Support Policies for RHEL High Availability Clusters - Management of SAP NetWeaver in a Cluster

Updated -

Contents

Overview

Applicable Environments

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the High Availability Add-On

Useful References and Guides

Introduction

This guide offers Red Hat's policies and requirements around managing an SAP NetWeaver deployment with a RHEL High Availability cluster. Users of RHEL High Availability clusters should adhere to these policies to be eligible for support from Red Hat with the appropriate product support subscriptions.

Policies

Scope of Red Hat support with SAP software resources managed by a cluster: Refer to Red Hat's policy on Management of applications that Red Hat does not ship for further details on Red Hat's scope of support applicable to SAP software deployments in a RHEL High Availability cluster.

The focus of Red Hat's assistance may be limited to functionality of the High Availability software and the SAP resource-agent(s). In some cases, SAP's input may be necessary to diagnose the nature of a problem, even if the problem originates in the resource-agent Red Hat ships. Solutions to problems with RHEL High Availability + SAP NetWeaver deployments may depend on some input or deliverable from SAP in cases where the issue cannot be solved adequately through RHEL High Availability without SAP's assistance.

Red Hat subscriptions for SAP NetWeaver support: Red Hat provides support for RHEL High Availability's resource-agents managing SAP NetWeaver deployments through the following subscriptions:

  • RHEL for SAP Solutions
  • RHEL for SAP Applications
  • RHEL for SAP Business Applications

One of these subscriptions is required for Red Hat to assist with RHEL High Availability management of SAP NetWeaver.

Supported platforms for SAP NetWeaver on RHEL High Availability: Red Hat support for its software supporting the SAP NetWeaver solution stack, including RHEL High Availability and its resource-agents for SAP software, largely follows the policies laid out for RHEL High Availability and RHEL:

However, in public cloud deployments, Red Hat's support for this SAP NetWeaver solution stack is limited to only the following cloud platforms:

  • Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud (AWS EC2)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Other cloud provider platforms are not supported by Red Hat for this solution at this time. Contact Red Hat Support if you are interested in running SAP NetWeaver on another cloud platform.

Supported releases of SAP NetWeaver: Red Hat provides support for RHEL High Availability management of the following NetWeaver products:

  • SAP NetWeaver Application Server for ABAP 7.X
  • SAP NetWeaver Application Server JAVA 7.X
  • SAP NetWeaver Application Server with ABAP and Java 7.X

ABAP/JAVA Dual-Stack Support:

  • ABAP/JAVA Dual-Stack is supported using the Master/Slave methodology, that is supported in all RHEL 7.x minor releases.
  • Because SAP no longer recommends dual-stack setups where ABAP and JAVA instances share the same SID, it would be better to consider doing a Dual-Stack Split so that the ABAP and JAVA stack use separate SIDs. With such a setup, you then could use the Standalone approach for managing the ASCS/ERS instances for the ABAP stack and the SCS/ERS instances for the JAVA stack. You need to configure separate resource groups for each instance and set up appropriate constraints based on the separate SIDs for each part of the environment. Follow configuration guide: Configure SAP NetWeaver ASCS/ERS ENSA1 with Standalone Resources in RHEL 7.5 and newer.

Supported Databases for SAP NetWeaver managed by RHEL High Availability: Red Hat supports RHEL High Availability management of SAP NetWeaver with any of the following database types for NetWeaver using the SAPDatabase resource agent:

pacemaker clusters (RHEL9):

  • SAP ASE 16 (16.0.04.06 and later)
  • IBM DB2 LUW 11.5.9 (and later)
  • SAP MaxDB 7.9.10.04 (and later)
  • SAP HANA Database 2.00 (2.00.059.04 and later)

pacemaker clusters (RHEL8):

  • Oracle 19c (19.3.0.0 and later)
  • IBM DB2 LUW 11.5 (and later)
  • SAP Sybase ASE 16 (16.0.03.10 and later)
  • SAP MaxDB 7 (7.9.09.005 and later)
  • SAP HANA Database 2.00 (2.00.052 and later)

pacemaker clusters (RHEL6, RHEL7):

  • Oracle 11gR2 (11.2.0.x), 12c
  • IBM Db2 LUW 9.7 and 10
  • SAP (Sybase) ASE 15.7 and 16
  • SAPDB/MaxDB 7.x
  • SAP HANA Database 1.00 and later (see section below)

rgmanager clusters (RHEL6):

  • Oracle 11gR2 (11.2.0.x)
  • IBM Db2 LUW 9.7 and 10
  • SAPDB/MaxDB 7.x

Use of SAP HANA Database for SAP NetWeaver: When using an SAP HANA Database for SAP NetWeaver managed by RHEL High Availability, the following conditions apply for Red Hat to provide support:

  • Each cluster node must have a local installation of SAPHostAgent and the version of SAPHostAgent across the cluster must be the same.
  • Each SAP HANA instance in same cluster must have unique instance number.
  • SAP Note 1625203 - saphostagent / sapdbctrl for NewDB for SAPHostAgent prerequisites

Red Hat support for Standalone vs Master/Slave ASCS and ERS resources: There are two approaches to configure (A)SCS and ERS resources in Pacemaker: Master/Slave and Standalone.

  • Master/Slave approach is supported by Red Hat with deployments running any release of RHEL 7
  • Standalone approach is supported by Red Hat with deployments running RHEL 7.5 or later, or any release of RHEL 8

In any new deployment, Standalone is recommended for the following reasons:

  • it meets the requirements of the current SAP HA Interface Certification
  • it is compatible with the new Standalone Enqueue Server 2 (ENSA2) configuration
  • (A)SCS/ERS instances can be started and stopped independently
  • (A)SCS/ERS instance directories can be managed as part of the cluster

Additional technical requirements for SAP NetWeaver deployments in pacemaker cluster:

  • When running SAPInstance in Master/Slave mode, instance numbers of (A)SCS and ERS must be different.

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