Storage infrastructure for SAP workloads on IBM Power Virtual Server

This document provides guidance on planning storage infrastructure requirements for SAP workloads on IBM® Power® Virtual Server.

For SAP workloads hosted on a cloud service provider, the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) layer operates in a similar way to environments used to run SAP workloads in external data centers. SAP systems in a landscape have specific storage requirements to support performance, availability, and data protection.

IBM Cloud® for SAP provides a rich set of capabilities that support these storage requirements and extend the SAP landscape beyond basic system hosting.

The following sections describe IBM Cloud® for SAP portfolio design considerations for storage on IBM® Power® Virtual Server.

Overview

The storage architecture for Power Virtual Server operates independently from IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and IBM Cloud Classic Infrastructure. IBM provisions, maintains, and manages the entire storage infrastructure in IBM‑operated data centers.

IBM Power Virtual Server uses SAN-attached IBM FlashSystem® storage arrays to deliver enterprise-grade, low-latency, and high-performance capabilities. For more information, see IBM FlashSystem®.

Clients use storage in the form of boot volumes and data volumes. IBM manages all underlying physical storage hardware.

The storage volumes provide the following key capabilities:

  • Configurable storage tiers: You can provision volumes across multiple performance tiers.
  • Flexible Sizing: You can increase the capacity of a volume after creation.
  • Replication support: You can configure replication policies for volumes.
  • Placement Rules: You can apply affinity and anti-affinity rules to optimize performance or resilience.
  • Shareability: You can attach volumes to one or more Power Virtual Server instances for different workload designs.

Storage types

Power Virtual Server supports multiple storage types that are designed for different workload requirements, performance characteristics, and use cases.

Block storage

Block storage is used for Power Virtual Server instances and provides predictable performance based on input/output operations per second (IOPS). It is the primary storage type for operating system boot volumes and additional data volumes.

Boot and data volumes

Boot and data volumes have the following properties:

  • When you create a Power Virtual Server instance, you specify the storage tier (Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 3, or Fixed IOPS) for the boot volume.
  • All additional volumes that are provisioned during virtual machine creation are allocated from the same storage pool as the boot volume, regardless of the tier selected for those volumes.
  • You provision each storage volume at IBM Power Virtual Server based on the IOPS that your workload requires.
  • Each volume has a storage tier that defines how many I/O operations per second (IOPS) can be started against that volume.
  • The IOPS for the storage tiers can scale according to the size of the volume (Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 3), or by fixed IOPS allocations.

Create storage volumes for SAP HANA® systems after the deployment of the individual server instance is complete.

The following table shows the supported storage tiers with corresponding IOPS.

Tier and IOPS mapping
Tier level IOPS
Tier 0 25 IOPS/GB
Tier 1 10 IOPS/GB
Tier 3 3 IOPS/GB
Fixed IOPS 5000 IOPS, regardless of size

Fixed IOPS volumes can be used only up to 200 GB, as 200 GB at 25 IOPS per GB (Tier 0) equals 5,000 IOPS.

Volume flexibility

The volume flexibility features include:

  • You can increase the size of an existing volume to manage data growth.
  • You cannot increase the boot volume size during provisioning. However, you can extend the boot volume after the Power Virtual Server instance is deployed.
  • You can change the storage tier of an existing volume to adjust the I/O bandwidth. For more information, see Storage tiers.
  • Choose placement rule affinity to place storage volumes within the same storage pool for snapshots, cloning, and locality.
  • Choose placement rule anti-affinity to place storage volumes in different pools for high availability and mirroring.

IBM Cloud Object Storage

IBM Cloud® Object Storage supports the following use cases:

  • Importing, exporting, storing, transferring, and staging OS images from Power Virtual Server OS image management workflows
  • Backup, restore, and archive or near-line storage purposes from Power Virtual Server instances

IBM Cloud Object Storage buckets are available in different storage classes. For more information, see Cloud Object Storage classes.

A subnet in a Power Virtual Server workspace does not provide direct private network access to IBM Cloud® Object Storage. To enable private access:

  1. Create a Virtual Private Endpoint (VPE) in a VPC.
  2. Configure network connectivity from Power Virtual Server subnet to the VPE in the IBM VPC.

Communicating with the VPE gives secure access from your virtual server instance in Power Virtual Server to IBM Cloud® Object Storage over the private network.

File storage

Power Virtual Server does not provide a native file storage solution. Instead, use File Storage for VPC, and access it by configuring network connectivity from your Power Virtual Server workspace to VPC. See Accessing file storage shares for VPC.

The table provides an overview about file systems on file storage:

File storage
File system Default path Purpose / Scenario Typical size (GB) Description
Software repository /install Staging area for installers, media, kernels Varies (typically 200–1000+) Shared or local; depends on the content to be stored.
Installation path /hana/shared Shared files between hosts in an SAP HANA multi-host system 1000 SAP HANA runtime and client, configuration, and instance files.
SAP core path /usr/sap/<SID> Per‑SID instance directories (profiles, kernels, work, logs) 10–20 per AS instance Size scales with the number of application server instances.
SAP Mount /sapmnt/<SID> Files shared between application servers 20–50 contains shared data, profiles, and executable replication directory.
SAP Transport /usr/sap/trans Central SAP transport directory (cofiles, data, EPS inbox) 50–200+ Shared for all systems; grows with project activity/transport volume.

SAP HANA storage guidelines

When you provision storage for an SAP HANA system, you must adhere to SAP's mandatory storage requirements.

Refer to the following resources:

For file system sizes, see SAP HANA Storage Requirements

Volume layout

To plan storage volumes for SAP HANA, refer to the tables provided in SAP HANA certified instances on IBM Power Virtual Server. Locate the compute profile applicable to your deployment, and review the tabs in the table for the log file system, data file system, and shared file system configuration. These tabs specify the required quantity of storage volumes, the storage tier, and the corresponding volume sizes for the file systems /hana/log, /hana/data, and /hana/shared.

  • Configure four Power Virtual Server storage volumes that provide a combined throughput of more than 12,000 IOPS for the SAP HANA log file system. The typical total capacity that is required for the SAP HANA log file system is up to 512 GB. Stripe the logical volume for the /hana/log file system across all four storage volumes to achieve the required performance.
  • Configure four Power Virtual Server storage volumes that provide a combined throughput of more than 8,000 IOPS for the SAP HANA data file system. The typical total capacity depends on the memory size. Stripe the logical volume for the /hana/data file system across all four storage volumes to achieve the required performance.
  • Configure one Power Virtual Server storage volume, or file storage for VPC for the SAP HANA shared file system /hana/shared. Provide a minimum of 3,000 IOPS.
  • Configure one Power Virtual Server storage volume for the /usr/sap file system on Tier 0 or Fixed IOPs storage tier.
  • Add more volumes for a backup or export file system.

SAP application server storage guidelines

To plan storage volumes for the SAP application server, refer to the table in SAP application server certified instances on IBM Power Virtual Server. Then, review the Storage tab to identify the storage tier, and the size of the storage volume for the /usr/sap file system.

Volume layout

Configure an own Power Virtual Server storage volume for the /usr/sap file system on Tier 0 or Fixed IOPs storage tier, or create a directory in the root file system '/' of the boot volume.

References