IBM Support

SAP HANA database backup and restore requirements: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.14

Preventive Service Planning


Abstract

This document details the SAP HANA database backup and restore requirements for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.14.

Content

This document is divided into linked sections. Use the following links to go to the section of the document that you require.



 

General

Beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.12, support was added for backing up and restoring SAP HANA database data.
To read about new and changed features in different versions of IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1, see What's new for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

Before you register an SAP HANA database with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, ensure that the system environment meets the following requirements.

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus support for third-party operating systems, applications, services, and hardware depend on the respective vendor. If a third-party product or version moves into extended support, self-service support, or end-of-life, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus supports the product or version at the same level as the vendor. See also IBM Support General Guidelines and Limitations - IBM support for software on unsupported operating systems



 

Configuration

Application versions

Table 1. Coverage matrix for application levels supported by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 05*(1) SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 06*(1)
10.1.12 ✔ ✔
10.1.13(2) ✔ ✔
10.1.14 ✔ ✔

 * all revisions within the support package stack (SPS) are supported.
(1) On scale-up (single node) environments.
(2) Beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.13, transport encryption feature is supported.


 

Operating systems

Table 2. Coverage matrix for supported Linux® x86_64 operating systems
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus RHEL 7.0* RHEL 8.0* SLES 12.0* SLES 15.0*
10.1.12 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
10.1.13 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
10.1.14 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

*The base release and later maintenance and modification levels are supported.


 

Table 3. Coverage matrix for supported operating systems on Linux on Power Systems (little endian)
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus RHEL 7.0* RHEL 8.0* SLES 12* SLES 15*
10.1.12 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
10.1.13 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
10.1.14 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

*The base release and later maintenance and modification levels are supported.


 

Restrictions

  • Ensure that your SAP HANA logical volume setup does not include nested mount points.
  • Do not run inventory jobs at the same time when backup jobs are scheduled.
  • Encrypted SAP HANA database is not supported.
  • SAP HANA persistent data storage with partitioned data volumes is not supported.
  • Unicode characters in file path names cannot be handled by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus. All names must be in ASCII.
  • Point in time recovery is not supported when one or more tenant databases or SAP HANA services are added to the database instance in the period between the chosen point in time and the time that the preceding backup job ran.
  • Transport encryption feature is not supported for SAP HANA log backups.
  • Transport encryption feature is not supported on the operating systems RHEL 7 and SLES 12.



 

Software

  • The bash and sudo packages must be installed. Sudo must be version 1.7.6p2 or later. Run sudo -V to check the version.
    Tip: The required bash and sudo packages are included in the supported Linux x86_64 and Linux on Power Systems (little endian) operating system installation packages.
  • Install the most recent SAP HANA database fixes and updates in your environment.
  • Ensure that the supported version of Linux x86_64, or Linux on Power Systems (little endian) is installed with the most recent fixes and updates.
  • Ensure that the user limit value ulimit -f is set to unlimited, for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user and the SAP HANA instance user. Alternatively, set the value sufficiently high to allow copying of the largest database files in your backup and restore jobs.
  • In a Linux environment, depending on your version or distribution, ensure that the Linux utility package util-linux-ng or util-linux is current.
  • RHEL users: To ensure that the util-linux-ng or util-linux package is current, run the following command: 
        yum update package_name
    Where package_name is the name of the Linux utility package.
  • Linux users: Before you enable transport encryption, ensure that the cifs-utils package is installed.



 

Connectivity

Ensure that your system environment meets the following connectivity requirements:

  • The secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) subsystem for Secure Shell (SSH) is enabled and functional.
  • The SSH service is running on port 22 on the SAP HANA database server.
    Note: During registration, either ChallengeResponseAuthentication option must be set to no or LoginGraceTime parameter must greater than 0. If one of those conditions is not met, the public key retrieval hangs.
  • The SSH host key must be one of the following algorithms: ssh-dsa, ssh-rsa, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384, or ecdsa-sha2-nistp521.
  • Firewalls are configured to allow IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to connect to the SAP HANA database server by using SSH.
  • When transport encryption is not enabled, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol to mount storage volumes for backup and restore operations. Ensure that the Linux NFS client is installed on the Oracle Server.
  • When transport encryption is enabled, the Server Message Block (SMB) or the Common Internet file system (CIFS) protocol to mount storage volumes for backup and restore operations. On Linux, ensure that the Linux SMB client is installed.
  • All servers, proxies, applications, and hypervisors that are added to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus environment must be registered by using a Domain Name System (DNS) name or Internet Protocol (IP) address.
  • If DNS names are used, they must be resolvable over the network by the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server and the vSnap server. All IBM Spectrum Protect Plus components must also be resolvable by their DNS names.
  • If DNS is not available, you must add the server to the /etc/hosts file on the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus by using the command line.



 

Authentication and privileges

Authentication

  • The SAP HANA database server must be registered with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus by using an operating system user who exists on the SAP HANA database server. The user is then referred to as the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user.
  • Ensure that the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user password is correctly configured and that the user can log in without other prompts, such as prompts to reset the password.


 

Privileges

To use an SAP HANA database, an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user must have the following permissions:

  • Privileges to run commands as the root user and as an SAP HANA software owner user by using sudo. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus requires these privileges for various tasks such as discovering storage layouts, mounting and unmounting disks, and managing databases.
    • The sudoers configuration must allow the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user to run commands without a password.
    • The !requiretty setting must be specified, as described in Setting sudo privileges for SAP HANA.

To register an SAP HANA database a name and password for a database, user must be specified. This database user can be created with the following command in SAP HANA hdbsql utility:

create user sppadmin password MyPassw0rd no force_first_password_change
grant backup admin, catalog read, inifile admin, database recovery operator to sppadmin

Where sppadmin specifies the username, MyPassw0rd specifies the password, and backup admin, catalog read, inifile admin and database recovery operator are the required privileges.

Prerequisites and operations

Prerequisites

Ensure that the Software, Connectivity, and Authentication and privileges requirements are met.

The following prerequisites must be met before you start protecting your resources:

  • Sufficient space is available in the SAP HANA database management system, in the volume groups for the backup operation, and on the target volumes for copying files during the restore operation. For more information about space requirements, see Space requirements for SAP HANA protection.
    • Before you back up and restore SAP HANA databases, ensure you have enough free disk space on the target and source hosts, and in the vSnap repository. Extra free disk space is required in the volume groups on the source host for creating temporary Logical Volume Manager (LVM) snapshots of the logical volumes that the SAP HANA database is stored on. The data area is defined by the configuration parameter basepath_datavolumes in the global.ini configuration file, which is in the persistence section of the SAP HANA instance. To create LVM snapshots of a protected SAP HANA database, ensure that the volume groups with SAP HANA data have sufficient free space. For every LVM snapshot logical volume that contains data, allow at least 10% of its size as free disk space in the volume group. If the volume group has enough free disk space, the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus SAP HANA agent reserves up to 25% of the source logical volume size for the snapshot logical volume.
  • Logical volumes holding data for the selected database is managed by the Logical Volume Management system (LVM2) on Linux. LVM2 on Linux is used for creating temporary volume snapshots. While the snapshot exists, the logical volume grows in size as the data changes on the source volume. For more information, see LVM2.
  • With transport encryption, you can securely transfer data between application host and vSnap during backup and restore. The transport encryption option is not enabled by default. To protect your SAP HANA log backup data, you must enable SAP HANA backup encryption. For more information, see Enabling log encryption for SAP HANA data.


 

Operations

Before you start a backup or restore operation, take the following actions:

  • Ensure that the application servers that host the SAP HANA databases that you want to back up are registered with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.
  • A service level agreement (SLA) policy is configured.
  • Assign appropriate roles and resource groups to users who are running backup and restore operations. Grant users access to resources and roles by using the Accounts pane.
  • Make sure that you have the required privileges to protect the resources.

Review the following information about creating backup and restore jobs:

  • You can define backup jobs to protect your SAP HANA data. To regularly back up your data, define a backup job that includes a service level agreement (SLA) policy. For instructions, see Backing up SAP HANA data.
  • To restore SAP HANA data from the vSnap repository, define a job that restores data from either the newest backup or an earlier backup copy. You can choose to restore data to the original instance or to an alternative instance on a different machine, and specify recovery options, and save the job. For instructions, see Restoring SAP HANA data

For an overview about protecting SAP HANA databases with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, see Protecting Databases-SAP HANA.



 

Ports

The following ports are used by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent users.

Table 4. Communication ports when the target is an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent
Port Protocol Initiator Target Description
22 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server SAP HANA server Provides access to troubleshoot and maintain remote proxy host servers running guest application components by using the SSH protocol.


 

Table 5. Communication ports when the initiator is the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent
Port Protocol Initiator Target Description
111 TCP and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) SAP HANA vSnap server Used for NFS data transfer to and from file systems mounted from vSnap servers during backup and restore operations when transport encryption is not enabled.
445 TCP SAP HANA vSnap server Used for SMB or CIFS data transfer to and from file systems mounted from vSnap servers during backup and restore operations when transport encryption is enabled.
2049 TCP and UDP SAP HANA vSnap server Used for NFS data transfer to and from file systems mounted from vSnap servers during backup and restore operations when transport encryption is not enabled.
20048 TCP and UDP SAP HANA vSnap server Used for NFS data transfer to and from file systems mounted from vSnap servers during backup and restore operations when transport encryption is not enabled.

Ports update:  Port 445: Beginning with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus 10.1.13 and later this port with target vSnap server is used when transport encryption is enabled.



 

Hardware

Table 6. Minimum hardware requirements
System Disk space
Compatible hardware that is supported by the operating system and SAP HANA database server A minimum of 100 MB under /tmp and 200 MB under /opt is required for product installation.



 

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Document Information

Modified date:
16 March 2023

UID

ibm16952287

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