SAP HANA Copy Data Management.
Backup, Recovery, Cloning & Analytics for SAP HANA Databases & Applications
“Often we get individual requests to refresh a single database. It’s now possible to fulfill those requests in only an hour with Actifio.”
IT Project Manager
OVERVIEW
Actifio provides a single platform for backup, recovery, cloning and analytics for SAP HANA databases which reduces RPO, RTO and TCO – on-premises and in the cloud.
Webinar with SAP and IDC:
Critical Capabilities for SAP HANA Data Management
Enterprises create many copies of SAP HANA databases for use cases including backup, disaster recovery, test/dev, DevOps, analytics, reporting and more.
For all of these use cases, Actifio software provides a scalable, enterprise-grade Copy Data Management (CDM) solution. It manages SAP HANA database backups and copies of any size or configuration efficiently and securely on-premises or in any public cloud.
Use Case
Modernize SAP HANA Backup and Recovery.
“We chose Actifio for performance, scale, and reliability. Now our data backups and disaster recovery have a 100% success record on all servers for all customers all the time.”
– Geir Stenersen, CTO
CHallenges
Recurring Full Backups
Many solutions force a recurring full SAP HANA backup (using SAP’s Backint API) at least once a week, if not daily. This impacts the production database performance, increases backup window and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Large Recovery Times
With many legacy solutions, a point-in-time SAP HANA database recovery involves recovering from a SAP HANA Backint backup, applying SAP HANA incremental backups, followed by SAP HANA transaction log restores. This whole process not only takes hours but also burdens the DBA with time, effort, and stress.
Large DB Cloning Time & Storage Cost
Dev, QA, UAT, analytics, & reporting teams need high fidelity clones of production SAP HANA databases. Legacy approaches lead to physical copies, thus increasing cloning time and compute costs. Moreover, there is no automated sensitive data masking, no self-service, and no role-based access control to database clones.
Lack of Public Cloud Support
Most vendors cannot support SAP HANA backup and recovery in a public cloud such as AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM.
HOW actifio HELPS
Backup, Recover, and Clone, in just minutes, a complete multi-tier SAP HANA application including database, application, and middleware running in VMs, physical servers or any public cloud.
Reduce RPO
Actifio eliminates recurring full SAP HANA backups. It leverages patented Actifio Change Block Tracking to perform incremental forever backups, thus reducing RPO to minutes, while maintaining application consistency using SAP HANA Savepoint API integration.
Reduce RTO
Recover a 50TB SAP HANA database in just minutes with Actifio’s unique instant mount and recovery technology.
Automated Log Management
Protect SAP HANA transaction logs as frequently as every 15 minutes and recover to any point in time with automated log restores.
High Performance
Instantly mount and recover SAP HANA databases over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or NFS with high performance.
Multi-Cloud Ready
Protect and recover SAP HANA databases, VMs, and physical servers in hybrid cloud or in any public cloud such as AWS, Azure, GCP and IBM.
Wide SAP HANA Platform Support
Support for SAP HANA single container, MDC with one or multiple tenants, scale-out MDC with one or more tenants, and scale-out MDC local HA configurations.
How Actifio works for SAP HANA Backup and Recovery
USE CASE
Accelerate Application Releases with Rapid SAP HANA Database Cloning
“The Actifio team has taken the time to understand our business complexities and our business model. They have helped us to create an easier-to-manage and faster solution that provides individual customer database copies without manual processes and other point solutions.”
– Kim Jacques, CIO, Sentry Data Systems
CHallenges
Time to Provision SAP HANA Test Data
Manual processes for approvals, capturing data from production, scrubbing & subsetting – it costs days or even weeks to provision SAP HANA test data to DevOps and Analytics, introducing wait cycles and delays.
Poor Performance
Some solutions can provision SAP HANA virtual database clones, consuming no extra storage, over NFS. However, it delivers poor performance either because of no Fibre Channel support or custom deduplication format.
Very High Costs
Some tools that can provision SAP HANA virtual database clones need staging servers with SAP HANA DB running 24×7. This increases the compute and DB license costs. Additionally, users still have to buy more point tools for backup, and disaster recovery. This increases the license & infrastructure costs.
HOW actifio HELPS
Clone your multi-TB SAP HANA databases in just minutes for Dev, QA, UAT, Analytics teams. Accelerate application testing, reporting and release cycles.
Reduce SAP HANA DB Cloning Time
Reuse backup copies to instantly provision dozens of rapid SAP HANA virtual database clones to any point-in-time for Dev/QA testing, analytics and reporting.
High Performance
Provision SAP HANA virtual database clones over Fibre Channel for best performance. iSCSI and NFS are also supported.
Reduce Storage Costs
Use Actifio CDX 2-Node cluster for high availability, ensuring that the SAP HANA virtual DB clones are always accessible for DevOps and Analytics
Wide SAP HANA Platform Support
Supports provisioning virtual DB clones in various SAP HANA configurations. Also supported in AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM cloud.
Reduce License Costs
Use a single platform and license for backup, DR, and DB cloning for Test Data Management and manage on-premises and cloud instances from a single pane of glass.
Self-Service & CI/CD Integration
Dev, QA, UAT, Analytics users can provision SAP HANA virtual database clones in a self-service manner. Actifio can also be integrated into existing CI/CD pipelines via REST APIs.
Security
Administrators can specify role-based access controls (RBAC), encryption at rest and automate sensitive data masking using Actifio workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions.
SAP is commonly referred to as the ERP application which has traditionally run on major databases like Oracle, DB2, SQL, etc. SAP HANA is a new, in-memory database designed specifically to run SAP applications. SAP HANA provides improved performance since it stores the database in-memory, which is faster than databases like Oracle, DB2, SQL, etc. which are stored on disk.
Every enterprise creates multiple copies of their production SAP HANA databases.
DBAs dump SAP backint API backups to disk.
Backup Admins backup these dumps to backup storage and replicate to a remote site for vaulting or DR purposes.
Test/Dev, DevOps, Analytics, Security, UAT users need copies of production SAP HANA databases for testing purposes.
All of the above-siloed copies lead to a copy data explosion resulting in very high infrastructure costs & operational burden. With no automation to manage all these SAP HANA database copies, data provisioning for testers takes many weeks, stretching application test and release cycles.
Actifio’s VDP software platform solves this Copy Data Problem with its Copy Data Management (CDM) solution.
Actifio’s pricing model is very simple and easy to understand. It’s based on the amount of source data protected. For example: If an enterprise wants to use Actifio to protect 5 SAP HANA instances, each with 10 TB source database size, the enterprise would need Actifio license for 50 TB of source data. Enterprises can use this license anywhere in private or public cloud.
For more details, refer to this licensing page.
Actifio VDP is the patented core Virtual Data Pipeline technology that can be consumed in multiple form factors.
Actifio Sky is a VM appliance that runs Actifio VDP engine and can be provisioned in a public cloud VM or on-premises in VMware, Hyper-V VMs.
Actifio CDS/CDX is a physical appliance cluster that runs Actifio VDP engine with High Availability and is typically used on-premises.
| Configurations | SAP SavePoint API | SAP BackInt API |
| Single Container system (HANA 1.0) | Yes (Preferred) | Yes |
| MDC: Multiple-Container Systems (HANA 2.0 ) with one tenant database | Yes (Preferred) | Yes |
| MDC: Multiple-Container Systems (HANA 2.0 ) with more than one tenant database | Yes (Preferred)
with SPS 04 |
Yes |
| Scale-out MDC : Multiple-Container Systems (HANA 2.0 ) with one or more tenant database | No | Yes |
| Scale-out MDC: Multiple-Container Systems (HANA 2.0 ) with Dynamic Tiering | No | Yes |
| Scale-out MDC Local HA (N active host + 1 or more standby nodes) | No | Yes |
| SAP HANA System Replication as a high-availability | Yes | Yes |
| SAP Support | SAP Supported | SAP Certified |
Yes. Actifio supports all the major public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Oracle. It’s also available in some of the public cloud marketplaces.