SAP on Google Cloud : Deployment Considerations

Welcome to Part 2 of the SAP on Google Cloud : Deployment Considerations blog series. Here’s Part 1 for your reference.

Ever wondered what are the aspects to be considered when you are thinking of a SAP Deployment on Google Cloud?

New to cloud, how do I know if I am following the best practices?

This blog tries to answer some of those questions regarding SAP Deployment.

Now let’s first identify the components that are curcial while planning for a SAP migration:-

• Support for various modules of SAP Applications & Databases
• Choosing the right Compute
• Choosing the right Storage
• Network Connectivity

Let’s pick each one of them & discuss in detail.

Support for various modules of SAP Applications & Databases

Anyone who has been working with SAP systems for long would be able to relate how important it is for SAP solutions to be certified by SAP to run them on any platform.

The keyword here is ‘Certified’ — which is imperative to get support from SAP.

I would further break the certified components in 2 parts -

I] Certifications for SAP applications on GCP

The page here lists the SAP application solutions that are certified to run on Google Cloud, the operating systems and the Compute Engine VM families that they are certified to run with. Remember this is for applications. If you are looking for HANA — look at the next section.

II] Certifications for SAP HANA on GCP :

Refer to the page here which will have the updated list of certified machine types for HANA.

In both of the above scenarios don’t forget to explore the custom VMs section which provides guidelines on how to size the VM that ensures support from SAP as well.

Now that we have chosen the VM families which are SAP certified to run on GCP, let’s move on exploring how we choose the right compute for the SAP apps/Databases.

Choosing the right Compute

First things first, we check what VM families are available in the required GCP Region and zones here (SAP certified VM families are n1, n2, n2d, c2, c2d, t2d, m1, m2)

Remember, multi-zonal deployment is recommended for HA deployment.

Now we split the SAP node requirements into 2 types -

I] SAP App servers or non-HANA DB server:

Pick-up SAP certified VM from this list until you match total SAPs & RAM requirements.

If SAP certified VM shape does not meet the requirement then you can consider a custom VM.

For N1 family VM, vCPU to RAM ratio should be at least 1:3.75.

For N2/N2D machines the ratio should be at least 1:4. (these ratios are mentioned in SAP note)

Please follow guidelines for vCPU/RAM in custom sizing of each VM family as mentioned here.

II] SAP HANA DB server:

Pick SAP certified HANA shape from the list here or link2

Be specific in checking certification type i.e. OLTP (ECC, S4) vs OLAP (BW, DWH) vs SAP B1 certification, based on your workload.

SAP also certifies Custom HANA machines.

1. If it’s a N1 machine family then vCPU to RAM ratio is 1:6.5 and vCPU count is between 32 & 64 (vCPU in multiples of 2, starting with 32 and max is 64).
2. If it’s a N2 machine family and vCPU to RAM ratio is 1:8 and vCPU count is between 32 & 64 (vCPU in multiples of 4, starting with 32 and max is 64. For IceLake n2 machines, max. vCPU count is 80)

Choosing the right Storage

After the choice of the right VMs is done, let’s talk about Storage.

GCP offers 3 types of block storage — HDD, Balanced SSD, SSD

IOPS & Throughput metric for each of them are published here

1. For Application servers, we offer different types of persistent disks. Each type has different performance characteristics. For details kindly refer to the link here.
2. For HANA servers we can consider SSD or Balanced PD at least equal to or above the threshold, as mentioned in the table here
3. Note that for HANA machines, there are recommended sizes for SSD (pd-ssd) and balanced (pd-balanced) persistent disks to meet SAP HANA performance requirements in a production environment for each Compute Engine machine type that is certified for SAP HANA. The listed sizes here provide the block storage performance that was required for the certification of that machine type for SAP HANA
4. For all hana directories (/hana/data, /hana/log, hana/shared, /sap) it is recommended to consider SSD for best performance. If you want to keep the costs in check and are ok with slight performance impact, you may consider Balanced PD.
5. In order to maintain a balance between cost and performance, you can consider SSD for /data, /log and Balanced SSD for hana/shared volume and the boot disk.
6. For Production non-HANA DB servers, you may consider SSD or Balanced SSD to depending on IOPS/Throughput requirements
7. For non-HANA DB backup, you can consider HDD for local staging. For long term retention (as per backup frequency) Google Cloud Storage (object based storage) can be a good choice.
   HANA BackInt API is certified for Google Cloud Storage (GCS) i.e. HANA backup can directly be written to GCS without having HDD as staging in between.
8. If your application setup requires NFS shared storage then Google FileStore Enterprise or 3rd party Marketplace products. For more information refer to link here

Network Connectivity

Establishing the network connection between the on-premises environment and Google Cloud will be required to support rehost of the SAP application.

You can use Cloud VPN or Dedicated Interconnect. Learn more about Dedicated Interconnect , Partner Interconnect and Cloud VPN.

Note: Depending on your internet connection and bandwidth requirements, we recommend using a Dedicated Interconnect or Partner Interconnect over Cloud VPN for production environments.

Within Google Cloud Platform you will require setting up your own private network to suit your organizational structure and SAP deployment requirements. Depending on your needs, you can deploy SAP on a single Shared VPC or multiple ones. The two scenarios differ in terms of network control, SAP environment isolation, and network inspection. For more details refer to the blog here.

With this, we come to end of blog 2 of our series, watch out for our next blogs on the SAP reference architectures, deep dive into the security and best practices for SAP deployment on Google cloud

Stay Tuned!!!

Additional Resources :

For more information on SAP on GCP deployment guideline documents refer to -

1. Overview: SAP on GCP Deployment checklist
2. All SAP Netweaver guides from GCP perspective
3. All SAP HANA guides from GCP perspective
4. All data integration guides

Contributors : Shijimol A K