Planning your backup strategy

To avoid data loss from SAP HANA databases, you must run full backups and redo log file backups regularly.

Full database backup

The full SAP HANA database is backed up to IBM Storage Protect™ for Enterprise Resource Planning. If needed, the database can be restored without extra redo log files. The frequency of full backups is controlled by the IBM Storage Protect recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). For more information about full backups, see the SAP HANA Administration Guide.

Redo log file backups

Back up redo log files so that if data is lost in between two full backups, the data can be restored to a particular point in time. Set the SAP HANA LOG_BACKUP_USING_BACKINT parameter to TRUE to enable backing up redo log files. Edit the frequency of the backup operations with the LOG_BACKUP_TIMEOUT_S. The default value is for a backup every 15 minutes. For more information about redo log file backups, see the SAP HANA Administration Guide.

Incremental and Differential backups

The data for incremental and differential backups uses the same processing parameters as the data for the redo log backups. The data is stored in the same management classes that are used for the redo logs. Although the amount of data for incremental or differential backups is much less than the amount for a full database back up, it might be considerably larger than what was calculated for storage of the redo logs.

Backing up data with the backup-archive client

Use the IBM Storage Protect backup-archive client include/exclude function to back up any files that are not backed up by the full database backup, such as configuration files. A scheduled incremental backup would ensure that the configuration files are backed up periodically to be used if data was lost.

*
* Sample include/exclude list for SAP HANA appliances
*
* first exclude everything
exclude /.../*
* 
* now include relevant files and directories only
include /usr/sap/C21/SYS/profile/.../*
include /usr/sap/C21/SYS/global/hdb/custom/config/.../*

Backup strategy for the SAP HANA appliance

If you experience a total loss of the SAP HANA appliance, use the SAP HANA recovery procedure to recover the system. For information about hardware recovery, see the SAP documentation.