The following sections provide an overview of the technologies that are used in an ActiveDR environment for SAP HANA.
Everpure FlashArray
FlashArray is an all-flash storage solution that gives storage and database administrators a fast, scalable, unified block and file storage platform that is ideal for high-performance SAP HANA databases.
By providing a unified interface and simple-to-use tools, FlashArray gives storage administrators the ability to quickly and seamlessly replicate, move, and manage data. FlashArray also deduplicates and compresses all data before it is written, efficiently reducing the size of data without impacting performance. Storage and database administrators can further increase storage capacity by using the FlashArray snapshot capabilities to create snapshots of production databases. They can then use those snapshots in development or testing environments.
The following FlashArray product models are certified for SAP HANA:
-
FlashArray//X™: Provides high-performance, high-capacity storage that is ideal for performance-oriented workloads
-
FlashArray//XL™: Provides high-performance storage at scale that helps reduce the number of arrays needed to run large applications
ActiveDR provides near-synchronous storage replication between two FlashArray systems within or across disparate data centers to protect against threats such as hardware failures, ransomware attacks, and user error. ActiveDR enables a near-zero recovery point objective that improves business resilience for critical application infrastructure compared to traditional asynchronous replication.
ActiveDR simplifies disaster recovery by providing continuous data protection and enabling non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery workflows. Organizations can perform test failovers, live failovers, resynchronization, and failbacks without disrupting production or halting replication, ensuring operational continuity while validating recovery readiness.
ActiveDR uses near-synchronous replication, making it ideal for latency-sensitive workloads and geographically distributed environments. Unlike synchronous replication, it doesn't require remote acknowledgment of writes, allowing efficient use of existing wide area networks without performance trade-offs.
ActiveDR consists of three components:
-
Pods: These are storage-management containers that organize storage objects and configuration settings into groups that are failed over and failed back as a unit. A pod can contain volumes, volume snapshots, and protection groups. Additionally, a pod can contain configuration settings such as protection group snapshot schedules, snapshot retention policies, and quality-of-service volume limits.
-
Replica links: These provide replication between pods and provide directional and auto-reversing capabilities. Once a replica link is created, ActiveDR is automatically enabled.
-
Connected FlashArray systems: ActiveDR requires a minimum of two FlashArray systems connected over a network to replicate data between. With no latency requirements, these systems can be within the same data center or as far apart as on different continents.
Pod-based replication helps simplify storage management across sites by replicating all configuration changes made on a primary site array to the secondary site array, which helps simplify management and disaster recovery storage failovers. ActiveDR also supports multi-directional replication for different pods. For example, a database administrator might have a pod at their primary site that they want to replicate to their secondary site, while the secondary site might contain a pod that they want to replicate back to their primary site. ActiveDR lets them easily configure the pods to replicate in either direction between sites.
Differences Between ActiveCluster, Asynchronous Replication, and ActiveDR
FlashArray has several storage replication functions that can be used to protect an organization's data. These include synchronous replication, which is used by the ActiveCluster solution; asynchronous replication of storage array volume snapshots; and near-synchronous replication with ActiveDR.
ActiveCluster uses synchronous replication to maintain copies of data between two FlashArray systems. When data is written to a primary site FlashArray, it is simultaneously copied to a secondary site FlashArray. Once the data is written to both arrays, the write is acknowledged to the host system. This method of replication is recommended when the latency between arrays is 11ms or less, which means that ActiveCluster should be used between arrays in the same data center, or between data centers that have very-low-latency wide area network capabilities. For more information about ActiveCluster, see ActiveCluster Solution Overview.
Asynchronous replication is a snapshot-based solution that uses space-efficient snapshots to replicate data between FlashArray storage devices. Asynchronous snapshot replication occurs according to a customer specified schedule, while ActiveDR is a streaming-based solution that continuously replicates volume data between FlashArray systems at different sites. When asynchronous replication is enabled on a volume on the primary site FlashArray, a snapshot of the volume is created on the primary site array and then replicated to the secondary site array. The first snapshot transfer is a baseline, which is a complete copy of the entire contents of the volume. All subsequent transfers are incremental transfers that result by comparing existing data on the storage array with the newly created snapshot to determine what data to send to the secondary site array. For more information about asynchronous replication, see FlashArray Asynchronous Replication Configuration and Best Practices Guide.
ActiveDR offers near-synchronous, pod-based replication. ActiveDR is ideal for continuously replicating data between high-distance or high-latency sites and is best suited for disaster recovery scenarios. Unlike ActiveCluster and asynchronous snapshot replication, it works best in any latency scenario and does not require continuous copies of data or host confirmation during replication.
For more information about ActiveDR, visit the Everpure support site.
SAP HANA
SAP HANA is a column-oriented in-memory database platform. This in-memory architecture provides high-speed processing and real-time analytics for users, and it also uses savepoints to periodically flush changed data to persistent storage (disk) to ensure data durability and prevent data loss in case of failure. It combines online transaction processing and online analytical processing for running transactional and analytical workloads simultaneously. SAP HANA is certified with FlashArray, making it capable of processing massive amounts of data with near-zero latency and protecting that data with ActiveDR storage replication.
SAP HANA can function as a database and development platform, enabling businesses to eliminate redundant data and speed up workloads. Combined with ActiveDR, it offers a unique platform for testing applications and disaster recovery workflows in a variety of scaling and non-scaling deployments. Combined with SAP HANA system replication, ActiveDR offers businesses unique options for improving performance, disaster recovery, and high availability.