SAP HANA on KVM: two HA layers, one view
SUSE publishes and maintains a best-practice guide for running SAP HANA on KVM with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 15 SP7 as the host OS, for production use when the configuration follows that guide and applicable SAP Notes. VirtStack gives your operators one view of the whole landscape — and guardrails that keep VMs aligned with those rules.
VirtStack does not confer SAP certification. SAP support depends on your hardware, CPU generation, scenario and configuration following SUSE's guide and SAP's Notes.
Reference architecture: two protection layers side by side
| Layer | Mechanism | What it protects | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure / VM HA | Host Pacemaker + SBD (SUSE HA) | General-purpose VMs | Restarts a VM on a surviving host after the failed node is fenced |
| SAP HANA HA | HANA System Replication (HSR) + SUSE SAPHanaSR agents in guest cluster | The HANA database | Keeps a hot standby and automates takeover |
| Operations | VirtStack | Both, in one console | Visibility, safeguards before touching cluster-managed resources, audit |
Why not just let host Pacemaker restart the HANA VM?
A restart is not replication. A cold restart of a large HANA instance is slow, and it doesn't protect against data-level failure. HSR provides a hot standby. The two HANA VMs must run on different hosts (anti-affinity) so one host failure cannot take down both.
Guardrails: create HANA VMs right, not just fast
SUSE's guide specifies NUMA alignment, huge pages, dedicated CPUs, no memory ballooning, no swap, and specific storage and network settings. VirtStack turns rules like these into checks the platform runs every time.
Support boundaries
Be precise about what each word means:
It runs
Vendor will support it in production
Tested against documented configuration
Listed by SAP Hardware Directory
Shown in lab — not a substitute for above
Key SUSE & SAP Technical References
- SUSE Best Practices: SAP HANA on KVM — SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications 15 SP7 (documentation.suse.com/sbp)
- SAP Note 2284516 — SAP HANA virtualized on SUSE Linux Enterprise hypervisors
- SAP Note 2235581 and the SAP HANA Hardware Directory — supported operating systems and hardware
- SAP Note 1522993 — Linux: SAP on SUSE KVM
- SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability 15 SP7 Administration Guide — Pacemaker, Corosync, SBD, crmsh
- SUSE Best Practices: SAP HANA System Replication scale-up (SAPHanaSR)
Assess your SAP landscape
Speak with an SAP-on-SUSE virtualization specialist.