApp Volumes, you can place all of the SAP HANA directories, including /hana/data and /hana/logs, in shared storage, instead of using Persistent Disk or Google Cloud Hyperdisk volumes. With most other shared storage systems, you can place only the /hana/shared directory in shared storage.

SAP support for NetApp Volumes is listed in the Certified and Supported SAP HANA Hardware Directory.

Regional availability of NetApp Volumes for SAP HANA

Your NetApp Volumes volumes must be in the same region as the Compute Engine instances that host your SAP HANA system.

Support for SAP HANA by NetApp Volumes is not available in every region that NetApp Volumes is available in.

You can use NetApp Volumes with SAP HANA in the following Google Cloud regions:

Region Location
europe-west4 Eemshaven, Netherlands, Europe
us-east4 Ashburn, Northern Virginia, USA
us-west2 Los Angeles, California, USA

If you are interested in running SAP HANA with NetApp Volumes in a Google Cloud region that is not listed in the preceding table, then contact Google Cloud sales.

NFS protocol support

NetApp Volumes supports the NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 protocols with SAP HANA on Google Cloud.

NFSv3 is recommended for volumes that are configured to allow multiple TCP connections. NFSv4.1 is not supported with multiple TCP connections.

Volume requirements for NetApp Volumes with SAP HANA

The NetApp Volumes volumes must be in the same region as the host VM instances.

For the /hana/data and /hana/log volumes, the Extreme or Premium service level of NetApp Volumes is required. You can use the Premium service level for the /hana/shared directory if it is in a separate volume from the /hana/data and /hana/log directories.

For the best performance with SAP HANA systems that are larger than 1 TB, create separate volumes for /hana/data, /hana/log, and /hana/shared.

To meet SAP HANA performance requirements, the following minimum volume sizes are required when running SAP HANA with NetApp Volumes:

Directory Minimum size
/hana/shared 1 TB
/hana/log 2.5 TB
/hana/data 4 TB

Adjust the size of your volumes to meet your throughput requirements. The maximum throughput for the Extreme service level is 128 MB per second for each 1 TB volume, up to a maximum of 4.5 GB per volume. For information about the expected performance of NetApp Volumes, see Maximum volume throughput and IOPS. Provisioning more disk space for the /hana/data volume can reduce startup times. For the /hana/data volume, we recommend either 1.5 times the size of your memory or 4 TB, whichever is greater.

The minimum size for the /hanabackup volume is determined by your backup strategy. You can also use the Backint feature of Google Cloud's Agent for SAP to backup the database directly into Cloud Storage. For more information, see Backup and recovery for SAP HANA by using Backint.

Deploying an SAP HANA system with NetApp Volumes

To deploy NetApp Volumes with SAP HANA on Google Cloud, you need to deploy your VMs and install SAP HANA first. You can use the Terraform configuration files or Deployment Manager templates that Google Cloud provides to deploy the Compute Engine instances and SAP HANA, or you can create the compute instances and install SAP HANA manually.

If you use the Terraform configuration files or Deployment Manager templates, then the compute instances are deployed with the /hana/data and /hana/log directories mapped to Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes. After you mount the NetApp Volumes volumes to the compute instances, you need to copy the contents of the deployed disks, as described in the following steps.

To deploy SAP HANA with NetApp Volumes by using the deployment files that Google Cloud provides:

  1. Deploy SAP HANA with Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes by following the instructions provided in Terraform: SAP HANA deployment guide.

  2. Create your NetApp Volumes volumes. For information about how to do this, see Create a volume.

  3. Mount NetApp Volumes to a temporary mount point by using the mount command with following settings:

    mount -t nfs -o options server:path mountpoint

    For options, use the following settings:

    rw,bg,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,vers=3,tcp,nconnect=16,noatime,nolock

    The option vers=3 indicates NFSv3. The option nconnect=16 specifies support for multiple TCP connections.

  4. Stop SAP HANA and any related services that are using the attached Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes.

  5. Copy the contents of the Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes to the corresponding NetApp Volumes volumes.

  6. Detach the Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes.

  7. Remount the NetApp Volumes volumes to the permanent mount points by updating the /etc/fstab with the following settings:

    server:path   /mountpoint   nfs   options   0 0

    For options, use the following settings:

    rw,bg,hard,rsize=1048576,wsize=1048576,vers=3,tcp,nconnect=16,noatime,nolock

    For more information about updating the /etc/fstab file, see the nfs page in the Linux File Formats manual.

  8. For the best performance, update the fileio category in the SAP HANA global.ini file with the following suggested settings:

    Parameter Value
    async_read_submit on
    async_write_submit_active on
    async_write_submit_blocks all
    max_parallel_io_requests 128
    max_parallel_io_requests[data] 128
    max_parallel_io_requests[log] 128
    num_completion_queues 4
    num_completion_queues[data] 4
    num_completion_queues[log] 4
    num_submit_queues 8
    num_submit_queues[data] 8
    num_submit_queues[log] 8

  9. Restart SAP HANA.

  10. After confirming that everything works as expected, delete the Persistent Disk or Hyperdisk volumes to avoid being charged for them.