SAP Data Replication, Offsite Backup, & DR

SAP is a mission critical enterprise multi-tier application that is utilized by 291,000 organizations in 190 countries. In the event of a disaster or logical failure that impacts the availability of SAP it can result in a significant impact to business operations, data loss, reduced employee productivity, share price devaluation and negatively impact the company brand.

Challenges of Protecting SAP

The protection of SAP is therefore of critical importance and it is made ever more challenging by large amounts of data change being written, 24/7 business operations, multi-tiers of Virtual Machines (VMs) utilizing different operating systems and database technologies to form the complete SAP application.

Many businesses try to use a combination of technologies to protect SAP such as storage based replication, log shipping or database mirroring software. Each of these different technologies introduces the following risks to the recovery of SAP:

Multiple solutions require separate skill sets relying on the knowledge of individuals to recover SAP introducing complexity and risk
Log shipping and database mirroring software require DBAs to manage and maintain protection in addition being present to manage a disaster recovery plan introducing risk
There is no visibility or integration to the virtualized environment running SAP increasing operational complexity
Manual recovery operations result in Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) reliant on the responsiveness and knowledge of individuals
Testing recovery is complex, time consuming and often requires production downtime making testing ad-hoc and infrequent
Constant maintenance can be required to maintain protection introducing risk of time windows of no protection and increases the cost of management overheads

The challenges identified can lead to complications in recovery, lack of visibility into the protection status of the entire SAP application stack and can make disaster recovery testing a manual ad-hoc and infrequent process. Together this places the business operations at serious risk from not being able to recover successfully in a timely manner from a disruption.

High availability

SAP provides a range of enterprise software applications and business solutions to manage and run the complete business of a company. These mission-critical systems require continuous availability. SAP NetWeaver–based products have a scalable, fault-tolerant, multitier architecture, components of which can be protected either by horizontal scalability—additional SAP NetWeaver Application Servers, for example — or by cluster and switchover solutions that protect the single points of failure in the SAP NetWeaver architecture. They include the database, message, and locking services. The latter two are included in constructs referred to as the central instance or SAP central services. The central instance is an older construct; in new releases, it is replaced with central services and the primary application server (PAS). A correctly architected and highly available solution can provide applications such as those from SAP with acceptable operational uptime by countering the impact of unplanned downtime. Although downtime can also be planned for maintenance and patching activities, the unplanned outages have the greatest effect on production uptime.

ABAP (ASCS) high availability setup
Primary and Additional AS node
Web Dispatcher and SAProuter node (optional)
Database high availability setup
NFS high availability setup

SAPBOT Technologies High Availability for SAP HANA Service

The SAPBOT Technologies High Availability for SAP HANA Service has been designed to automate and enhance SAP HANA System Replication for the Converged System for SAP HANA. This service assumes that SAP HANA System Replication is already configured and functioning properly. The service approach is one of knowledge-sharing and providing flexibility in the application of the service to increase business continuity. The SAPBOT Technologies consultant acts as your single point of contact to integrate with SAP HANA System Replication, ensuring the solution is configured according to your requirements and aligns with SAP’s recommendations and best practices.

Service benefits

A single point of contact to integrate and implement SAP HANA System Replication in accordance with your requirements.
Our consultants collect the necessary technical information to configure the High Availability System for SAP HANA, integrate and implement a failover solution, thereby delivering a system in a highly available, “ready-to-use” state.

Our approach emphasizes knowledge-sharing—with a focus on applying the service intended to help increase business continuity.

Our goal is to help you more quickly realize benefits from your HA implemented SAPBOT Technologies System for SAP HANA in terms of return on investment and total cost of ownership.

Service feature highlights