A brief discussion over SAP HANA Administration

Who are SAP HANA Administrators?

SAP HANA Administrators are those people who are responsible and accountable for the smooth functioning of all HANA databases and applications. Their main job is to make the HANA management system works efficiently and without any issues. To be on the role of SAP HANA Administrator one needs to have a good knowledge of its internal mechanism so as to understand its impact on the database system and applications.

Lets first understand SAP HANA in context with Administration

SAP HANA system consists of multiple servers. Out of these the most important one is Index Server where the real data stores and data processing engines are there.

Though the name suggests administration, actually SAP HANA Administration requires less administration than other databases. Its specialty is that it uses SQL and with HANA learning curve is minimal.

SAP HANA Admin Responsibilities

If we ask you to talk about what are the hardcore responsibilities of an admin, the things which come to your mind would be database management, regular backups, configuration backups, patches, updates and monitoring (both automatic and manual). HANA Admin too works in the same manner as other databases, but with a lot of additional features.

A multiple-host or distributed SAP HANA system is a system that is installed on more than one host. Otherwise, it is a single-host system. A host is a machine (comprised of CPU, memory, storage, network, and operating system) that runs parts of the SAP HANA system.

Multitenant Database Containers

Many numbers of isolated databases are supported by SAP HANA within a single SAP HANA system. These are called as multitenant database containers.

SID

As we already mentioned SAP HANA system consists of multiple hosting servers. All these servers are recognized by single system ID that is called as SID. The Administrator is responsible to use this unit considered as single unit for its core responsibilities of administration such as installation, updating, startup, shutting down or taking the back up of database.

A multiple-container system always has exactly one system database and any number of multitenant database containers (including zero), also called tenant databases.

In a multiple-container system, only the system database runs the name server. The name server contains landscape information about the system as a whole, including which tenant databases exist. It also provides index server functionality for the system database. Unlike the name server in a single-container system, the name server of the system database in a multiple-container system does not own topology information, that is, information about the location of tables and table partitions in databases. Database-related topology information is stored in the relevant tenant database catalog.

This is all a small talk over the SAP HANA Admin topic. A lot is there if we dig deeper into the subject. To master this subject one should take practical oriented training from a well experienced trainer who can use real scenarios (used in real projects) as case studies in the training for a better learning.