HoP keeps Hopping Forward – GA Announcement and New IBM Solution Editions for SAP HANA

Almost two years ago, I speculated about the potential value of a HANA on Power solution.  In June, 2014, SAP announced a Test and Evaluation program for Scale-up BW HANA on Power.  That program shifted into high gear in October, 2014 and roughly 10 customers got to start kicking the tires on this solution.  Those customers had the opportunity to push HANA to its very limits.  Remember, where Intel systems have 2 threads per core, POWER8 has up to 8 threads per core.  Where the maximum size of most conventional Intel systems can scale to 240 threads, the IBM POWER E870 can scale to an impressive 640 threads and the E880 system can scale to 1536 threads.  This means that IBM is able to provide an invaluable test bed for system scalability to SAP.  As SAP’s largest customers move toward Suite “4” HANA (S4HANA), they need to have confidence in the scalability of HANA and IBM is leading the way in proving this capability.

A Ramp-up program began in March with approximately 25 customers around the world being given the opportunity to have access to GA level code and start to build out BW POC and production environments.  This brings us forward to the announcement by SAP this week @ SapphireNow in Orlando of the GA of HANA on Power.  SAP announced that customers will have the option of choosing Power for their BW HANA platform, initially to be used in a scale-up mode and plans to support scale-out BW, Suite on HANA and the full complement of side-car applications over the next 12 to 18 months.

Even the most loyal IBM customer knows the comparative value of other BW HANA solutions already available on the market.  To this end, IBM announced new “solution editions”.  A solution edition is simply a packaging of components, often with special pricing, to match expectations of the industry for a specific type of solution.  “Sounds like an appliance to me” says the guy with a Monty Python type of accent and intonation (no, I am not making fun of the English and am, in fact, a huge fan of Cleese and company).  True, if one were to look only at the headline and ignore the details.  In reality, IBM is looking toward these as starting points, not end points and most certainly not as any sort of implied limitation.  Remember, IBM Power Systems are based on the concept of Logical Partitions using Power Virtualization Manager (PVM).  As a result, a Power “box” is simply that, a physical container within which one or multiple logical systems reside and the size of each “system” is completely arbitrary based on customer requirements.

So, a “solution edition” simply defines a base configuration designed to be price competitive with the industry while allowing customers to flexibly define “systems” within it to meet their specific requirements and add incremental capability above that minimum as is appropriate for their business needs.  While a conventional x86 system might have 1TB of memory to support a system that requires 768GB, leaving the rest unutilized, a Power System provides for that 768GB system and allows the rest of the memory to be allocated to other virtual machines.   Likewise, HANA is often characterized by periods of 100% utilization, in support of instantaneous response time demanded of ad-hoc queries, followed by unfathomably long periods (in computer terms) of little to no activity.  Many customers might consider this to be a waste of valuable computing resource and look forward to being able to harness this for the myriad of other business purposes that their businesses actually depend on.  This is the promise of Power.  Put another way, the appliance model results in islands of automation like we saw in the 1990s where Power continues the model of server consolidation and virtualization that has become the modus operandi of the 2000s.

But, says the pitchman for a made for TV product, if you call right now, we will double the offer.  If you believe that, then you are probably not reading my blog.  If a product was that good, they would not have to give you more for the same price.  Power, on the other hand, takes a different approach.  Where conventional BW HANA systems offer a maximum size of 2TB for a single node, Power has no such inherent limitations.  To handle larger sizes, conventional systems must “scale-out” with a variety of techniques, potentially significantly increased costs and complexity.  Power offers the potential to simply “scale-up”.  Future IBM Power solutions may be able to scale-up to 4TB, 8TB or even 16TB.   In a recent post to this blog, I explained that to match the built in redundancy for mission critical reliability of memory in Power, x86 systems would require memory mirroring at twice the amount of memory with an associated increase in CPU and reduction in memory bandwidth for conventional x86 systems.  SAP is pushing the concepts of MCOS, MCOD and multi-tenancy, meaning that customers are likely to have even more of their workloads consolidated on fewer systems in the future.  This will result in demand for very large scaling systems with unprecedented levels of availability.  Only IBM is in position to deliver systems that meet this requirement in the near future.

Details on these solution editions can be found at http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/sod.html
In the last few days, IBM and other organizations have published information about the solution editions and the value of HANA on Power.  Here are some sites worth visiting:

Press Release: IBM Unveils Power Systems Solutions to Support SAP HANA
Video: The Next Chapter in IBM and SAP Innovation: Doug Balog announces SAP HANA on POWER8
Case study: Technische Universität München offers fast, simple and smart hosting services with SAP and IBM 
Video: Technische Universität München meet customer expectations with SAP HANA on IBM POWER8 
Analyst paper: IBM: Empowering SAP HANA Customers and Use Cases 
Article: HANA On Power Marches Toward GA

Selected SAP Press
ComputerWorld: IBM’s new Power Systems servers are just made for SAP Hana
eWEEK, IBM Launches Power Systems for SAP HANA
ExecutiveBiz, IBM Launches Power Systems Servers for SAP Hana Database System; Doug Balog Comments
TechEYE.net, IBM and SAP work together again
ZDNet: IBM challenges Intel for space on SAP HANA
Data Center Knowledge: IBM Stakes POWER8 Claim to SAP Hana Hardware Market
Enterprise Times: IBM gives SAP HANA a POWER8 boost
The Platform: IBM Scales Up Power8 Iron, Targets In-Memory

Also a planning guide for HANA on Power has been published at http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP102502 .

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