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Prepare the target host

Contributors

This section describes the preparation steps required at the server that is used for disaster recovery failover testing.

During normal operation, the target host is typically used for other purposes, for example as a HANA QA or test system. Therefore, most of these steps must be run when disaster failover testing is performed. On the other hand, the relevant configuration files, like /etc/fstab and /usr/sap/sapservices, can be prepared and then put into production by simply copying the configuration file. The disaster recovery testing procedure ensures that the relevant prepared configuration files are configured correctly.

The target host preparation also includes shutting down the HANA QA or test system, as well as stopping all services using systemctl stop sapinit.

Target server host name and IP address

The host name of the target server must be identical to the host name of the source system. The IP address can be different.

Note Proper fencing of the target server must be established so that it cannot communicate with other systems. If proper fencing is not in place, then the cloned production system might exchange data with other production systems, resulting in logically corrupted data.

Install required software

The SAP host agent software must be installed at the target server. For more information, see the SAP Host Agent at the SAP help portal.

Note If the host is used as a HANA QA or test system, the SAP host agent software is already installed.

Configure users, ports, and SAP services

The required users and groups for the SAP HANA database must be available at the target server. Typically, central user management is used; therefore, no configuration steps are necessary at the target server. The required ports for the HANA database must be configured at the target hosts. The configuration can be copied from the source system by copying the /etc/services file to the target server.

The required SAP services entries must be available at the target host. The configuration can be copied from the source system by copying the /usr/sap/sapservices file to the target server. The following output shows the required entries for the SAP HANA database used in the lab setup.

vm-pr1:~ # cat /usr/sap/sapservices
#!/bin/sh
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/sap/PR1/HDB01/exe:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH;export LD_LIBRARY_PATH;/usr/sap/PR1/HDB01/exe/sapstartsrv pf=/usr/sap/PR1/SYS/profile/PR1_HDB01_vm-pr1 -D -u pr1adm
limit.descriptors=1048576

Prepare HANA log volume

Because the HANA log volume is not part of the replication, an empty log volume must exist at the target host. The log volume must include the same subdirectories as the source HANA system.

vm-pr1:~ # ls -al /hana/log/PR1/mnt00001/
total 16
drwxrwxrwx 5 root   root   4096 Feb 19 16:20 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root     22 Feb 18 13:38 ..
drwxr-xr-- 2 pr1adm sapsys 4096 Feb 22 10:25 hdb00001
drwxr-xr-- 2 pr1adm sapsys 4096 Feb 22 10:25 hdb00002.00003
drwxr-xr-- 2 pr1adm sapsys 4096 Feb 22 10:25 hdb00003.00003
vm-pr1:~ #

Prepare log backup volume

Because the source system is configured with a separate volume for the HANA log backups, a log backup volume must also be available at the target host. A volume for the log backups must be configured and mounted at the target host.

If log backup volume replication is part of the disaster recovery setup, a new volume based on a snapshot is mounted at the target host, and it is not necessary to prepare an additional log backup volume.

Prepare file system mounts

The following table shows the naming conventions used in the lab setup. The volume names of the new volumes at the disaster recovery site are included in /etc/fstab. These volume names are used in the volume creation step in the next section.

HANA PR1 volumes New volume and subdirectories at disaster recovery site Mount point at target host

Data volume

PR1-data-mnt00001-sm-dest-clone

/hana/data/PR1/mnt00001

Shared volume

PR1-shared-sm-dest-clone/shared
PR1-shared-sm-dest-clone/usr-sap-PR1

/hana/shared
/usr/sap/PR1

Log backup volume

hanabackup-sm-dest-clone

/hanabackup

Note The mount points listed in this table must be created at the target host.

Here are the required /etc/fstab entries.

vm-pr1:~ # cat /etc/fstab
# HANA ANF DB Mounts
10.0.2.4:/PR1-data-mnt00001-sm-dest-clone /hana/data/PR1/mnt00001 nfs   rw,vers=4,minorversion=1,hard,timeo=600,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,intr,noatime,lock,_netdev,sec=sys  0  0
10.0.2.4:/PR1-log-mnt00001-dr /hana/log/PR1/mnt00001 nfs   rw,vers=4,minorversion=1,hard,timeo=600,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,intr,noatime,lock,_netdev,sec=sys  0  0
# HANA ANF Shared Mounts
10.0.2.4:/PR1-shared-sm-dest-clone/hana-shared /hana/shared nfs rw,vers=4,minorversion=1,hard,timeo=600,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,intr,noatime,lock,_netdev,sec=sys  0  0
10.0.2.4:/PR1-shared-sm-dest-clone/usr-sap-PR1 /usr/sap/PR1 nfs rw,vers=4,minorversion=1,hard,timeo=600,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,intr,noatime,lock,_netdev,sec=sys  0  0
# HANA file and log backup destination
10.0.2.4:/hanabackup-sm-dest-clone    /hanabackup nfs   rw,vers=3,hard,timeo=600,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,nconnect=8,bg,noatime,nolock 0 0