Storage Support of Azure for SAP Workloads

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 



Azure VM NFS Storage

Azure VM NFS storage is widely available for SAP workloads can be easily implemented by using Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD) with the help of Pacemaker clustering on Azure VMs running SUSE and also by using GlusterFS clustering on RHEL.

Managed NFS storage is available in the form of Azure NetApp Files which is an enterprise-class, high-performance, metered file storage service. Azure NetApp Files supports a wide range of workloads and is highly available by default. Snapshots set up and service as well as performance level can be selected through the service. Microsoft has already tested the SAP file shares with Azure NetApp Files for application-level high availability and plans to provide support for SAP HANA in the near future, after the Azure NetApp Files are certified by SAP.

Azure VM SMB Storage

SMB shares are highly available for SAP workloads in Azure VMs and can be readily implemented by using Storage Space Direct (S2D)-based clusters with the Scale-Out File Servers (SOFS) role. On the contrary, such shares can be generated by leveraging third party solutions (such as SIOS DataKeeper) that emulates shared disks by synchronously replicating the content of the local disks of the clustered Azure VMs. Azure also provides Azure Files that can deliver managed SMB file sharing.  

SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instance) Storage 

The storage layout for SAP HANA (Large Instances) is configured according to SAP recommended guidelines. These guidelines are documented in the SAP HANA storage requirements white paper available at https://www.sap.com/documents/2015/03/74cdb554-5a7c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html  














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