Dell EMC Storage Integration with SAP Landscape … Guide . DELL EMC STORAGE INTEGRATION WITH SAP LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE . Enabled by Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape

Implementation Guide

DELL EMC STORAGE INTEGRATION WITH SAP LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE Enabled by Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management July 2017

Abstract

This document describes how the Dell EMCTM Enterprise Storage Integrator (ESI) for SAP Landscape Management is implemented with SAP Landscape Management software. ESI storage-based cloning automates the SAP System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh processes with Dell EMC SymmetrixTM VMAXTM, VPLEXTM, XtremIOTM, and EMC VNXTM storage systems in Linux and UNIX-based SAP physical and virtual environments.

H13279.2-R

This document is not intended for audiences in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao.

Copyright

2 Dell EMC Storage Integration with SAP Landscape Management Software Implementation Guide

The information in this publication is provided as is. Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

Copyright © 2014–2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, Dell-EMC, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be the property of their respective owners. Published in the USA July 2017. Implementation Guide. H13279.2-R

Dell Inc. believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

Contents


Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction 5

Purpose of this guide .............................................................................................. 6

Business value ....................................................................................................... 6

Objectives ............................................................................................................... 6

Audience ................................................................................................................. 6

Scope ..................................................................................................................... 6

Terminology ............................................................................................................ 7

We value your feedback ......................................................................................... 8

Chapter 2 Before You Start 9

Implementation prerequisites ............................................................................... 10

Implementation workflow ...................................................................................... 10

Essential reading .................................................................................................. 10

Chapter 3 Solution Overview 12

Overview ............................................................................................................... 13

Solution architecture ............................................................................................. 13

Key components ................................................................................................... 16

Chapter 4 Solution Implementation 21

Overview ............................................................................................................... 22

Software components overview ............................................................................ 23

Hardware components overview .......................................................................... 24

Physical architecture ............................................................................................ 24

Logical architecture .............................................................................................. 25

Setting up the Dell EMC storage systems for ESI ................................................ 25

Setting up a physical environment ........................................................................ 29

Setting up a vSphere virtual environment ............................................................. 30

Configuring the SAP hosts for SAP LaMa system provisioning ........................... 33

Installing and Deploying the EHAC Server ........................................................... 40

Configuring the SAP LaMa with the ESI storage adapter ..................................... 43

Chapter 5 Solution Configuration 44

SAP LaMa configuration and preparation for ESI ................................................. 45

Chapter 6 Solution Verification 60

Test objectives ...................................................................................................... 61

SAP LaMa Advanced operations .......................................................................... 63

Contents


System Clone and System Copy .......................................................................... 71

System destroy ..................................................................................................... 89

Chapter 7 Reference Documentation 96

Dell EMC documents ............................................................................................ 97

Dell EMC Links ..................................................................................................... 97

VMware documents .............................................................................................. 97

SAP documents .................................................................................................... 98

Chapter 1: Introduction


Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter presents the following topics:

Purpose of this guide ........................................................................................... 6

Business value ..................................................................................................... 6

Objectives ............................................................................................................. 6

Audience ............................................................................................................... 6

Scope ..................................................................................................................... 6

Terminology .......................................................................................................... 7

We value your feedback ....................................................................................... 8



Purpose of this guide This document focuses on the integration between Dell EMCTM storage systems and SAP Landscape Management (SAP LaMa) software to enable the automated end-to-end SAP system provisioning processes, System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh. This document describes the steps required to install and configure the Dell EMC products that enable integration with SAP LaMa software.

Business value SAP LaMa software supports application virtualization and provides management of SAP systems through a single user interface. This powerful management tool simplifies and optimizes provisioning, deployment, and management of SAP systems by using virtualization and cloud technology, and provides the following benefits:

• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

• Increased flexibility and agility to respond to business demands

Objectives This guide covers how the Dell EMC Storage Integration features work with SAP LaMa software. The objectives of the document are to:

• Introduce the key components of Enterprise Storage Integrator (ESI) for SAP LaMa

• Describe how to install and configure the three ESI key components

• Present the ESI storage-based cloning integration solution with SAP LaMa system provisioning processes

Audience This implementation guide is intended for the Dell EMC Professional Services team that is responsible for implementing ESI for SAP customers, and the Dell EMC Customer Service team that supports ESI. Technical experience with virtualization, servers, operating systems (OS), networking, and storage solutions is required to fully understand the content described in this document.

Scope This paper focuses on the implementation of the components required for integration of the Dell EMC storage systems with SAP LaMa software with Linux and UNIX-based SAP systems. It does not cover all the features that are available with SAP LaMa software or details on SAP Post Copy Automation (PCA).



Terminology Table 1 describes the terms used in this document.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Definition

ABAP SAP Central Services (ASCS)

Runs the SAP NetWeaver ABAP central queue and message server services.

Enterprise Library for SAP Adapter (ELSA)

Included as part of the libsapacosprep_emc.so file in the Storage Resource Management (SRM) module of the Dell EMC Solutions Enabler (SE) software. ELSA provides integration with the SAP Host Agent binary sapacosprep to mount and unmount SAP instance-specific file systems that are based on SAN-FC devices.

EMC Common Object Manager (ECOM)

A hub of communications and common services for applications based on the EMC Common Management Platform.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

Powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, a fully integrated enterprise resource planning application that fulfills the core business needs of midsize companies and large enterprises across all industries and market sectors.

Java Enterprise Archive (EAR) A file format used by Java EE for packaging one or more modules into a single archive so that the deployment of the various modules onto an application server happens simultaneously and coherently.

Java Software Component Archive (SCA)

A delivery and installation unit that groups development components without overlapping. Software components (SCs) combine development components (DCs) into larger units for delivery and deployment.

Network Attached storage (NAS)

A file-level storage connected to a network that can provide data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. NAS not only operates as a file server, but is specialized for this task either by its hardware, software, or configuration of those elements. They typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as NFS, SMB/CIFS, or AFP.

SAP Adaptive-enabled (AC-Enabled) systems

SAP NetWeaver systems installed using virtual IPs, virtual hostnames, and independent file systems per instance and stored on a shared central storage system, according to the SAP adaptive computing concept. This is also called SAP Adaptive Design or SAP Application Virtualization.

SAP Additional Application Server (SAP AAS)

Formerly called Dialog instance, the SAP NetWeaver Application Server is the scalable component of the SAP software stack.

SAP Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP)

The programming language used by SAP, which describes the type of SAP architecture used by the SAP systems in this solution.



Term Definition

SAP Enhancement Package (EHP)

SAP software component that provides highly integrated core functionality encapsulated in business functions. It simplifies the way customers manage and deploy new software functionality. Customers can elect to implement these software innovations from SAP and activate the software upon business demand.

SAP ERP DB SAP ERP database server that runs the database instance.

SAP LaMa provisioning system processes

Group term for the SAP LaMa System Clone, System Copy, System Refresh, System Rename, and System Destroy processes.

SAP Primary Application Server (SAP PAS)

Formerly called central instance, the SAP NetWeaver Primary Application Server is the central foundation for the entire SAP software stack. It also provides a platform for other NetWeaver components (Portal, XI, and so on), as well as for ABAP and Java applications.

SAP Additional Application Server (SAP AAS)

Formerly called Application instance, the SAP NetWeaver Additional Application Server is the additional application server that scales the SAP software stack for ABAP and Java applications.

Secure Shell (SSH) A cryptographic network protocol for secure data communication between two networked computers. It connects, using a secure channel over an unsecure network, a server running SSH server, and a client running SSH client.

Storage Area Network (SAN) A dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. It is primarily used to enhance storage devices, such as disk arrays, so that the devices appear locally attached to the operating system.

Storage Management Interface Specification (SMI-S)

A storage standard management interface for multiple storage vendors, created by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

A set of APIs that enables communication between VMware vSphere ESXi hosts and storage devices; also referred to as hardware acceleration or hardware offload APIs.

We value your feedback Dell EMC and the authors of this document welcome your feedback on the solution and the solution documentation. Contact [email protected] with your comments.

Authors: Manoel Silva, Larry Mann, Donna Renfro

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Dell%20EMC%20Storage%20Integration%20with%20SAP%20Landscape%20Management%20Software%20Implementation%20Guide%20P/N%20H13279.2

Chapter 2: Before You Start


Chapter 2 Before You Start


Implementation prerequisites ........................................................................... 10

Implementation workflow .................................................................................. 10

Essential reading ................................................................................................ 10



Implementation prerequisites This implementation guide assumes the prerequisites in Table 2 have been completed.

Table 2. Implementation prerequisites

No. Action Reference

1 Install SAP Application Server System based on SAP NetWeaver 7.5 SP7 Unix Java

SAP NetWeaver Guide Finder

2 Install SAP LaMa 1 SAP Help Portal - SAP LaMa Enterprise

3 Configure SAP LaMa SAP Help Portal - SAP LaMa Configuration

4 Read the SAP LVM Best Practices for System Provisioning document

SAP LVM Best Practices for System Provisioning

5 Prepare the SAP application instances to become adaptively enabled 2

SAP Help Portal - SAP LaMa Landscape Preparation

Note: Some documentation in this guide requires a Dell EMC username or an SAP username and password. Ensure that you have both for the procedures in this guide.

Implementation workflow Table 3 outlines the high-level steps required to implement SAP LaMa with Dell EMC Enterprise Storage Integrator (ESI).

Table 3. Implementation steps

Step Action Reference

1 Implement ESI for SAP LaMa components Chapter 4

2 Configure SAP LaMa to integrate with EMC components Chapter 5

3 Configure and run SAP LaMa System Provisioning processes Chapter 6

Essential reading Dell EMC recommends that you read the following documentation, available at SAP.com, SAP Community (SC), Dell EMC Community Network (ECN), and Dell EMC Online Support (EOS). If you are unable to access these documents, contact your SAP or Dell EMC representative.

• SAP Landscape Management 3.0, Enterprise Edition – Overview

• SAP Landscape Management 3.0, Community page – SC

1 SAP S-user access is required to open these SAP links. Contact SAP for more information.

2 SAP strongly recommends that all SAP systems to be managed by SAP LaMa 3.0 are installed Adaptive Enabled (AC-Enabled), based on the SAP Adaptive Design. SAP instance file systems for each SAP system must be stored on dedicated LUNs / datastores provided from a shared central storage system.

https://uacp2.hana.ondemand.com/viewer/30839dda13b2485889466316ce5b39e9/CURRENT_VERSION/en-US/c8ed609927fa4e45988200b153ac63d1.html

https://help.sap.com/viewer/lama_instguide

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/4e57e8322ace4dabe10000000a42189b.html

https://archive.sap.com/documents/docs/DOC-56593

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/ad4e4e34efd54a5d885daf73885c520f.html


https://www.sap.com/product/technology-platform/landscape-management.html

https://www.sap.com/community/topic/landscape-management.html



• SAP Landscape Virtualization Management at a Glance – SC

• System Landscape Management for SAP – Resource Page – ECN

• Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management Release Notes – EOS

• Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide – EOS

Important: Several documents, chapters, and sections in other documents are referenced throughout this document. Ensure that you complete only the sections mentioned, and then return to this document to complete the procedure.


https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-20641

https://support.emc.com/products/28468_Storage-Integrator-for-SAP-Landscape-Virtualization-Management-



Chapter 3: Solution Overview


Chapter 3 Solution Overview


Overview .............................................................................................................. 13

Solution architecture .......................................................................................... 13

Key components ................................................................................................. 16



Overview This chapter provides an overview of the integration of Dell EMC storage systems with the SAP Landscape Management product and the key technologies used.

Solution architecture This solution uses separate Dell EMC software components to integrate Dell EMC storage systems with SAP LaMa. This section describes the features directly related to the Dell EMC components and their integration points for the ESI product:

• Enterprise Storage Integrator adapter or plug-in

• Enterprise High Level Storage Administration Console (EHAC)

• SMI-S Array Provider

• Solutions Enabler (SE) and Enterprise Storage Library for SAP (ELSA) Figure 1 shows the high-level architecture of the solution.

Figure 1. Architecture of the solution3

The solution supports EMC VNXTM, Dell EMC VMAXTM, Dell EMC XtremIOTM, and Dell EMC VPLEXTM storage platforms.

As shown in Figure 1, Solutions Enabler, ESI plug-in, EHAC, and SMI-S Provider connect to the Virtualization and Storage modules. VMware integration for virtualized SAP systems occurs in the Virtualization Connect module.

3 All SAP copyrighted images (Figures 1 and 2) are used by permission and were copied from the SAP TechEd 2016 session ITM115 (September 2016) available at SAP TechEd Online.

High-level architecture

Dell EMC software integration components

http://events.sap.com/teched/en/session/28838



Dell EMC supports SAP LaMa as part of its strategy and direction toward virtualization and cloud technologies. Integrating SAP LaMa into a Dell EMC infrastructure enables customers to maximize the value of their infrastructure while providing them with a path to virtualization and the cloud.

ESI also supports VCE Vblock Systems. For more information, refer to Run SAP and Oracle Better on Dell EMC Converged Solutions.

SAP provides application-based virtualization through the SAP adaptive computing concept or SAP Adaptive Design, which decouples the SAP application and database instances from the underlying operating system. SAP adaptive-enabled (AC-Enabled) instances are decoupled from the operating system where they are running, enabling them to run in multiple computing nodes. Application virtualization is different from hypervisor-based virtualization, which decouples the virtual machine and its operating system from the underlying server hardware.

SAP application virtualization enables an SAP instance to be relocated from one physical server or virtual machine to another with minimal downtime. This provides flexibility, increases availability, and enables upgrading the operating system of a server during normal business hours without affecting the SAP application that was running there.

SAP LaMa is an add-on to SAP NetWeaver 7.5 Application Server Java (AS Java). It uses the underlying SAP NetWeaver AS Java technology.

With SAP LaMa, you can simplify and automate the management and operations of your SAP systems and landscapes running on physical or virtual infrastructures to increase your business agility.

SAP LaMa provides a central point of control for flexibly by assigning computing resources and managing application services in the system landscape, which provides the following benefits:

• Centralized SAP landscape operations

• End to end automation for provisioning SAP systems

• Landscape-wide visibility and control

• Automation of repetitive basic administration tasks

• Faster response to changing landscape demands

Figure 2 provides an overview of the key features provided by SAP LaMa.

SAP application virtualization

SAP LaMa overview

https://www.emc.com/en-us/solutions/converged-infrastructure/business-applications.htm

https://www.emc.com/en-us/solutions/converged-infrastructure/business-applications.htm

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/737a99e86f8743bdb8d1f6cf4b862c79.html



Figure 2. SAP Landscape Management key features

The SAP LaMa landscape includes the following building blocks:

• Managing system—A virtual or physical server installed with SAP NetWeaver Java AS 7.5 with the SAP LaMa add-on deployed. The SAP LaMa server initiates the actions such as starting, stopping, and relocating SAP application instances, and cloning SAP systems.

• Managed SAP systems—The SAP business application systems controlled by SAP LaMa from which the SAP Host Agent and SAP Instance Agents collect information. An SAP system usually consists of at least a database, a central instance, and a set of application servers running on one or more hosts (physical or virtual servers).

• Central name server—Used to register host names for copied or cloned SAP systems.

• Central user management—Used to centrally register the operating system (OS) users needed for a copied SAP system.

SAP LaMa editions and ESI for SAP LaMa support The level of integration of the Dell EMC storage adapter with SAP LaMa depends on the SAP LaMa edition and the features that are required.

Standard Edition This is a free product for customers with an SAP NetWeaver license. Download this edition from the SAP Service Marketplace. ESI supports the Prepare, Unprepare, and Relocation operations in this edition.

Enterprise Edition This is a separately licensed product that authorized customers can download from the SAP Support Portal Software Center.

The Enterprise Edition includes all features from the Standard Edition. The SAP LaMa Enterprise edition provides additionally to the Standard Edition the SAP System Provisioning processes like System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh.



Dell EMC provides end-to-end support for the storage-based cloning for SAP LaMa system-provisioning processes (System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh). ESI integration with SAP LaMa is based on storage-specific integration. ESI currently uses SMI-S Array Provider for VMAX and VNX and storage specific REST APIs for VPLEX and XtremIO to manage storage systems. Solutions Enabler is used to retrieve and precisely identify storage devices in use by SAP instance-specific file systems mounted on the physical or virtual SAP hosts.

Notes: For SAP and Dell EMC to provide support for SAP LaMa Prepare, Unprepare, Relocation operations and System Provisioning processes, the SAP hosts must have:

1. The SAP-instance file systems created according the layout recommendations described in Chapter 4. The Dell EMC Professional Services team responsible for implementing ESI on the customer environment will verify that this prerequisite is followed before the ESI implementation.

2. Solutions Enabler (SE) installed on the hosts with SAP instance file systems stored on SAN devices participating on the SAP LaMa system provisioning processes and/or relocation operations.

Key components This section provides an overview of the key technologies that you must implement to enable the integration between SAP LaMa software and ESI on SAN and NAS environments, as outlined in Table 4.

Table 4. Key solution components

Component Description Required for SAN

Required for NAS

SAP LaMa server

SAP LaMa is an Add-On component for SAP NetWeaver Java Stack server and is the SAP landscape control block. Also referred to as the SAP LaMa Management server

Y Y

SAP Hosts SAP Business Suite systems, like ERP, CRM and SCM. Also referred to as SAP LaMa Managed hosts Y Y

SAP Host Agent SAP technology component installed on all SAP hosts Y Y

ESI Adapter Enterprise storage manager adapter for SAP LaMa software, a Java plug-in deployed on the SAP NetWeaver Java application server

Y Y

Enterprise HLS Administration Console (EHAC)

Enterprise central storage administration tool used to manage all storage systems used by ESI for SAP LaMa. Also referred to as the Dell EMC Management server

Y Y

SMI-S Provider Open storage management interface that enables the interoperability of storage management technologies to run the operations at the storage level

Y N

Solutions Enabler

Includes the Enterprise storage library for SAP (ELSA) that is used for file system mount and unmount operations on the SAP hosts

Y N

As shown in Table 4, all components are required for both SAN and NAS implementations except for SMI-S Provider and Solutions Enabler, which are required only for SAP LaMa implementations in SAN environments.



Chapters 4 and 5 of this document describe the implementation steps that you must run on the SAP LaMa server and on all the SAP hosts to work properly with SAN environments based on Fibre Channel (FC).

ESI for SAP LaMa (ESI) is a set of components that integrate with SAP LaMa software and the SAP systems managed by SAP LaMa. ESI has the following components:

• ESI for SAP LaMa adapter (ESI adapter or ESI plug-in)

• EHAC (EHAC console, ESI web service, and EHAC deployment console)

• Dell EMC Solutions Enabler (SE)

• Dell EMC SMI-S Array Provider (SMI-S)

The ESI adapter is a Java written plug-in distributed as a Java Enterprise Archive (EAR) file that complies with SAP LaMa specifications. The ESI adapter is deployed in the SAP NetWeaver Java stack application server and integrates with Dell EMC file and block storage systems.

Figure 3 shows the SAP LaMa architecture combined with ESI and the VMware adapter for SAP LaMa (VLA). The architecture supports for storage-based and virtualization-based cloning respectively. Virtualization-based cloning clones entire virtual machines at the vCenter level. This document focuses on ESI storage-based cloning only. Refer to the VMware VLA documentation for more information.

Figure 3. SAP LaMa architecture combined with the ESI for SAP LaMa and VMware VLA

As shown in Figure 3, the EHAC also manages Dell EMC block and file storage systems in physical and virtual environments. ESI currently uses the SMI-S Array Provider to handle VMAX and VNX storage systems and uses REST APIs to handle XtremIO and VPLEX storage systems. Solutions Enabler handles SAN-based storage device mount and unmount operations to servers.

ESI for SAP LaMa

http://www.vmware.com/products/adapter-sap-lvm.html



In vSphere virtual environments, ESI dynamically rescans the host bus adapters (HBAs) of vSphere ESXi (ESXi) servers to support vMotion operations prior to storage-related tasks triggered by SAP LaMa. ESI handles datastores and Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs) and coordinates with Solutions Enabler to mount and unmount the SAP instance-specific file systems in the operating system of the SAP virtual machines.

ESI sends VMware SDK API commands to the vCenter server to run the following operations from vCenter server to the ESXi servers in the cluster: attach, detach, mount, unmount, rescan datastores, add vmdks to virtual machines, and remove vmdks from virtual machines. You must register the ESXi servers on the EHAC console before you start SAP LaMa operations involving vSphere clusters.

EHAC provides a single point of management to the storage administrator to create user accounts, assign storage systems to the user accounts, add ESXi servers to the EHAC database, and add EMC VPLEX storage details.

The EHAC console is a graphical configuration tool based on an ESI web service written in Java that communicates with the ESI adapter deployed on the SAP LaMa server. SAP LaMa storage-related requests are handled by the ESI adapter, which communicates with the ESI web service on the EHAC server to coordinate execution of storage operations using the SMI-S Array Provider or REST APIs commands, depending on the Dell EMC storage system being used.

In the EHAC console, storage administrators manage users, configure the SMI-S EMC ECOM WBEM servers, and configure NAS storage systems. Storage administrators can also manage storage access per user account by controlling read and write access to storage pools for each storage system. The EHAC management server and its integration with an SAP Landscape are shown in Figure 4.

EMC HLS Administration Console (EHAC)



Figure 4. EHAC management diagram

SMI-S Array Provider (SMI-S-A) supports the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative (SMI), an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard for storage management. The SMI-S Provider contains the ECOM server with the EMC Common Information Model (ECIM) to provide an SMI-compliant interface for EMC VMAX and VNX storage arrays, depending on the SMI-S release. For more information, refer to Chapter 3 of the EMC Solutions Enabler, VSS Provider, and SMI-S Provider 8.3 Release Notes.

The SAP LaMa system provisioning processes use the ESI adapter inside the SAP LaMa server to connect to the ESI web service running at the EHAC server. The ESI web service integrates with the SMI-S-A. One SMI-S-A manages up to five Dell EMC storage arrays. For more arrays, deploy an additional EHAC appliance with the SMI-S-A and point the EHAC server to the SMI-S-A contained in that appliance. Solutions Enabler supports command-line entries to perform control operations on devices to manage SAN-based storage. SAP LaMa software programmatically manages storage from the SAP LaMa GUI using the Storage Managers that are configured there. The SAP application virtualization (or SAP Adaptive Design) is used by SAP LaMa and it is enhanced by two components packaged within the SAP Host agent software:

• The SAP Adaptive Computing OS Preparation binary (sapacosprep)

• The SAP platform library (libsapacosprep)

SMI-S Array Provider

Solutions Enabler

https://support.emc.com/docu78910_Solutions_Enabler,_VSS_Provider_and_SMI-S_Provider_8.3.0_Release_Notes.pdf?language=en_US&language=en_US

https://support.emc.com/docu78910_Solutions_Enabler,_VSS_Provider_and_SMI-S_Provider_8.3.0_Release_Notes.pdf?language=en_US&language=en_US




ELSA is represented technically by the libsapacosprep_emc file that is included in the Storage Resource Management (SRM) module of the Dell EMC Solutions Enabler. Create a symbolic link in the SAP Host Agent directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe during the implementation to integrate the SAP Host Agent binary sapacosprep to ELSA. When SAP LaMa triggers the SAP Host Agent to execute mount and unmount operations for file systems based on SAN Fibre Channel devices, the SAP Host Agent is called and requires the binary sapacosprep to call ELSA to complete these operations.

Every SAP Host with the SAP Host Agent installed contains the sapacosprep binary, the database library, and the SAP platform library. The database library is required for managing specific database functions like start and stop, is DB specific, and delivered by SAP with the DB partners. The platform library manages virtual hostnames and network file systems, is OS specific, and delivered by SAP with the OS partners. These libraries manage virtual hostnames for Linux on NFS-based data storage for Linux systems. All the SAP Host Agent libraries reside in the /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe directory on UNIX and Linux OS.

Note: SAP LaMa does not support operations on NFS-based storage file systems in Microsoft Windows environments.

The SAP Host Agent is invoked on behalf of the SAP LaMa GUI and calls the sapacosprep binary.

The SAP Host Agent contains SAP and Dell EMC storage libraries in its directory to control and establish the application virtualization layer to perform the following actions:

• Activate and deactivate virtual hostnames and virtual IPs used only by the SAP instance installed Adaptive Enabled (AC-enabled).

• Attach and detach file systems, logical volumes, and volume groups used by the SAP instances, whether they are an installed AC-enabled or not.

Chapter 4: Solution Implementation


Chapter 4 Solution Implementation


Overview .............................................................................................................. 22

Software components overview ........................................................................ 23

Hardware components overview ...................................................................... 24

Physical architecture ......................................................................................... 24

Logical architecture ........................................................................................... 25

Setting up the Dell EMC storage systems for ESI ........................................... 25

Setting up a physical environment ................................................................... 29

Setting up a vSphere virtual environment ....................................................... 30

Configuring the SAP hosts for SAP LaMa system provisioning ................... 33

Installing and Deploying the EHAC Server ...................................................... 40

Configuring the SAP LaMa with the ESI storage adapter ............................... 43



Overview This overview describes the high-level steps required to deploy ESI.

SAP LaMa software differentiates between the following cloning-variants:

• Storage-based cloning of SAP adaptive-enabled (decoupled from the OS) instances stored in shared central storage where the corresponding storage manager is configured on SAP LaMa.

• Virtualization-based cloning of SAP instances that reside within a virtual machine where the corresponding virtualization manager is configured on SAP LaMa.

Dell EMC integration with SAP LaMa using ESI is focused on storage-based cloning for adaptive-enabled SAP instances stored on EMC shared central storage, and that is the focus of this document. SAP adaptive-enabled instances are installed using virtual IPs and virtual hostnames, and have independent file systems per instance that are stored on a central storage system shared by multiple hosts. This follows the SAP Adaptive Design concept (also called SAP Adaptive Computing concept or SAP Application Virtualization).

Ensure that all implementation prerequisites described in Table 2 are met before beginning the ESI implementation.

Table 5 outlines the high-level steps required to implement the ESI for SAP LaMa components that provide storage-based cloning for SAP LaMa software.

Table 5. Implementation steps


1 Set up the Dell EMC Storage systems Setting up the Dell EMC storage systems for ESI

2 Set up the Virtual environment (VMware vSphere)

Setting up a vSphere virtual environment

3 Configure the SAP hosts for ESI support Configuring the SAP hosts for SAP LaMa system provisioning

4 Install and configure EHAC (EMC Management Host)

Installing and Deploying the EHAC Server

5 Deploy the ESI Storage Manager adapter on SAP LaMa

Configuring the SAP LaMa with the ESI storage adapter

Implementation steps




Software components overview Table 6 provides an overview of the required software for the solution.

Table 6. Software requirements

Software Minimum software version Installed on

Browser IE 11 / Chrome 59 User desktop

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12 SP1 Linux-based EHAC virtual appliance

Microsoft Windows Enterprise Server 2012 R2 x64 SP1 Windows-based EHAC server

SMI-S Provider 8.3.0.7 Windows-based EHAC servers and Linux-based virtual appliance Note: All software described here is pre-installed and configured on the Linux-based EHAC virtual appliance, but must be installed or upgraded on the Windows-based EHAC server.

Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.7 update 80

Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) JCE-7 for Java 1.7 with Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files 7

JBoss Application Server 7.1.1 final

Apache Derby database 10.8

ESI for SAP LaMa Web service 4.6.8.4

EHAC Deployment Console 4.6.8.4

SAP NetWeaver Java Server 7.5 SP07 SAP LaMa server

SAP LaMa 3.00, SP02 Patch 3 SAP LaMa server as an Add-On component

ESI for SAP LaMa Java Adapter 4.6.8.4 SAP LaMa server as a Dell EMC storage manager plug-in

SAP Host Agent 7.21 SP 26 or higher All SAP managed hosts

SAP Adaptive Extensions 1.0 SP 33 or higher All SAP managed hosts

Dell EMC Solutions Enabler 8.3.0.27 All SAP managed hosts with instance file systems based on SAN/FC storage devices

VMware vSphere ESXi server 6.0 U2 or higher update 5.5 U3 or higher update

Intel x86 physical servers

Note: Refer to the Dell EMC Simple Support Matrix. For SAP software release information, refer to the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM). Credentials are required to access these sites.

https://elabnavigator.emc.com/eln/elnhome

https://support.sap.com/en/release-upgrade-maintenance/product-availability-matrix.html



Hardware components overview Table 7 provides an overview of the hardware resources used in the verification lab during the implementation.

Table 7. Hardware resources

Purpose Quantity Configuration Used as

Storage 1 Dell EMC VMAX3TM 450F Dell EMC central shared storage

Servers 4 2x 8-core x86 Intel E5 CPUs 256 GB RAM ESXi hosts for the virtual machines

SAN switches 2 Fibre Channel switch – 8 Gb/s Connection between servers and storage

Ethernet switches 2 Ethernet switch – 10 Gb/s IP connection between the servers

Physical architecture Figure 5 shows the physical architecture of the solution with a sample SAP landscape including physical and virtual SAP systems. All Dell EMC storage system configurations supported by ESI for SAP LaMa are shown.

Figure 5. Physical architecture of the solution

Note: VPLEX is an optional component. VPLEX Local is used in the single data center while VPLEX Metro is used across two data centers. The simplest configuration is one data center with an SAP landscape with physical or virtual servers that is connected to one VMAX or XtremIO storage system. ESI also supports the VCETM Vblock systems, which contain the compute, network, and storage layers combined.



Logical architecture Figure 6 shows the logical architecture of the solution, including the ESI components, installation locations, and minimum required versions.

Figure 6. Logical architecture of the solution

Setting up the Dell EMC storage systems for ESI You can use Unisphere to configure Dell EMC storage systems as required for ESI. The following sections describe the steps you must complete before you can configure ESI with these Dell EMC storage systems. Before setting up a VMAX storage array for ESI, complete the steps in Table 8.

Table 8. Prerequisites for VMAX

Step Prerequisite

1 Cable and power on the VMAX storage array.

2 Install and configure the VMAX storage array on the network and start Unisphere.

3 Configure disk groups on the VMAX storage array.

4 Create the required LUNs.

5 Create thin storage pools that contain thin data devices (TDAT) and are bound by thin devices (TDEV).

6 Configure zoning and masking of the VMAX storage array.

7 Install and configure the licensed Dell EMC replication software.

8 Provision at least six EMC gatekeeper devices and mount them to the EHAC server as raw device mappings.

Note: VMAX3 storage arrays come from Dell EMC manufacturing with one storage pool preconfigured, so that step is omitted in this storage system configuration.

Preparing VMAX for ESI



The following limitations exist for ESI on EMC VMAX and VMAX3 storage arrays:

• Do not modify or delete the snapshots created by ESI directly on the array. Snapshots created by ESI on VMAX and manually deleted from the storage array still appear in the SAP LaMa GUI when you click Provisioning > Manage System Snapshots.

• ESI cannot create snapshots of an existing snapshot on VMAX3 eNAS. Creating SAVE devices is a requirement of ESI if the intention is to perform Dell EMC TimeFinderTM snapshots of SAP systems. This is not a requirement when using VMAX3 storage systems because SnapVXTM devices are used instead.

A SAVE device is non-host addressable back-end storage devices contained within a shared pool of save devices. If any track on the source device is written to, the Enginuity code first moves the original source data to the SAVE Device and redirects pointers to this original source data.

Creating SAVE devices for VMAX 1. Within Unisphere, navigate to Storage > Volumes.

2. Under Common Tasks, navigate to Create volumes.

3. Specify the following details, as shown in Figure 7.

Volume Type: Private

Configuration: SAVE

Disk Technology

Emulation

Protection

Number of Volumes and Volume Capacity

Add to pool: Default _Pool

Figure 7. Creating a SAVE device

VMAX limitations for ESI

Preparing VMAX for snapshots of SAP system devices



4. Click the arrow next to Add to Job List and select Run Now to commit the configuration change.

Before setting up a VNX storage array for ESI, complete the steps in Table 9.

Table 9. Prerequisites for VNX

Step Prerequisite

1 Cable and power on the VNX storage array.

2 Install and configure the VNX storage array on the network and start Unisphere.

3 Configure zoning of the VNX storage array to the servers.

4 Configure storage pools with hard disks on the VNX storage array.

5 Create the required LUNs and register the initiators.

6 Create storage groups and connect initiators and LUNs to the storage group.

7 Install and configure the licensed EMC replication software.

The following limitation exists for SAP LaMa with ESI on a VNX storage array:

If you create a snapshot of an SAP system using SAP LaMa with ESI, do not modify or delete the snapshot directly on the array. Snapshots that were created through SAP LaMa with ESI on VNX or VMAX and manually deleted from the storage array directly can still appear in the SAP LaMa GUI when you click Manage System Snapshots.

Note: Use only SMI-S Array Provider 4.6.2.29 Virtual Appliance (vApp) with VNX storage arrays. Configure the EHAC server to point to the SMI-S-A 4.6.2.29 vApp to manage VNX storage arrays.

Before setting up a VPLEX storage array for ESI, complete the steps in Table 10.

Table 10. Prerequisites for VPLEX

Step Prerequisite

1 Cable and power on the VPLEX storage system.

2 Install and configure the VPLEX storage system on the network and start Unisphere.

3 Create an extent from the storage device you want to claim in both VPLEX clusters.

4 Create devices to form a one-to-one mapping between extents and devices.

5 Create distributed devices to mirror across clusters.

6 Create virtual volumes, which VPLEX presents to hosts using storage views.

7 Create consistency groups and storage views.

Support for VPLEX was added in version 4.6.x of ESI with support for two VPLEX product families: VPLEX Local and VPLEX Metro:

• VPLEX Local provides seamless, non-disruptive data mobility and the ability to manage and mirror data between multiple heterogeneous arrays from a single

Preparing VNX for ESI

VNX limitations for ESI

Preparing VPLEX for ESI



interface within a data center. VPLEX Local consists of a single VPLEX cluster, which provides increased availability, simplified management and improved utilization and availability across multiple arrays.

• VPLEX Metro enables active/active block level access to data between two sites within synchronous distances of up to a 5-millisecond round-trip time. The combination of virtual storage with VPLEX Metro and virtual servers enables the transparent movement of virtual machines and storage across synchronous distances. This technology provides improved utilization and availability across heterogeneous arrays and multiple sites.

The following limitations exist for ESI on VPLEX:

• Heterogeneous VPLEX storage environments (using non-Dell EMC storage arrays) are not supported by ESI.

• The SAP instance file systems must either be stored on direct storage devices for a storage array or VPLEX virtual devices, and never both or a combination.

• All VPLEX virtual volumes must be created with a one-to-one VPLEX element constraint, must have unique names, and must come from a single VPLEX system. Do not combine virtual volumes from two or more different VPLEX systems.

• When adding a new initiator to an SAP host, register the initiator in VPLEX and add it to a VPLEX storage view before you use it. Register at least one initiator for each cluster. You can register only one initiator for a storage view from each cluster. The initiator ports that you add and use in one storage view should be unique, and should not be added to or reused for any other storage views.

• Create each VPLEX distributed virtual volume or local volume using a single device that completely uses the claimed storage volume. VPLEX distributed virtual volumes must be of equal size. The mirror of each virtual volume (local or distributed) must lie entirely on one back-end array volume. The back-end array volumes corresponding to each mirror must be exactly the same size as the virtual volume.

• A storage administrator must manually create storage views for the target hosts that will be used in an SAP LaMa System Clone, System Copy, or System Refresh prior to starting any of these processes.

• Ensure that the target hosts for the cloned devices reside on the same VPLEX cluster as the local virtual volume.

• Snapshots and cloning from snapshots are not supported.

• Cloning is only supported by the native cloning technology of the storage array in use.

Notes:

• For additional VPLEX configuration details, refer to Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 2 > “Prerequisites” > “VPLEX configuration prerequisites.”

• For more information about VPLEX leveraging array-based and native copy technologies refer to the EMC VPLEX: Leveraging Array-Based and Native Copy Technologies White Paper.

VPLEX limitations with ESI



https://www.emc.com/collateral/white-papers/h12642-wp-emc-vplex-leveraging-native-and-array-based-copy-technologies.pdf




Setting up a physical environment ESI supports storage-based cloning of physical hosts in release 1.0 and later. This section describes the specific implementation steps for SAP hosts based on physical servers.

ESI manages the SAP hosts instance-specific storage devices through EHAC. ESI sends commands directly to the physical server that is running SAP instances to perform scans of SCSI devices, add and remove disks, and mount and unmount file systems.

It is a common practice to install the operating system on direct attached disks to the server and install SAP application instances data on central storage. This practice aligns well with storage requirements of deployments based on the SAP Adaptive Design concept, because the operating system of the server is stored on local disks. Only the SAP instance-specific data is stored in separate LUNs on Dell EMC shared central storage system and is cloned there for efficiency.

Working with SAP LaMa and ESI integration for storage-based cloning requires that the SAP target systems be set up in advance and that the operating system is installed, configured, and able to access the central storage.

To optimize the cloning process of a source server, ESI requires that the SAP instance-specific file systems be based on separate storage devices (LUNs). Only the SAP instance-specific file systems based on these storage devices are cloned using ESI and presented to the target server. This complies with the SAP recommendations regarding adaptive-enabled (AC-enabled) installation and with Dell EMC recommendations, because the operating system file systems are not copied.

Note: The LUNs used by the SAP instance-specific file systems of the source and target systems cannot be used by other SAP systems in the landscape, preserving the LUNs to be used only by these SAP systems.

To clarify this layout requirement, see the reference layout for an SAP central system architecture based on SAN FC in Figure 8. This figure shows the SAP instance-specific file systems and their LUNs configured on the Dell EMC VMAX physical devices. DFS in the Type column stands for Distributed File Systems and represents block-based storage devices.

Figure 8 shows a block only physical SAP central system with Oracle database reference layout with the recommended storage device and SAP instance-specific file system configuration.

ESI support for physical servers




Figure 8. File system layout of an SAP Central System architecture in a physical server

Note: In the reference layout in Figure 8, all the SAP database file systems, for example, /oracle/…, are stored in a separate logical volume (LVs) and volume group (VGs). The VGs are stored on LUNs (Physical Device ID column in the example) grouped by SAP instance, providing segregation and flexibility to clone only the SAP instance-specific LUNs actually required in the SAP target system or only the SAP database instance-specific file systems.

Setting up a vSphere virtual environment ESI supports storage-based cloning of VMware virtual hosts as well as physical hosts. This section describes the specific implementation steps for SAP hosts based on vSphere virtual machines, also referred to as SAP virtual hosts.

VMware vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 are supported by ESI. The vSphere platform is made up of many components—for example, vCenter and ESXi servers—which, for the purposes of this document, are assumed to be already in place. This section focuses on the common integration points involved in integrating EMC storage with SAP LaMa.

The VMware vCenter Server enables you to manage multiple ESXi hosts or clusters as well as other functionalities, such as VMware vMotion, DRS, HA, and fault tolerance. The vSphere Client or Web Client is used to manage the vCenter server.

ESI integrates with a vCenter server through EHAC to manage the SAP virtual hosts. ESI sends commands to the vCenter server that coordinates the ESXi servers to do the following operations:

• Perform rescans of HBAs and Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastores on vCenter and ESXi servers

• Mask and unmask LUNs to ESXi servers or physical servers

vSphere ESXi and vCenter support



• Attach, detach, mount, and unmount datastores to ESXi servers

• Add and remove new virtual hard disks (vmdks) to and from virtual machines With ESI 4.6.8 or later, integration with VPLEX active-active distance technology is also supported. Working with SAP LaMa with ESI integration for storage-based cloning requires that the SAP target systems be configured in advance to work with ESI. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 provide more information about meeting this requirement.

It is a VMware best practice to deploy virtual machine files on shared datastores to take advantage of features like VMware vMotion, VMware High Availability (HA), and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Note: ESI does not support the fully automated VMware vSphere Storage DRS or datastore clusters for the SAP instance-specific file systems to be cloned by ESI.

This practice aligns well with the deployments based on the SAP Adaptive Design concept, because the guest OS of the virtual machines is stored on the shared datastores. Only the SAP instance-specific file systems are stored in separate and dedicated datastores on Dell EMC shared central storage and cloned there for efficiency.

vSphere HA uses the datastores shared by all virtual machines for monitoring when the management network fails. The vCenter server selects two datastores for each vSphere ESXi host using the vSphere HA admission control policy and datastore preferences. The SAP virtual machine guest OS and other file systems not required by the SAP instance to function must be stored in large shared datastores to simplify the VMware vSphere HA datastore heartbeat configuration.

For vSphere virtual machines, the OS disk must be stored in a dedicated virtual machine disk (VMDK) that is also stored in a shared datastore on the vSphere cluster.

In the verification environment described in Chapter 6, two 4 TB datastores are created and masked to both vSphere ESXi servers in the cluster.

For each SAP virtual host, the guest OS is installed on a virtual machine hard disk (VMDK) and this VMDK is stored on a 4 TB datastore that is shared with other SAP virtual hosts. The SAP instance-specific VMDKs are stored in dedicated datastores separated from the 4 TB datastores used for the guest OS of the SAP virtual hosts.

ESI supports cloning of both VMFS and physical Raw Device Mapping (pRDM) disks attached to the source and target SAP hosts.

Storing SAP instance-specific file systems in datastores separated from the Guest OS optimizes the storage-based cloning process triggered by SAP LaMa for large volumes over 2 TB. This cloning process is not optimized enough, even when using VMware vCenter virtualization-based (host-based) cloning using VAAI.

To optimize the cloning process of a source virtual machine, the SAP instance-specific file systems must be based on separate and dedicated datastores for each SAP system. Only the SAP instance-specific file systems cloned by SAP LaMa with ESI are presented to the target virtual machine. This complies with the SAP LaMa requirement regarding SAP Adaptive Design, AC-enabled installation, and the Dell EMC recommendations that are shown in Figure 9. To avoid SAP LaMa errors resulting from implementing an incorrect file

Storage configuration for ESI in vSphere environments






system layout, ensure that the file system layout of your SAP system instances is in compliance with these layout recommendations before proceeding with SAP LaMa system provisioning processes.

ESI calls SMI-S-A to run cloning operations at the storage array level. VMware vSphere datastores are created based on Dell EMC physical storage devices described here as Logical Unit Number (LUNs). Because ESI performs the cloning operations at the LUN level where the VMware vSphere datastores are created on, it is important to have only the SAP instance-specific file systems to be cloned by ESI in dedicated datastores or LUNs—for example, /oracle/SID, /usr/sap/SID. Backup directories and other non-essential file systems should not be stored in same datastores of the SAP instance file systems, so that they are not copied.

Note: The separate datastores used by the SAP instance-specific file systems of the source and target systems cannot be shared with other SAP systems in the landscape.

To clarify this layout requirement, a reference layout for an SAP central system architecture based on SAN FC is provided in Figure 9. This figure shows the SAP instance-specific file systems and their VMware datastores configured on the EMC VMAX physical devices. DFS in the Type column stands for Distributed File Systems and represents block-based storage devices.

Figure 9 shows a VMware vSphere SAP central system reference layout of the recommended configuration.

Figure 9. File system layout in an SAP Central System architecture on VMware vSphere

Note: In the example layout in Figure 9, all the SAP database instance with Oracle file systems, like /oracle/…, are stored in logical volumes (LVs) and volume groups (VGs). Each VG is stored on one VMDK, which is stored in dedicated datastores. This provides a high level of segregation and flexibility to clone only the datastores containing the SAP database instance-specific file systems (if the use case is an SAP LaMa Refresh Database only, for example).



Before performing SAP LaMa provisioning processes in a vSphere environment, consider the following limitations:

• Avoid using numerous small LUNs or datastores due to the vSphere ESXi server limitation of 256 LUNs. ESI clones the source LUNs during the storage-based cloning processes that duplicate them. This cloning process could exceed this limit and fail.

• Avoid using more than four paths for each LUN due to the vSphere ESXi server limitation of 1024 paths. If the LUNs being cloned have multiple paths, remember that the new LUNs created by ESI have the same number of paths, duplicating them.

• Ensure that the number of devices to be cloned is not greater than 128.

• Ensure that the total of all paths is not greater than 512.

Note: For more information about vSphere storage maximums refer to the following documents on the VMware website: VMware Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 5.5 or VMware Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 6.0.

Configuring the SAP hosts for SAP LaMa system provisioning The SAP LaMa managed hosts are the SAP Business Application servers (referred to in this document as SAP hosts or SAP virtual hosts) that are part of the customer’s SAP Landscape. Ensure that the following prerequisites are met before configuring the SAP hosts:

• The physical or virtual SAP hosts are installed as adaptive-enabled (AC-enabled), and are configured and running, according to the SAP Adaptive Design, and the SAP LaMa Landscape Preparation for SAP Instances.

• The SAP Host Agent 7.21 latest patch is installed on the SAP hosts in the local directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/. Separate this directory from any of the SAP instance-specific mount points like /usr/sap/SID to guarantee that the SAP LaMa unprepare operation does not unmount it. Install or upgrade the SAP Host Agent on all SAP hosts managed by SAP LaMa as described in Configuring SAP Host Agent.

• The SAP Adaptive Extensions 1.0 latest support package must be installed on the SAP hosts in the SAP Host Agent local directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/ exactly as described in the SAP Note 1759181 - Installation of SAPACEXT.SAR. SAP Support Portal user access is required to view this note.

Storage limitations in vSphere environments

Prerequisites

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r55/vsphere-55-configuration-maximums.pdf

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere6/r60/vsphere-60-configuration-maximums.pdf

https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere6/r60/vsphere-60-configuration-maximums.pdf



https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/4e56df6600c74dabe10000000a42189b.html


https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/1759181



Configure the SAP hosts that will participate in the SAP LaMa provisioning processes as source or target by following the steps in Table 11.

Table 11. SAP Hosts configuration steps


1 Install Solutions Enabler Installing Solutions Enabler

2 Install and configure SAP Virtual hosts Installing and configuring SAP virtual hosts

3 Configure VMware vSphere virtual host with Solutions Enabler

Configuring vSphere virtual hosts with Solutions Enabler

4 Configure Solutions Enabler Configuring Solutions Enabler

5 Configure the Dell EMC integration with the SAP Host Agent

Configuring the Solutions Enabler integration with the SAP Host Agent

This section refers to the Solutions Enabler software installation and describes the specific settings required by ESI during the Solutions Enabler installation.

Requirements • ESI requires installing Solutions Enabler version 8.3.0.27 on each SAP host

(physical or virtual) that is managed by SAP LaMa with ESI.

• Solutions Enabler is only required on the SAP hosts with SAP instance-specific file systems stored on Dell EMC storage devices that are connected using SAN and FC protocols.

Note: Solutions Enabler is not required on SAP hosts with instance-specific file systems based on storage devices provisioned from a Dell EMC storage array connected as network attached storage (NAS) using a Network File System (NFS) protocol.

Procedure 1. Download the Solutions Enabler kit with the installer from the Solutions Enabler page

on Dell EMC Online Support. Select Downloads > Updates, and then select the OS that is installed on your SAP hosts.

2. Install Solutions Enabler 8.3 in the SAP hosts managed by SAP LaMa by using the instructions in the section “Installing Solutions Enabler on UNIX and Linux” from the Solutions Enabler Version 8.3 Installation and Configuration Guide available at Dell EMC Online Support.

3. You can Install Solutions Enabler with the interactive or silent installation methods.

Interactive method: a. Using interactive, shown below, accept all the default settings, except for the SRM

Components and Lockbox Password.

b. For the question, Install EMC Solutions Enabler SRM Components? [N]: type Y and press Enter to install all of the optional database components, which include the Enterprise storage library for SAP (ELSA).

Overview steps

Installing Solutions Enabler

https://support.emc.com/docu78907_Solutions-Enabler-8.3.0-Installation-and-Configuration-Guide.pdf?language=en_US



c. Enter a Lockbox password with at least eight characters, containing at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character. Special characters allowed are:!@#%&

sapsrc:/software10/EMC/SE/83027 # ./se83027_install.sh –install #---------------------------------------------------------------------------- # EMC Installation Manager #---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) [1997-2016] EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. This software contains the intellectual property of EMC Corporation or is licensed to EMC Corporation from third parties. Use of this software and the intellectual property contained therein is expressly limited to the terms and conditions of the License Agreement under which it is provided by or on behalf of EMC.

Solutions Enabler Native Installer Kit Location : /software10/EMC/SE/83027 Do you want to change Install root Directory. [N] : Install root directory : /opt/emc Working root directory [/usr/emc] : Working root directory : /usr/emc Checking for OS version compatibility...... Following daemons can be set to run as a non-root user: storevntd, storgnsd, storrdfd, storsrvd, storstpd, storwatchd Checking for active processes..... Checking for active SYMCLI components... Install EMC Solutions Enabler Certificates for secure Client/Server operation ? [Y]: Install All EMC Solutions Enabler Shared Libraries and Run Time Environment ? [Y]: Install Symmetrix Command Line Interface SYMCLI ? [Y]: Install Option to Enable JNI Interface for EMC Solutions Enabler APIs ? [N]: Install EMC Solutions Enabler SRM Components ? [N]:Y Do you want to change default permission on /var/symapi directory from [755]? [N] Do you want to use the default Lockbox Password ? [N]:Y Please confirm that you want to use the default Lockbox Password ? [N]:Y Please enter the Lockbox Password: Please reenter the Password for confirmation : Solutions Enabler Lockbox is created with given password

Silent method This method is faster.

Add the srm option to the command line to install the Solutions Enabler SRM components. In this installation method, the Solutions Enabler Lockbox password is created with the default password, unless the command line parameter –lockboxpassword= with a password is specified.

sapsrc:/software10/EMC/SE/83027 # ./se83027_install.sh -install -silent -srm ... Installing symcli-base-8.3.0.2252-27.3.x86_64.rpm..... Installing symcli-symcli-8.3.0.2252-27.3.x86_64.rpm..... Installing symcli-symrecover-8.3.0.2252-27.3.x86_64.rpm..... Installing symcli-srm-8.3.0.2252-27.3.x86_64.rpm..... Solutions Enabler Lockbox is created with default password

Enable the VMware virtual machine disk (vmdk) universally unique disk identifier (UUID) advanced parameter, and install VMware tools software on all SAP hosts that are running on VMware vSphere virtual machines.

Important: Several documents, chapters, and sections in other documents are referenced throughout this document. Ensure that you complete only the sections mentioned, and then return to this document to complete the procedure.

In Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: User Guide > Chapter 3, perform the only the procedures described in these two sections:

• “Enabling the disk UUID in a VMware virtual environment”

• “Installing VMware Tools”

Installing and configuring SAP virtual hosts




Note: To enable the VMware parameter disk_UUID on the virtual machine, the virtual machine must be powered off. Plan accordingly with the SAP administrator to minimize disruption. This procedure is not required for SAP hosts based on physical servers.

Run this procedure on each SAP host that is based on VMware vSphere virtual machines (SAP virtual hosts).

Note: This procedure is not required for SAP hosts based on physical servers.

To retrieve the underlying physical server and storage array information for that SAP virtual host, Solutions Enabler requires detailed information about the vSphere ESXi server where the SAP virtual host is running. Run the Configure_Virtualhost2.sh bash script, which is included with ESI, to automate the update of the Solutions Enabler symapi database.

Perform the procedure in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management Storage Adapter User Guide > Chapter 3 > “Configuring the virtual host.”

Configure Solutions Enabler on each SAP host with SAP instance-specific file systems stored on devices from Dell EMC storage systems connected using SAN and FC protocol.

Running Solutions Enabler commands Run the following Solutions Enabler commands on both the source and target SAP hosts. These commands verify that Solutions Enabler was correctly configured.

1. Add the IP address of the Dell EMC storage system to the Solutions Enabler symapi database on the host you are configuring using this command:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/symcfg auth add -host [VMAX_IP_Address] -username [username]

2. List the entries inside the Solutions Enabler symapi database with this command:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/symcfg auth list -vmware

3. Search for all the Dell EMC storage devices that are attached to the SAP host and update the Solutions Enabler symapi database with the storage devices found with the commands:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/symcfg scan /opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/symcfg discover

Note: For VNX storage systems, assisted discovery process is required. A configuration file with the VNX service processor’s IP addresses, username, and password must exist for the assisted discovery to function. Beginning with Solutions Enabler version 8.0, VNX and CLARiiON arrays are no longer supported. Use the latest version of Solutions Enabler 7.6.x for VNX arrays. EMC Solutions Enabler 7.6 Symmetrix Array Management CLI Product Guide > “CLARiiON-assisted discovery” provides more information.

Configuring vSphere virtual hosts with Solutions Enabler

Configuring Solutions Enabler



https://support.emc.com/docu46983_Solutions-Enabler-Symmetrix-Array-Management-CLI--7.6-Product-Guide.pdf

https://support.emc.com/docu46983_Solutions-Enabler-Symmetrix-Array-Management-CLI--7.6-Product-Guide.pdf



4. List all the storage devices found in the operating system of the SAP host using the command:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/syminq

5. List all the storage devices found in the operating system of the SAP host and show the World Wide Name (WWN) of each of the devices found using the command:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/syminq -wwn

6. Retrieve the HBA properties from vSphere ESXi server where the SAP virtual machine is running, or from SAP physical host using this command:

/opt/emc/SYMCLI/bin/syminq hba

Note: In VMware virtual environments, the command syminq hba only works if the previous step “Configuring vSphere virtual hosts with Solutions Enabler” was run successfully. If the syminq hba command returns blank, it is because the SAP virtual machine running this command did not have the correct vSphere vCenter IP address, username, or password entry added previously in the Solutions Enabler symapi database using the Configure_Virtualhost2.sh bash script. Remove the entry, add it again, and run the syminq hba command again to verify. For more information about adding and deleting entries in the Solutions Enabler symapi database, refer to Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administration Guide > Chapter 3 > “Useful commands.”

After the latest version of SAP Host Agent, SAP Adaptive Extensions and Solutions Enabler are installed and configured on all SAP hosts (source and target), the SAP Host Agent directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe is created.

Configuring Solutions Enabler with sapacosprep 1. Create a symbolic link in the SAP Host Agent directory for ELSA to integrate with

the SAP Host Agent binary sapacosprep using the commands:

cd /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe ln -s /opt/emc/SYMCLI/shlib/apps/SAP/libsapacosprep_emc.so libsapacosprep_emc.so

Note: On AIX, this library is a regular object (.o), and not a shared object (.so). The syntax of the command is: ln -s [target-filename] [symbolic-filename] The ELSA file (libsapacosprep_emc.o) is installed during the Solutions Enabler installation of the SRM component, so the path described above must point to the exact location of that file to work properly.

2. Stop and restart the SAP Host Agent from the /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe directory:

./saphostexec -stop

./saphostexec -restart

./saphostexec –status

Configuring the Solutions Enabler integration with the SAP Host Agent





3. Run the following command to verify that the SAP Host Agent finds the Dell EMC Storage Library for SAP as a shared library:

/usr/sap/hostctrl/exe/sapacosprep -a diag

Verify that the output is similar to Figure 10, which shows the SAP sapacosprep binary in the Dell EMC storage library.

Figure 10. SAP Adaptive computing OS preparation diagnostic output

4. If the previous command completes successfully, then run the following command to retrieve the HBAs in use by the SAP host managed by SAP LaMa: /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe/sapacosprep -a GetResourceStorageProperties

The output should be similar to that shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Retrieve the HBA properties from the SAP host to be consumed later

5. If the previous command completes successfully, then run the following command to list all the mount points in use in the SAP host in the format to be consumed later by SAP LaMa: /usr/sap/hostctrl/exe/sapacosprep -a ListFileSystems | grep WWN

The output should be similar to that shown in Figure 12.



Figure 12. SAP Adaptive computing OS preparation List File Systems output

The critical information to obtain from the output shown in Figure 12 is the Export Path string, which should contain:

All SAP-instance specific file systems are listed and correctly.

The serial number of the Dell EMC storage array where the SAP instance-specific storage devices are stored.

The physical device ID (LUN) at the storage array level where each SAP instance-specific file system is stored.

The WWN of the storage devices where the SAP instance-specific file systems are stored.

Note: In the example, different SAP database instance-specific file systems are stored in the same LUN; therefore, after all the Dell EMC and SAP LaMa configurations are complete, ESI clones the LUNs identified in the SAP database instance-specific mount points that are configured inside SAP LaMa.

If this command fails, or if any of the critical information is not shown, revise the /usr/sap/tmp/sapacosprep.log file for more information and verify the following:

A symbolic link was created between the ELSA and the SAP Host Agent on the SAP host that has storage devices based on SAN FC.

Both sapacosprep commands described in steps 3 and 4 were completed successfully on the SAP host.



Installing and Deploying the EHAC Server The EHAC server is an ESI management tool for storage administrators, which includes the following components:

• EMC SMI-S Array Provider (SMI-S-A)

• EHAC Deployment Console

• EHAC Web service

• EHAC Console The following prerequisites must be in place before you install the Windows-based EHAC or deploy the Linux-based EHAC virtual appliance:

• Zone and mask the Dell EMC storage systems to the SAP systems physical or virtual to be part of the SAP LaMa system provisioning processes.

• When working with VMAX storage systems, SMI-S requires at least six gatekeepers to be provisioned, zoned, and masked to the EHAC server to provide communication between the SMI-S array provider and the VMAX storage systems. The six gatekeepers (GKs) must be added as raw devices. On VMware vSphere virtual hosts, add these disks as physical raw device mapping (pRDMs).

• VMware vCenter Server is installed and configured.

• On the storage arrays to be used, install the required licenses to create snapshots and clones.

Notes:

• We recommend that you use the Linux-based EHAC virtual appliance to deploy EHAC because it is faster to deploy and the EHAC server becomes operational in minutes.

• When using VNX storage arrays, download the SMI-S 4.6.2.29 Virtual Appliance, and then deploy and configure it following the instructions in EMC Solutions Enabler 7.6 Installation Guide > Chapter 8, “Installing the Solutions Enabler Virtual Appliance.”

Ensure that the following tasks have been completed:

• A physical or virtual server with Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 x64 SP1 and updates are installed. The server is dedicated as the EHAC appliance and a user is defined with administrator privileges to install applications and access the internet to download the required ESI software.

• SMI-S software version 8.3.0.7 is installed according to Solutions Enabler 8.3 Installation and Configuration Guide > Chapter 2 > “Installing Solutions Enabler on Windows.”

Perform the procedure described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: EMC High-Level Storage Administrator Console Administrator Guide > Chapter 3 > “Installing and Deploying the EHAC Server.”

Overview

Prerequisites

Installing the Windows-based EHAC server

https://download.emc.com/downloads/DL66632_SMI-S-Provider-4.6.2.29-for-SMI-S-1.5-for-Virtual-Appliance.ova

https://support.emc.com/docu46992_Solutions_Enabler_7.6_Installation_Guide.pdf?language=en_US&language=en_US

https://support.emc.com/docu46992_Solutions_Enabler_7.6_Installation_Guide.pdf?language=en_US&language=en_US

https://support.emc.com/docu78907_Solutions_Enabler_8.3.0_Installation_and_Configuration_Guide.pdf






SMI-S 8.3 is used for VMAX arrays only. After the EHAC server is installed and configured, adjust three SMI-S parameters to clone volumes sized over 1 TB of data.

During cloning, the storage array takes a byte-to-byte full copy from the Source LUN to the Cloned LUN. Since a byte-to-byte copy of data takes time, SMI-S waits for one hour by default, and if the byte-to-byte copy is not complete, it might fail the cloning process with a timeout error.

To prevent this timeout error:

1. Login to the EHAC host where SMI-S Array Provider is installed.

2. On Windows services, stop the JBoss service and the ECOM service.

3. Navigate to C:\Program Files\EMC\ECIM\ECOM\Providers.

4. Add the following entries to the OSLSProvider.conf file, if they are not present:

# Amount of time (sec) to wait for the SMI-S triggered replication OSLSProvider/com.emc.cmp.osls.se.symm.ReplicationService.totalwaittime = 86400000 # Enable the deletion of jobs after successful completion OSLSProvider/com.emc.cmp.osls.se.symm.Session.StorageConfiguration.job.deleteoncompletion = true # Amount of time (min) to wait before job removal OSLSProvider/com.emc.cmp.osls.se.symm.Session.StorageConfiguration.job.timebeforedeletion = 00000000080000.000000:000

5. On Windows services, restart the SMI-S (ECOM) service and the JBoss service.

Note: For more information about SMI-S, refer to EMC Solutions Enabler 8.3 Installation and Configuration Guide > Chapter 5 > “SMI-S Provider runtime settings.”

Perform the following steps to configure the EHAC Administration Console for the first time, as outlined in Table 12.

Table 12. Steps required to configure the EHAC server


1 Configure the EHAC server Configuring the EHAC server

2 Log in to EHAC console Logging in to EHAC console

3 Configure storage systems Configuring Storage systems in the EHAC console

4 Configure virtual systems Configuring virtual systems in the EHAC console

5 Configure VPLEX storage systems

Configuring VPLEX Storage systems in the EHAC console

6 Manage User accounts Managing User accounts in the EHAC console

Configuring SMI-S parameters (Windows-based EHAC only)

Configuring the EHAC server





Configuring the EHAC server Add six gatekeeper storage devices as RDM disks (Windows-based server) or pRDM disks (Linux-based virtual appliance), but do not mount them to the OS.

For the EHAC server to find the VMAX storage to be configured, perform the following:

1. Run the TestSmisProvider binary to perform a discovery using the following commands:

For the Windows-based EHAC server, run the following command and accept all default entries:

<DriveLetter>:\Program Files\EMC\ECIM\ECOM\bin\TestSmisProvider

For the Linux-based EHAC virtual appliance, run the following command and accept all default entries:

/opt/emc/ECIM/ECOM/bin/TestSmisProvider

2. When the menu appears, execute the following steps:

a. Type disco and press Enter twice to answer No for the Filter and Flags questions.

b. Type dv and press Enter to display the version and storage arrays found.

Note: On the Windows-based EHAC server only, the storage administrators must configure a Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) infrastructure, the ECOM account, and set the administrator role to allow full access. Refer to the ECOM Deployment and Configuration Guide, available at Dell EMC Online Support.

3. For Windows-based EHAc server only, execute in the order listed, the steps in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 4:

a. “Configuring the EHAC web service to run in HTTPS mode”

b. “Configuring residue cleanup”

c. “Starting the EHAC server”

Logging in to EHAC console Log in to the EHAC console and create an Admin user as described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 5, “Logging in to EHAC.”

Configuring Storage systems in the EHAC console Configure the Dell EMC storage systems in the EHAC console as described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 6, “Configuring Storage Systems in EHAC.”

https://support.emc.com/docu43613_ECOM-Deployment-and-Configuration-Guide.pdf?language=en_US

https://support.emc.com/docu43613_ECOM-Deployment-and-Configuration-Guide.pdf?language=en_US









Configuring virtual systems in the EHAC console Configure the Dell EMC storage systems in the EHAC console as described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 6, “Configuring Storage Systems in EHAC” > “Adding VMware vCenter virtual storage systems and ESXi hosts.”

Configuring VPLEX Storage systems in the EHAC console Configure Dell EMC VPLEX storage systems in the EHAC console as described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 6, “Configuring Storage Systems in EHAC” > “Configuring VPLEX storage systems.”

Managing User accounts in the EHAC console Manage user accounts in the EHAC console as described in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide > Chapter 7, “Managing User Accounts.”

Configuring the SAP LaMa with the ESI storage adapter To enable ESI integration with the SAP LaMa server, perform the procedure in Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: User Guide > Chapter 4, “Installing ESI for SAP LaMa.”








Chapter 5: Solution Configuration


Chapter 5 Solution Configuration

This chapter presents the following topic:

SAP LaMa configuration and preparation for ESI ........................................... 45



SAP LaMa configuration and preparation for ESI After SAP LaMa software is installed, you must complete several configuration steps. This chapter covers only the steps that are important for Dell EMC storage integration with SAP LaMa. The initial setup and configuration steps are required whether you have a Standard or Enterprise Edition license.

The Enterprise Edition license is required for system provisioning features like System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh. This chapter covers the advanced configurations for Enterprise edition that enable Dell EMC storage integration for storage-based cloning in SAP LaMa.

Table 13 lists the required configuration and preparation steps for SAP LaMa that are covered in this chapter.

Table 13. SAP LaMa configuration steps

Step Action

1 Configure and test the EMC Storage Adapter

2 Configure initial settings

3 Discover the SAP hosts and systems

4 Retrieve the host specific storage properties

5 Configure the SAP system instance properties

6 Retrieve the mount points for each of the application instances

7 Configure systems settings specific to system provisioning

8 Configure and prepare the target host

Before configuring SAP LaMa, ensure that the steps described in the previous chapters and listed in Table 14 have been completed.

Table 14. SAP LaMa configuration prerequisites

Prerequisites Refer to

SAP LaMa is installed and running on the SAP Management server. Chapter 4

The EHAC service on the EHAC server is started, and a user was created and granted storage access.

Chapter 4

The SAP systems are adaptively installed and started on the SAP hosts. Chapter 2

The SAP Host Agent with SAP Adaptive Extensions are installed, configured, and started on all SAP hosts.

Chapter 4

Solutions Enabler is installed and configured on each SAP host using instance file systems stored on SAN Fibre Channel devices from Dell EMC storage arrays.

Chapter 4

The SAP virtual hosts are configured on the EHAC Administrator Console. Chapter 4

Overview

Prerequisites



After the storage administrator has configured the user accounts for the storage adapter and granted the read/write permission to the storage for this user on the EHAC Administrator Console, the adapter must be configured in SAP LaMa. Use the Storage Manager tab in the Infrastructure section of the SAP LaMa interface to maintain the configuration.

Prerequisite The Dell EMC Storage adapter must have been deployed inside of the SAP NetWeaver Java Stack where the SAP LaMa add-on is running.

Procedure 1. Select Infrastructure > Storage Manager > Add.

2. Select the EMC storage adapter from the list of supported storage managers, as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. SAP LaMa Infrastructure – Storage Manager add the ESI adapter

3. Enter the user account information that was created in the EHAC Server and received from the storage administrator.

4. Type a Label name, such as ESI_Adapter.

5. Enter the User Name and Password provided by the storage administrator that was configured on the section Managing User accounts in the EHAC console.

6. Type the IP address of the server where the EHAC is installed, followed by a colon (:), and type the port number (8080 is the default port for EHAC).

7. Click Test Configuration to check that the administration console is communicating properly with SAP LaMa.

Configure and test the EMC Storage Adapter



If the connection is successful, a confirmation message appears at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14. SAP LaMa Infrastructure – EMC Storage Manager Test Configuration

Figure 15. SAP LaMa Infrastructure – EMC Storage Manager storage system findings



The procedures in this section provide instructions for configuring the parameters required to integrate SAP LaMa with Dell EMC components.

1. Log in to the SAP LaMa GUI.

2. Click Setup, as shown in Figure 16.

3. Under Settings, shown in Figure 16, customize the following parameters as required: User Interface, Notification, Engine, Monitoring, and ACM.

For our solution verification testing, we selected the following Engine settings:

Allow Multiple Instances on Same Host

Automatic Mountpoint Creation

Automatic Mountpoint Deletion

Show Advanced Shutdown Options when Stopping Operations.

The Expert mode, shown in Figure 16, provides many more customizable settings, such as Timeouts. For the solution verification tests, we kept all the default Timeout settings.

Figure 16. Configuring settings in SAP LaMa

Before you can configure your hosts, systems, and the instances that make up the system, they must be started and running to be detected by SAP LaMa.

1. Select Configuration > Hosts or Systems > Discover.

Figure 17 shows discovering hosts.

Configure initial settings

Discovering the SAP managed hosts and systems



Figure 17. SAP LaMa Configuration – Discover Hosts

2. Provide the hostname to discover hosts, instances, or both hosts and instances, by using the SAP Host Agent and Instance Agent.

3. Use the Discover wizard to add instances and assign hosts to systems and selected pools, as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. SAP LaMa Detecting hosts and instances and assigning to systems

Figure 19 shows that the discovered system, its hosts, and instances are available for basic operations.

Figure 19. Overview of system and instances



Complete the following steps to configure the newly discovered hosts:

1. Select Configuration > Hosts, select the host, and edit as required.

2. Review and confirm the Basic configuration.

3. Click Retrieve from Host to retrieve the storage properties of the host, which is the HBA of the physical server.

Note: If you plan to use the host for system provisioning, select Isolation Ready.

The screen is populated as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 20. Configuring SAP LaMa Host-Specific Properties

For each application instance associated with a system, you must configure the SAP system Instances properties.

1. From Configuration, select your system and, for each instance, click Edit to modify the configuration, as shown in Figure 21.

Retrieving the host-specific storage properties

Configuring the SAP system instances properties



Figure 21. Configuring SAP system instances properties

2. Select 1 to display the Basic configurations screen and set the required parameters.

3. Select 2 to display the Instance properties screen.

4. Under Adaptive Enablement, select AC-Enabled, and accept the settings for Virtual Hostnames and Networks and the Required Host Type, as shown in Figure 22.

Figure 22. SAP LaMa Instance properties

In step 3, you can add mount points.

1. Select 3 to display the Mount points screen.

2. Clear OS managed Mounts (Automounter).

Retrieving the mount points for each application instance



3. Click Retrieve Mount list to populate the mount list with all of the mount points that are on the resource or server.

Note: Retrieving the mount points automatically in this way avoids errors.

4. Select the mount points that do not pertain to this SAP instance and click Remove.

Figure 23 shows an Oracle database instance example of the populated list, which contains SAN-FC block-based mount points, volume groups, their logical volumes, and physical LUNs (the actual VMAX device ID from Unisphere) where they are stored.

Figure 23. SAP LaMa Oracle Database Instance configuration mount points

5. Repeat these steps for each application instance in the system.

Figure 24 shows an SAP Primary Application Server PAS instance example of the populated list, which contains NAS-NFS file-based mount points, volume groups, their logical volumes, and physical LUNs (the actual VMAX eNAS device ID from Unisphere) where they are stored.



Figure 24. SAP LaMa SAP PAS Instance configuration mount points

Note: Ensure that all SAP instance-specific mount points are not local operating system directories of the SAP host. All the SAP instance-specific mount points must be verified, adjusted, and approved by the SAP administrator who supports the SAP LaMa implementation at the customer site. Do this before any SAP LaMa provisioning processes begin.

After the configuration of all instances and hosts of every system in the landscape, run an SAP LaMa validation. After the validation is run successfully, the hosts and instances are now ready for SAP LaMa operations, as shown in Figure 25.

Figure 25. SAP System Instances and host configured for operations



With the SAP LaMa Enterprise Edition license, system provisioning features like System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh are enabled based on Dell EMC storage-based cloning with ESI. This section contains prerequisites for the SAP administrator at the customer side to configure the SAP systems if the intent is to perform online SAP LaMa system clone, copy, or refresh processes.

Setting a system flag for cloning and copying 1. Select Configuration > Systems and select the system.

2. Click Edit > Provisioning & RFC.

3. Select Cloning and Copying, as shown in Figure 26.

Figure 26. Enable system for Online System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh

4. For Oracle only: In the Provisioning & RFC step, configure a transfer mount for redo logs.

When the SAP system on the source is running and using an Oracle database, configure an NFS share to transfer the redo logs from the source to the target system.

Configure settings specific to system provisioning



Note: For more information about SAP LaMa 3.0 Enterprise Edition, Landscape Configuration refer to System Provisioning Configuration and Configuring Mount points on the SAP Help Portal.

Configure RFC for system copy/refresh For System Copy and System Refresh operations, Remote Function Call (RFC) defines connections to run PCA Post Copy Automation (PCA). Confirm with the SAP administrator on the customer side that the RFC destinations are configured to communicate to the SAP systems involved in the SAP LaMa system provisioning processes.

Note: For more information about the SAP LaMa 3.0 Enterprise Edition, refer to Provisioning and Remote Function Call (RFC) > Landscape Configuration > Configuring Systems on the SAP Help Portal.

Ensure that the UUID parameter is set The source SAP system/UUID profile parameter must be set for the SAP systems involved in an SAP LaMa system provisioning process. This is an SAP requirement. Confirm with the SAP administrator on the customer side that this is configured correctly.

Note: For more information about the SAP LaMa 3.0 Enterprise Edition, refer to System Provisioning Configuration > Landscape Configuration > Initial Entities Configuration on the SAP Help Portal.

Define the path to SAP SWPM software for SAP LaMa system copy/refresh For SAP LaMa system copy/refresh processes, the SWPM software must be made available to SAP LaMa. As part of the System Copy and System Refresh processes, a system rename process is run for the storage-based cloned volumes to the target SID and hostnames.

You can define the location of the SAP SWPM software in Infrastructure > Repositories > Configuration > SWPM configuration for system copy, as shown in Figure 27.

Confirm with the SAP administrator on the customer side that the path to SAP SWPM is configured correctly in the SAP LaMa system-provisioning processes.

Note: As a best practice, use a central NFS server to share the SAP SWPM software, defined in the Export Path, to all SAP hosts.

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/3b1f5aa19e8f464296362088dd681556.html

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/ef4af39c26f641f4a85b3ab9150d23fc.html

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/b93617b1b17b4264bf87102bcd7f8b64.html

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/b93617b1b17b4264bf87102bcd7f8b64.html





Figure 27. Configuring the path to the SAP SWPM software

There are two versions of SAP SWPM: one for 7.0.x-based systems and one for 7.10 and later systems. Refer to the SAP Note: 1680045 - Release Note for Software Provisioning Manager 1.0 for information about which version to use for the SAP source system products that are in use on the customer side.

This section summarizes the SAP LaMa product management guidelines for a successful implementation. Follow these best practices to eliminate or significantly minimize errors or failures, and to facilitate and speed up any troubleshooting required.

Confirm with the customer’s SAP administrator that all these configurations are in place before starting the SAP LaMa system operations and provisioning processes.

Central NFS server for software distribution SAP LaMa relies on the SAP Host Agent installed on all SAP physical or virtual hosts in an SAP landscape. SAP recommends keeping the SAP Host Agent and the SAP Adaptive Extensions versions and support packages updated to the latest releases to avoid running into known problems. Dell EMC recommends using the latest qualified Solutions Enabler version. Maintain the latest versions of the SAP and Dell EMC software updated in a central NFS server or a storage-based NFS server (for example a VMAX3 eNAS), and then distribute the updates to all SAP hosts centrally.

Central NTP configuration SAP LaMa relies on the time synchronization across all hosts involved in an SAP landscape managed by SAP LaMa. Ensure that all the SAP physical or virtual hosts are synchronizing their date and time with a Central Network Time Protocol (NTP) server.

Best Practices for SAP LaMa System operations and provisioning





Central DNS configuration SAP LaMa can automate the reservation and binding of new virtual host names during the system provisioning processes communicating with an existing Domain Name System (DNS). To use this feature, the corresponding section in the SAP LaMa Infrastructure > Network Components > Name Server should be configured by the SAP administrator in the customer side.

For more information about how to set up an SAP Host Agent to update a name server to be used with SAP LaMa, see SAP Note 1572841 - Setup of name server update of SAP LVM and Configuring Name Servers on the SAP Help Portal.

Note: Reserve a set of contiguous free IP addresses on the network and configure them on SAP LaMa. SAP LaMa communicates with the central DNS server and assigns these new contiguous, free IPs to the SAP target instance virtual host names. This assignment is done during an SAP LaMa System Copy process, if the virtual IPs are not already defined on the central DNS server. The use of virtual IPs and virtual hostnames is prerequisite for the SAP Adaptive Design.

Central SAP User management configuration SAP LaMa automates the creation and update of SAP and database OS users and groups during the System Copy and System Refresh provisioning processes if a Central User Management Server is configured, such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or Network Information Service (NIS).

To configure SAP LaMa to communicate with the Central User Management Server, go to SAP LaMa Infrastructure > Network Components > User Management.

For more information about how to configure users and groups with SAP LaMa, refer to section 3.5 of SAP LVM Best Practices for System Provisioning and Configuring User Management on the SAP Help Portal.

As a prerequisite, ESI requires that the target hosts exist in your SAP LaMa landscape or are deployed from a VMware vSphere preconfigured template. As described in Chapter 4, configure VMware templates with OS, SAP Host Agent, SAP Adaptive Extensions, and SE prior to using them to deploy new target virtual machines.

Prepare the target server in the same way as the source server. Ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

Physical and vSphere Virtual Hosts prerequisites • Define the Virtual host names and virtual IPs of the source and target SAP

instances on the central DNS server and guarantee they are resolved by all SAP hosts involved. Or, if a DNS server is not configured, manually add the virtual host names to the /etc/hosts file in the SAP LaMa server for the target instances to be created during one of the SAP LaMa system provisioning processes.

• Install and configure the latest SAP Host Agent 7.21 patch on the SAP hosts in the local directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/. Ensure that this directory is separated from any of the SAP instance-specific mount points like /usr/sap/SID, to guarantee that the SAP LaMa unprepare operation does not unmount it. For more information, refer to Configuring SAP Host Agent in the SAP Help Portal.

• Install the latest SAP Adaptive Extensions 1.0 support package on the SAP hosts in the SAP Host Agent local directory /usr/sap/hostctrl/ exactly as described in the SAP Note 1759181 - Installation of SAPACEXT.SAR.

Configure and prepare the target host



https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/3894194a60174a1ebd16cb6af35301f8.html



https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/f5e10bebabd046479b7c964288ae5ade.html

https://help.sap.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/3.0.2.0/en-US/f5e10bebabd046479b7c964288ae5ade.html





• Install Solutions Enabler on SAP hosts with SAP instance file systems based on SAN storage devices.

• Create the source and target OS users and groups on the Central User Management server and configure SAP LaMa to communicate with it. Or, if a Central User Management server is not configured, manually maintain the source OS users and groups on the source target hosts to avoid conflicts.

• Discover and configure the physical servers on SAP LaMa that will be used as target SAP hosts in the same way as the source SAP hosts.

Note: Always refer to the SAP LaMa documentation for specific details about configuring target hosts. Some use case scenarios and specific databases require the database software to be installed on the target. For more information about which databases must be installed on the target system in advance, refer to SAP LVM Best Practices for System Provisioning.

Additional vSphere virtual Hosts prerequisites Ensure that the following prerequisites are met for the target SAP virtual host in a vSphere environment:

• Mask the target server or ESXi servers to access the central shared storage as the source server.

• Configure all VMware hosts with the Configure_VirtualHost2.sh bash script that is described in Chapter 4.

• Add all the ESXi servers in the vSphere cluster to the EHAC database using the EHAC console prior to any SAP LaMa operations or processes.

• Create dummy disks (small 1 MB empty VMDKs) to use all available SCSI controllers on the target virtual machine. First add to the target virtual machine all additional SCSI controllers that you need to match the configuration to the source system. Add three 1 MB dummy disks to support four paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) controllers. The recommended configuration is as follows:

The PVSCSI Controller 1, Port 0 (1:0) assigned to the first disk

The PVSCSI Controller 2, Port 0 (2:0) assigned to the second disk

The PVSCSI Controller 3, Port 0 (3:0) assigned to the third disk

Supporting multiple PVSCSI controllers in vSphere environments Multiple PVSCSI controllers are supported, which conforms to the SAP and VMware best practices. Configure disks to use VMware PVSCSI adapters as described in detail in the VMware Knowledge Base Article 1010398.

For more VMware recommendations for SAP system running on VMware vSphere with a Linux operating system, see the SAP Note 1122388 - Linux: VMware vSphere configuration guidelines.


https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010398





If a source system already has all the Dell EMC software installed and configured as described in Chapter 4, you can create a vSphere virtual machine (VM) template from the source SAP system after you run an SAP LaMa Mass Stop and Unprepare operation. You can create the target system from a preconfigured VMware template during an SAP LaMa System Clone, System Copy, or System Refresh process. The creation of a target system during an SAP LaMa system provisioning process is called Automatic Server Provisioning (ASP).

SAP LaMa is now fully configured, prepared, and integrated with ESI for storage-based cloning. Proceed to the solution verification.

Chapter 6: Solution Verification


Chapter 6 Solution Verification


Test objectives .................................................................................................... 61

SAP LaMa Advanced operations ...................................................................... 63

System Clone and System Copy ....................................................................... 71

System destroy ................................................................................................... 89



Test objectives The tests undertaken for this solution demonstrate Dell EMC storage integration for SAP LaMa, specifically using storage-based cloning.

We ran the following tests to validate this solution:

• Mass Operations

• System Relocation

• System Copy

• System Refresh

• System Destroy The lab environment included the following:

• SAP LaMa server version 3.0 SP2 Patch 3 was used, based on SAP NetWeaver (NW) 7.5 SP04 Java stack.

• ESI version 4.6.8.2.4 was used for the integration, and EHAC was deployed as a VMware virtual appliance based on SLES 12 SP1.

• SAP ERP EhP 7 IDES source system was installed on SuSe SLES 11 SP4 OS with an Oracle 11.2.0.4 database.

• This source system SAP System ID is EC1. The system is adaptively installed using file systems coming from block and file devices from a VMAX3 450F array in a VMware vSphere 6.0 U3 virtualized host environment. The source system EC1 uses the following virtual IPs and host names resolved by a central DNS server:

dbec1 for the database instance

ascsec1 for the central services instance

ciec1 for the central instance.

• The source system EC1 is a standard central system (single host). The handling of a distributed system (multiple hosts) is not different but more complex, since each instance file system has to have its own mount points configured in a way that make them independent of each other for system relocation operations to separate hosts. Because the ABAP SAP Central Services (ASCS) instance contains the SAP global file system mount points /sapmnt/SID and /usr/sap/trans, they need to be exported to all SAP NetWeaver Application Servers (AS) that belong to the same system. We recommend using storage-based NFS (VMAX3 eNAS, for example). Alternatively, for block only storage systems like VPLEX, XtremIO, and VMAX, you can use server-based NFS, but the NFS server has to be installed and configured by the customer to support this scenario.

• A target host is prepared with virtual hostnames and communicates with the central DNS server. The target system is temporarily fenced from the SAP landscape by using an OS firewall configuration during SAP LaMa system provisioning processes.

Lab environment



Figure 28 shows the physical architecture of the lab used for the solution verification, and Table 15 shows the SAP virtual machines configuration.

Figure 28. Physical architecture of the lab environment

Table 15. SAP virtual machines configuration

ESXi Server Virtual machine role

vCPUs Memory (GB)

Disk (GB)

Virtual machine name

C460-1 SAP ECC source 4 32 2000 ECCSRC

C460-2 SAP ECC target 1 4 32 128 ECCTGT1

C460-2 SAP ECC target 2 4 32 128 ECCTGT2

C460-2 SAP LaMa server 2 16 1000 SAPLaMa

C460-2 EHAC server 1 8 128 EHAC

Lab Physical Architecture



ESXi Server Virtual machine role

vCPUs Memory (GB)

Disk (GB)

Virtual machine name

C460-1 vCenter server 2 32 200 vCenter6.0

C460-1 Central NFS server 1 16 1000 CentralNFS

C460-1 Central DNS server 1 16 256 W2012AD

SAP LaMa Advanced operations This section describes the procedures to run on-demand SAP LaMa Advanced operations and their integration with the ESI storage library. The SAP LaMa Advanced operations that can be run are Mass Stop with Unprepare, Mass Start with Prepare, and System Relocation. The source and target SAP virtual hosts run on a VMware vSphere virtual machine. The SAP LaMa Mass Stop with Unprepare operation shows how SAP LaMa integrates with ESI.

Mass operations can run an operation on single or multiple instances and systems. Mass Stop with Unprepare stops the selected SAP instances from a running state; Unprepare removes the instances from the host and sets the instances state to initial.

In vSphere virtual environments, SAP LaMa integrates with ESI to run a Mass Stop with Unprepare operation, and then performs the following steps:

1. SAP LaMa calls the SAP Host Agent on the SAP virtual host where the operation is to be executed and runs the sapcontrol command to stop the SAP instance.

2. The SAP Host Agent calls the binary sapacosprep to deactivate the SAP instance virtual hostname/virtual IP address and invokes SE ELSA to unmount the SAN-based SAP instance-specific file systems from the Guest OS of the SAP host.

3. SAP LaMa calls ESI. ESI runs VMware SDK API commands against the vCenter cluster that contains all ESXi servers to:

Remove the vmdks containing the SAP instance-specific file systems from the SAP host

Unmount the datastores

Rescan the datastores

Detach the datastores from the ESXi hosts in the vCenter cluster

4. ESI runs SMI-S commands to remove the detached LUNs/datastores at the storage level from the storage group assigned to the ESXi hosts in the vCenter cluster.

5. ESI returns control to SAP LaMa.

Mass Stop with Unprepare



Note: ESI dynamically rescans the HBAs of vSphere ESXi servers where the SAP virtual machine is running to support vMotion/DRS operations prior to storage-related tasks triggered by SAP LaMa.

Success criteria The SAP LaMa Mass Stop with Unprepare process runs successfully without errors. The SAP instance-specific virtual hostnames and virtual IP addresses are deactivated. All the SAP instance-specific file systems are unmounted and removed from the SAP System EC1 virtual host.

Figure 29 shows the vSphere 6.0 Web Client where separate datastores are connected to the host, eccsrc, to support the following systems:

• OS file systems

• SAP application file systems

• Oracle database file systems

• Oracle database datafile systems for performance reasons

Figure 29. Storage connected to source host in vSphere 6.0 Web client

Procedure 1. Log in to SAP LaMa web GUI, as shown in Figure 30.

2. Select Advanced Operations.

3. Select the system EC1: NetWeaver ABAP 7.02 on which to perform the Mass Stop with Unprepare operation.

4. Under Mass Operations, select each instance of the selected SAP System.

5. Click Execute, as shown in Figure 30.

6. Use the Monitoring menu to track the progress of the mass operation.



Figure 30. Mass stop and unprepare

In Figure 31, the vSphere 6.0 Web client shows that the datastores are detached from the host eccsrc after a successful Mass Stop and Unprepare.

Figure 31. Confirmation in vSphere Web client that the datastores are detached

In Figure 32, SAP LaMa shows the status of the source SAP system EC1.



Figure 32. SAP source system EC1 status Initial after Mass Stop and Unprepare operation

The SAP LaMa Mass Start with Prepare operation shows how SAP LaMa integrates with ESI by mounting and starting the selected SAP instances from a central storage system to an assigned virtual SAP host. The steps of this operation are identified by SAP LaMa in different states as described below:

• Initial state—The selected SAP instances are registered on SAP LaMa in a central location without host assignment.

• Active state—The selected SAP instances have an activated virtual hostname and virtual IP address, and instance-specific file systems are mounted on an assigned host.

• Running state—The selected SAP instances are started on the assigned host.

In vSphere virtual environments, the Prepare operation goes through the following steps:

1. ESI runs SMI-S commands to add the LUNs with or without datastores to the storage group assigned to the ESXi hosts.

2. ESI runs VMware SDK API commands again against the vCenter server cluster with all ESXi servers to attach, mount, rescan datastores, and add VMDKs from the LUNs with datastores to the assigned SAP target virtual machine.

3. ESI then returns control to SAP LaMa.

4. SAP LaMa calls, on the target virtual machine, the SAP Host Agent that calls the binary sapacosprep, which invokes ELSA to mount the SAN-based SAP instance-specific file systems to the Guest OS of the SAP target virtual machines.

5. SAP LaMa calls, on the target virtual machine again, the SAP Host Agent to activate the virtual IP and hostname of the SAP instance and to start it.

Mass Start with Prepare



Success criteria The SAP LaMa Mass Start with Prepare operation runs without errors. The configured datastores and devices are attached to the host, the virtual IPs and hostnames are activated, the SAP EC1 file systems are mounted, and the EC1 system is started.

Procedure 1. Select Advanced Operations.

2. Select the system EC1 on which to perform the Mass Start with Prepare operation.

3. Under Mass Operations, select each instance of the selected SAP System.

4. Click Auto Assign > Last Used to assign the host to the EC1 system.


6. Use the Monitoring menu to track the progress of the mass operation.

Figure 33. Mass Start with Prepare

7. Select Monitoring > Activities to track progress of the Mass Start with Prepare operation.

Figure 34 shows that the activity is 100% completed.



Figure 34. Monitoring Activities

After a successful Mass Start with Prepare operation, in Figure 35, the vSphere 6.0 Web client shows that the datastores and virtual disks are reattached to the ESXi host where the virtual machine eccsrc is running.

Figure 35. Confirmation in vSphere client that the datastores are attached again The SAP LaMa System Relocation operation shows how SAP LaMa integrates with ESI regarding the SAP adaptive design concept, which decouples the SAP instances from the operating system.

System Relocation moves selected prepared instances to an assigned host. System Relocation can be done for SAP instances whether running or not. If the SAP instances are running, then SAP LaMa stops the SAP system, relocates the instance to the specified target host, and then starts the selected instances there. System Relocation has little downtime effect on the SAP system.

SAP LaMa storage-based system provisioning prerequisites Meet the following prerequisites before you perform an SAP LaMa System Relocation:

System Relocation




1. Install the SAP systems as Adaptive enabled (AC-enabled), following the SAP Adaptive Design concept.

2. Configure the SAP landscape according to the Best Practices for SAP LaMa System operations and provisioning.

If a central DNS server is not configured, manually configure and maintain the updated /etc/hosts file on all SAP hosts involved in the SAP LaMa operations and processes. If a central NTP server is not configured, manually configure and synchronize the date and time of all SAP hosts involved in the SAP LaMa operations and processes. If a central user management server is not configured, manually configure and update without conflicts the /etc/passwd and /etc/group files on all SAP hosts involved in the SAP LaMa operations and processes. You can use the SAP SWPM software in advance to manually maintain users and groups on each SAP host. If a central NFS server is not configured, manually update the SAP Host Agent and SAP Adaptive Extensions software to the latest version in all SAP hosts involved in the SAP LaMa operations and processes.

3. Successfully complete SAP LaMa Mass Stop and Unprepare and Mass Start and Prepare processes before you run a System Relocation operation.

ESI system provisioning prerequisites: 1. Log in to Unisphere on the control station for the VMAX3 eNAS. Navigate to

Storage > File systems, open properties for each SAP file system that you want to create a clone or snapshot, and add the IP addresses of the source and target virtual machines in the read/write access window.

2. Add to the EHAC console all ESXi hosts in the vCenter cluster where the SAP source and target virtual machines are running. This prerequisite is only for vSphere virtual environments.

3. Configure the EHAC server according to the section “Using SAP LaMa System Relocation, Unprepare, and Prepare on vSphere cluster environments” in Chapter 5 from the EMC Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management Storage Adapter User Guide. This configuration enables ESI to relocate VMDKs across virtual machines, without affecting LUN masking and datastore attachments. Configure the EHAC server for SAP LaMa system provisioning processes by performing the following steps only for vSphere virtual environments:

Log in to the EHAC appliance.

Stop the EHAC service by typing /etc/init.d/ehac stop.

Go to the ESI application server directory: /usr/local/jboss-as-7.1.1.Final

Verify that the ESI_application.properties file contains the following values:

UnprepareWithNoVolumes=True PrepareWithNoVolumes=True

Type the /etc/init.d/ehac start command to restart the EHAC service.

https://support.emc.com/docu82343_EMC-Storage-Integrator-for-SAP-Landscape--Management-Storage-Adapter-User-Guide.pdf?language=en_US

https://support.emc.com/docu82343_EMC-Storage-Integrator-for-SAP-Landscape--Management-Storage-Adapter-User-Guide.pdf?language=en_US



Note: SAP LaMa System Relocation does not persist mount points on target hosts or update the /etc/fstab file during the prepare and unprepare operations. Rebooting the SAP target system that received the relocated file systems after a prepare will not mount the SAP instance file systems automatically. Run a new SAP LaMa Mass Prepare operation to mount the SAP instance file systems described in the export paths of SAP LaMa at Configuration > Systems > SID > Mount points. You can only run SAP LaMa System Relocation in the same SAP LaMa pools.

Success criteria The SAP LaMa System Relocation runs without errors. The configured datastores and devices are attached to the target host, the virtual IPs and hostnames are activated, the SAP EC1 file systems are mounted, and the EC1 system is started on the target host.

Procedure 1. Using the SAP UI5, Select Operations > Systems.

2. Select the system EC1 and click Relocate (running).

3. Under EXECUTABLE ENTITIES, select for each instance the desired target host to relocate the SAP instance to.


Figure 36. Mass system relocation in state running

5. Use the Monitoring menu to track the progress of the mass operation. After the System Relocation is completed, click Operations > Instances of the SAP system EC1 to see the assigned hosts, as shown in Figure 37.



Figure 37. SAP LaMa system relocation completed

With the SAP LaMa System Relocation, the SAP system EC1 was converted from an SAP NetWeaver central system architecture to a distributed architecture.

Note: SAP LaMa System relocation is very useful for OS upgrades that are disruptive for the SAP application. To avoid disruption, run a System Relocation from one SAP host to another to minimize downtime to the SAP application, enabling the OS administrator to perform the OS upgrade during business hours. After the OS upgrade is completed, run System Relocation again to return the SAP application to its original host. VMware vSphere vMotion does not address this scenario, because the SAP application is encapsulated inside the Guest OS of the virtual machine.

System Clone and System Copy The SAP LaMa System Clone or System Copy processes help SAP LaMa integrate with ESI to create storage-based clones or snapshots.

SAP LaMa System Clone and System Copy processes are identical from an ESI perspective, because the cloning process done at the storage level on both is the same. The only difference in the processes is that in a System Copy process, after the new storage devices are created and masked to the target system, the file systems are renamed to have the target SAP SID. This is different from the System Clone process, where the SID remains the same.

System Clone The System Clone process creates an exact replica of an existing SAP system with the same SID in an isolated environment. For the SAP administrator, this is useful for sandbox, training, and demo systems where production data is required. This is particularly useful when, for example, you need to test a business-critical production configuration to address a problem or test an SAP upgrade.

System Clone is the simplest of the SAP LaMa system-provisioning processes. It is a fast way to create without disruption, for example, a test system for an update and throw it away afterwards. The clone is fenced off from the SAP landscape and remains isolated for single-system tests.

System Copy The System Copy process creates a copy of an existing SAP system. The SAP system ID (SID), instance hostnames, or IP addresses can be renamed, and post copy activities are conducted. This enables the SAP administrator to create test systems from the production system or create a sandbox system from a development system.



The system copy with ESI for SAP LaMa is based on the storage-based cloning capabilities. The high-level System Copy steps are as follows:

1. Type the SAP SID.

2. Select an existing target host (physical/virtual) or create a new one (virtual only).

3. Clone the system.

4. Mount the new storage devices to the target system.

5. Rename the system.

6. Fence the system from the landscape.

7. Run the post-copy automation (PCA) on the copy.

8. Unfence the system from the SAP landscape.

ESI is invoked by SAP LaMa only on steps 3 and 4, as described above.

Success criteria The SAP LaMa System Clone or System Copy runs without errors and the copied system runs on the target system.

Prerequisites for System Clone and System Copy 1. Configure the SAP LaMa according to the System Relocation prerequisites 1 to 5.

2. Prepare the target system according to the configurations outlined in Chapter 5

3. On VMware vSphere virtual environments, the target system does not have to exist in advance. SAP LaMa can create target virtual machines during a system provisioning process. The creation of the target system during an SAP LaMa system provisioning process is called, Automatic Server Provisioning scenario (ASP). To enable the ASP with SAP LaMa, there are two prerequisites:

Install and configure the VMware VLA virtualization adapter as described in the VLA Installation and User Guide.

Create VMware preconfigured virtual machine templates with the required SAP, VMware, and Dell EMC software installed and configured for deploying new target systems.

Note: Refer to the VMware VLA documentation for more information.

4. If you performed a System Relocation as described in the previous section, configure the EHAC server for SAP LaMa system provisioning processes as follows:

a. Login to the EHAC appliance.

b. Stop the EHAC service with the commands:

cd /etc/init.d ./ehac stop

c. Go to the ESI application server directory: /usr/local/jboss-as-7.1.1.Final

http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/vmware-adapter-for-sap-landscape-management-connector-for-vrealize-automation-installation-users-guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/products/adapter-sap-lvm.html



d. Verify that the ESI_application.properties file contain the following values, and configure them if they are not:

UnprepareWithNoVolumes=False PrepareWithNoVolumes=False

e. Type the following commands to restart the EHACH service:

cd /etc/init.d ./ehac stop

Additional prerequisites for Copy System The prerequisites for the SAP LaMa Copy System process with ESI are the same as for the System Clone procedure with the exception of one extra step:

The new SID replaces the old SID in the file system and inside the database metadata. The SAP SID system rename procedure is performed by the SAP SWPM. In addition, the old SID is replaced in the system (application layer) itself. This is done by the SAP Post Copy Automation (PCA). Configure the settings as outlined in Configure settings specific to system provisioning.

Note: The SAP LaMa 3.0 Enterprise Edition, Landscape Configuration > Initial Entities Configuration > System Provisioning Configuration on the SAP Help Portal provides more information.

Procedure 1. Select Provisioning > System and AS.

2. Select the system EC1 from the system landscape in the left pane.

3. Click Copy System, as shown in Figure 38.

Figure 38. Select the copy system workflow




4. Navigate through the Copy System workflow by following the instructions on the screen. In stage 1 (Basic), type the new system ID, select the pool for the target system in SAP LaMa, and type the master password, as shown in Figure 39.

Figure 39. System Clone, basic data of target system

5. In stage 2 (Hosts), as shown in Figure 40, select Use existing host and type the target hostname.

Figure 40. Select existing target host for copy

In stage 3 (Host Names), the virtual host names and virtual IP Addresses are listed for each application instance as defined on the central DNS server.

6. To validate the entries, click Check Step, as shown in Figure 41.



Figure 41. Select virtual hostnames and virtual IPs

7. In stage 4 (Instance Number), type the selected target instance numbers for the Central instance and Central services, as shown in Figure 42.

Figure 42. Choose target instance numbers

8. In stage 5 (Storage), in the storage volumes table each of the source volumes is listed. For each source storage volume, a new storage volume is created for the target with the exact same specifications. Enter a storage pool for each of the target new volumes.

The Storage screen shows the ESI storage manager and lists the storage pools that have been granted access during the EHAC configuration and are available for selection.

Assign the same storage pool to all the volumes, under Storage Volumes click Copy Target Selection, as shown in Figure 43, and select Copy target selection to all volumes of storage manager.

Select Full Copy to create storage-based full clones or clear the checkbox to create space-saving snapshots.

Select the logical volumes to view the target Mount Point listed under Mount Data.

As this is a system copy, the mount points use the target SID that is handled by ESI.



Figure 43. Entering the target storage pool and use snapshots

Note: You cannot mix full copy and snap volumes.

9. In stage 6 (database Consistency), select Online: Backup/Suspend IO Mode for Oracle, as shown in Figure 44.

Figure 44. Select database consistency

In stage 7 (Users), SAP LaMa verifies whether the required target system users exist and are configured on the Central User Manager system or on the target host. If users do not exist and if SAP LaMa is configured to use SAP SWPM for the User Management instead of a Central User Management system (like LDAP), SAP LaMa calls SAP SWPM to create the users and groups on the target system, as shown in Figure 45.



Figure 45. Required target users exist

In stage 8 (Rename), SAP LaMa tests the preconfigured SAP SWPM access location that will be used for the SAP SID system rename and ensures that the source database schema is correct. The source and target SIDs that will be used are displayed, as shown in Figure 46.

Figure 46. SAP SWPM System rename tool and SAP SIDs

In stage 9 (Isolation), the cloned system is fenced off from the system landscape until it has been renamed.

10. Configure any hosts or ports that must be excluded from the fencing, as shown in Figure 47.

Leave Port 443 open to enable SE to communicate with the physical HBA on the ESXi server.



Figure 47. Hosts which can access host during Isolation

11. In stage 10 (ABAP PCA), select a variant to use, as shown in Figure 48.

The SAP PCA task list and task list variants to be used on each client must be provided by the SAP administrator on the customer side. The configuration of this step is required only if the customer wants to call ABAP post-copy automation during the copy process.

Figure 48. ABAP PCA tasks

12. In stage 11 (Summary), review the summary of selections. Select Save Template and Execute or Start System Copy, as shown in Figure 49. Saving opens a dialog box to name the System Copy template and add a password so you can run it again.



Figure 49. Start System Copy

4. Select Monitoring > Activities to track the progress of the System Copy.

The System Copy activity is finished successfully when the Status is completed and the progress bar reaches 100%, as shown in Figure 50.

Figure 50. SAP LaMa System Copy completed



Figure 50 shows all the SAP LaMa System Copy steps where ESI is directly invoked.

During the Clone Volumes step, ESI creates new target devices, activates the clone process, and syncs data between source and target storage devices.

In the Post Clone Volumes step, ESI waits for copy to complete and build the response to SAP LaMa with mount points to be updated in the configuration of the target system.

In the prepare steps, ESI masks LUNs and attaches and mounts datastores to the ESXi servers. It then adds the VMDKs from the datastores from the clones or snapshots created from the source volumes to the target virtual host, and returns control to SAP LaMa.

SAP LaMa then calls the SAP Host Agent on the target virtual host to mount the VMDKs added there. SAP Host Agent calls the executable sapacosprep to mount the devices, volume groups, logical volumes and file system mount points. To mount these file systems, the EMC Storage Library for SAP (ELSA) included in Solutions Enabler is called, because the file systems are based on SAN/GC storage devices, which is not handled by SAP Host Agent.

13. Select Operations > Systems to verify that the copied system EC2 is available and running, as shown in Figure 51.

Figure 51. System copy completed successfully and EC2 system running

Objective The System Refresh operation replaces the data of a target—commonly a non-production system—with updated data from a source system—commonly a production system.

System Refresh updates an existing SAP system with the latest business data while keeping your configurations. The update of the existing SAP system uses the system copy procedure to replace the original volumes in use by the target system. This enables the

System Refresh



SAP administrator to refresh the production data in test systems and refresh the sandbox systems from the development systems. The two SAP LaMa options regarding System Refresh are Refresh System and Refresh Database.

• The Refresh System option creates a storage-based clone or snapshot of all the SAP instance file systems of the source SAP system.

• Refresh Database creates only storage-based clones or snapshots of the SAP Database instance file systems of the source SAP system.

During both System Refresh options, the existing target system devices are removed and new devices are created from a clone or snapshot. The new devices are presented (masked and mounted) to the target host.

For brevity, only the System Refresh option is described in detail.

Success criteria The System Refresh runs without errors. All existing storage devices mounted on the target host are removed. New storage devices are created and mounted to the target host. After the target system is running with the new storage devices, all storage devices that were previously removed from the target host are deleted.

Prerequisites for System Refresh 1. Complete all of the prerequisites for System Copy, listed under Prerequisites for

System Clone and System Copy and Additional prerequisites for Copy System.

2. The target system must exist and have an SAP system installed and configured AC-enabled there or a VMware preconfigured template and a customization specification created to enable the deployment of a new target system from the template.

3. Create and maintain specific SAP PCA task lists and variants in the source and target SAP systems prior to the SAP System Refresh process start. Configure the settings like Export Directory for System Refresh, as outlined in Configure settings specific to system provisioning.

Note: Refer to the SAP LaMa 3.0 Enterprise Edition, Landscape Configuration > Initial Entities Configuration > Configuring Systems > Provisioning and Remote Function Call (RFC) in Configuring Mount Points > Transfer Mount Configuration for System Provisioning > Usage Type - Export Directory for System Refresh and System Provisioning Configuration on SAP Help Portal for more information.

High Level Steps The high-level steps of the fully automated SAP LaMa System Refresh Database operation are:

1. Export all relevant data (configuration) from the target system.

2. Stop and unprepare the test target system.

3. Clone the source system using a storage-based clone or snapshot of the devices.

4. Update the target system mount points configuration inside SAP LaMa.






5. Mask and mount the new storage devices created to the target host keeping the same SID of the existing target system.

6. Perform SAP system rename calling SAP SWPM.

7. Fence the system from the landscape.

8. Start the target system.

9. Rename the SAP system and reimport the configuration exported previously using the SAP PCA pre-configured task lists and variants.

Note: SAP PCA execution is optional on SAP LaMa 3.0 SP2 P3. It is the responsibility of the customer’s SAP administrator to determine whether or not to run the PCA step.

10. Optionally, delete old storage volumes.

11. Unfence the system from the SAP landscape.

Procedure 1. Select Configuration > Systems > EC2 > System database EC2 > Edit.

2. Select Mount points identified in column Export Path the VMAX3 physical device as shown in Figure 52.

Figure 52. SAP LaMa Configuration SAP System EC2 Mount Points

3. Select Provisioning > System and AS Provisioning. Select the system EC2 from the left pane. Click Refresh System as shown in Figure 53.



Figure 53. SAP LaMa Refresh Database

4. Type in the location Export to Directory, where the export of the configuration and data of the SAP target system was created using a preconfigured SAP PCA task list and variant. In this verification, the target system export was created previously, so select Export already exists > Confirm, as shown in Figure 54. Click Next.

Figure 54. SAP LaMa Refresh System export directory

5. Verify that the target hosts are the same as the ones used during the System Copy process, because the Refresh Database also needs the SAP binaries that exist on the target system, as shown in Figure 55. Click Next.



Figure 55. SAP LaMa Refresh System hosts

6. Verify that all the source and target host names in use are displayed, as shown in Figure 56, and then click Next.

Figure 56. SAP LaMa Refresh Database host names

7. In the Storage step, all the storage volumes of the source system are listed. For each source storage volume, a new storage volume is created for the target system with the exact same specifications. Enter a storage pool for each of the target new volumes for both block and file. The new storage volumes will replace the storage volumes currently running on the target systems.

The Storage screen shows the ESI storage manager and lists the storage pools that were granted access during the EHAC configuration and are available for selection. Assign the same storage pool to all the volumes under Storage Volumes click Copy Target Selection, as shown in Figure 57, and select Copy target selection to all volumes of storage manager.

Select Full Copy to create storage-based full clones or leave the checkbox cleared to create space-saving snapshots.

Select the logical volumes to view the target Mount Point listed under Mount Data at the bottom of the screen. Note that in a system refresh or database refresh process, the mount points use the same target SID of the target system that is running before it is refreshed.

Click Next to proceed.



Figure 57. SAP LaMa Refresh Database Storage step

8. In the Consistency step, select the option Online: Backup/Suspend IO Mode and type 9999 seconds to avoid a timeout, as shown in Figure 58. Click Next.

Figure 58. SAP LaMa Refresh Database Consistency step

9. In the Users step, verify if the users exist on the target and set a new password for them as shown in Figure 59. Click Next.

Figure 59. SAP LaMa Refresh Database user step



10. In the Rename step, click Execute Prerequisite Checker to run a validation on the target host where the database instance will run, as shown in Figure 60. Click Next.

Figure 60. SAP LaMa Refresh Database Rename step

11. In the Isolation step, confirm that port 443 is open for Solutions Enabler and select Unfence target system without confirmation as shown in Figure 61. Click Next.

Figure 61. SAP LaMa Refresh Database Isolation step

12. In the ABAP PCA step, select the preconfigured task list SAP_BASIS_COPY_REFRESH_IMPORT and the variant SYSREFRESHIMP for client 000 as shown in Figure 62. Click Next.



Figure 62. SAP LaMa Refresh Database step ABAP PCA

13. In the Delete Storage Volumes step, select both storage volumes used by SAP EC2 database instance, select Delete volumes without confirmation. Click Confirm to authorize SAP LaMa to have ESI delete the previous storage volumes assigned to the target host after the target system is running, as shown in Figure 63. Click Next.

Figure 63. SAP LaMa Refresh Database step Delete Storage Volumes

14. In the Summary step, review all information added in the previous steps and then click Start Refresh Database, as shown in Figure 64.



Figure 64. SAP LaMa Refresh Database Summary step.

15. Select Monitoring > Activities to track the progress of the System Copy.

The Refresh Database activity is finished successfully when the Status is completed and the progress bar reaches 100%, as shown in Figure 65.

Figure 65. SAP LaMa Refresh Database completed



System destroy System destroy is used to remove systems that are no longer required, delete their associated storage volumes, and remove the system configuration inside SAP LaMa. Optionally, you can also select and delete virtual host names and user from a central DNS server when configured.

Success criteria The System destroy runs without errors, all storage volumes are deleted, and the system configuration is removed.

Prerequisites The system is cloned, copied, or refreshed by SAP LaMa, and the system is stopped and unprepared.

Procedure 1. Select Configuration > Systems > EC2 > System database EC2 > Edit.

2. Select Mount points identified in column Export Path the VMAX3 physical devices IDs as shown on Figure 66.

Figure 66. SAP LaMa Configuration SAP System EC2 Mount Points

3. Use Unisphere to identify and confirm at storage level the volumes that will be destroyed.

In this example, the system copied system EC2 using snapshots rather than full copy clones. You can identify the copies by the naming convention, which uses the source LUN ID followed by _Snapshot*, as shown in Figure 67.



Figure 67. Storage level view of cloned volumes

4. Select Advanced Operations.

5. Select the EC2 system to be destroyed and run a Mass Stop and Unprepare operation with all instances.

6. Select Provisioning > Systems and AS Provisioning, select the system you want to destroy, and click Destroy System, as shown in Figure 68.

Figure 68. Destroy System in SAP LaMa

7. Navigate through the system destroy workflow by following the instructions on the screen. In stage 1 (Delete Storage Volumes), the storage volumes are selected by default for deletion, as shown in Figure 69.



Figure 69. Block and File Storage volumes to be destroyed

8. In stage 2 (Delete Host Names), virtual hostnames with virtual IPs are selected for deletion. In our lab environment, a DNS server was used, so the virtual host names are available for deletion, but de-selected as shown in Figure 70.

Figure 70. DNS virtual hostnames for deletion

9. In stage 3 (Summary), review the summary of selections and click Start System Destroy, as shown in Figure 71.

Figure 71. Start System Destroy



10. Select Monitoring > Activities to track the progress of the system destroy operation, as shown in Figure 72.

Figure 72. Monitoring the system destroy activity

7. Use Unisphere to verify at the storage level that the volumes have been deleted. Refresh the VDEV volumes, as shown in Figure 73, to verify that the volumes are permanently destroyed.

Figure 73. Confirmation the volumes have been destroyed at storage level



Destroying a partially provisioned system Errors can occur during the System Clone, System Copy, and System Refresh processes in SAP LaMa because of incorrect configurations, missed prerequisites, or software issues. These errors cause the process to fail and result in a partially provisioned system. Depending on the phase of the failure, cloned storage volumes might exist and the target system might be partially prepared.

Note: SAP LaMa with ESI only supports destroying partially provisioned systems if the step Update Mount Configuration completed successfully.

In this example, a System Clone (full copy) of EC1 has failed. The cloned volumes are already created. Figure 74 shows the full copy cloned volumes in Unisphere for VMAX. You can identify them by the naming convention, which uses the source LUN ID with the suffix _Rep*.

The processes for Destroy System and Destroy Partially Provisioned System differ. For the Destroy System process, you must first unprepare the system to be destroyed. For Destroy Partially Provisioned System, the unprepare step is included in the process.

Figure 74. Full Copy volumes created in a partially provisioned system

Destroying a partially provisioned system 1. Select Provisioning > Systems and AS Provisioning, as shown in Figure 75.

2. Select the system you want to destroy.

3. Under Destroy System, select Destroy partially provisioned system.

Figure 75. Destroy partially provisioned system



4. Navigate through the system destroy workflow by following the instructions on the screen. In stage 1 (Delete Storage Volumes), the storage volumes are selected by default for deletion, as shown in Figure 76.

Figure 76. Storage volumes for deletion

5. In stage 2 (Delete Host Names), choose a virtual hostname to delete.

6. In stage 3 (Summary), review the summary of selections and select Start system unprepare and destroy, as shown in Figure 77.

Figure 77. Start system unprepare and destroy

7. Select Monitoring > Activities to track the progress of the System Destroy, as shown in Figure 78.



Figure 78. Monitoring the system destroy activity

The activities were 100% successfully completed. The partially cloned target system was unprepared, the storage clone volumes deleted, the isolation settings removed, and the target system configuration removed.

The partially provisioned system is unprepared and the virtual hostname deactivated. The storage volumes no longer exist and the target system configuration is removed from SAP LaMa.

Note: All Solution verification tests and scenarios were carried out in a rigorously controlled lab environment with ESI configured, as described. Results obtained in other operating environments with different landscape configurations can vary. For additional SAP LaMa operations and processes with ESI integration, refer Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: User Guide > Chapter 5, “SAP LaMa-ESI Integration: Provisioning operations and processes.”



Chapter 7: Reference Documentation


Chapter 7 Reference Documentation


Dell EMC documents .......................................................................................... 97

Dell EMC Links .................................................................................................... 97

VMware documents ............................................................................................ 97

SAP documents .................................................................................................. 98



Dell EMC documents For more information, see the following Dell EMC documents which are available on Dell EMC Community Network (ECN) and on Dell EMC Online Support.

• EMC Solutions Enabler 7.6.2 Release Notes

• EMC Solutions Enabler 8.3 Installation and Configuration Guide

• Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: Administrator Guide

• Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management: User Guide

• VPLEX: Leveraging Array Based and Native Copy Technologies

• Using VMware vSphere with EMC VPLEX Best Practices Planning

Dell EMC Links • System Landscape Management for SAP Resource Page

• Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape Management page

• SMI-S Provider page

• Solutions Enabler page

VMware documents For more information, see the following VMware documents.

• Oracle Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide

• SAP Solutions on VMware Best Practices Guide

• Virtualizing Business-critical Applications with Confidence Technical Papers

• VMware Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 5.5

• VMware Configuration Maximums for VMware vSphere 6.0

• VMware vSphere vMotion - Architecture, Performance and Best Practices in VMware vSphere 5

• VMware vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center

• VMware vSphere 6.0 Documentation Center

https://support.emc.com/docu52739

https://support.emc.com/docu78907_Solutions_Enabler_8.3.0_Installation_and_Configuration_Guide.pdf?language=en_US&language=en_US





https://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h7118-using-vmware-virtualization-platforms-vplex.pdf

https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-20641


https://support.emc.com/products/5587_SMI-S-Provider

https://support.emc.com/products/2071_Solutions-EnablerEMC%20VPLEX%20Metro%20Witness%20Technology%20and%20High%20Availability%20Techbook

http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/partners/oracle/oracle-databases-on-vmware-best-practices-guide.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/sap-solutions-on-vmware-best-practice-guide-2011-white-paper.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/techpapers/2010/virtualizing-business-critical-applications-with-c-10147.html

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r55/vsphere-55-configuration-maximums.pdf

https://www.vmware.com/vsphere-60-configuration-maximums.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/techpapers/2011/vmotion-architecture-performance-and-best-practi-10202.html

http://www.vmware.com/techpapers/2011/vmotion-architecture-performance-and-best-practi-10202.html

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-55/index.jsp

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-60/index.jsp



SAP documents For more information, see the following SAP documents, available at SAP Support Portal:

• SAP Landscape Management product page

• SAP Landscape Management FAQ

• Preparing SAP Application Instances on UNIX

• SAP Landscape Virtualization Management - Information by Topic Areas - SCN

• SAP Host Agent - Frequently Asked Questions – Wiki

• SAP Host Agent - Troubleshooting – Community Wiki

• SAP Support Notes:

SAP Note 1380654 - SAP support in public cloud environments

SAP Note 2350235 - SAP Landscape Management 3.0 - Enterprise edition

SAP Note 1709155 - System Provisioning with SAP Landscape Virtualization Management

SAP Note 1492000 - General Support Statement for Virtual Environments

SAP Note 2363128 - SAP Host Agent operation fail

SAP Note 0611361 - Hostnames of SAP servers

SAP Note 0962955 - Use of virtual TCP/IP host names

SAP Note 0171356 - SAP software on Linux: Essential information

SAP Note 1972803 - SAP on AIX: Recommendations

SAP Note 1680045 - Release Note for Software Provisioning Manager 1.0

SAP Note 1031096 - Installing Package SAPHOSTAGENT

SAP Note 1759181 - Installation of SAPACEXT.SAR

SAP Note 2050537 - Support for SAP HANA in SAP Landscape Management

https://www.sap.com/products/landscape-management.html

https://blogs.sap.com/2016/10/21/sap-landscape-management-faq-lvmlama/

https://uacp2.hana.ondemand.com/viewer/e7dead4286c545808b3bd24feee7448c/2.1.8.0/en-US/dd581a2fe0a84514b3f3ea82a7688a76.html


https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/ATopics/SAP+Host+Agent+-+Frequently+Asked+Questions

https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/ATopics/SAP+Host+Agent+Troubleshooting+Guide#SAPHostAgentTroubleshootingGuide-ChangingthedefaulttracelevelofSAPHostAgent

https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/xxxxxx














Documents

Dell EMC Storage Integration with SAP Landscape … Guide . DELL EMC STORAGE INTEGRATION WITH SAP LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE . Enabled by Enterprise Storage Integrator for SAP Landscape