SAP HANA Server Installation

Once you have prepared the environment and transferred the download to the
server, installing the SAP HANA server is very easy.

The tool to use is the SAP HANA Database Lifecycle Manager, ‘hdblcm’ on the
command-line. A windows version is also available, ‘hdblcmgui’. However, as most
HANA systems will not have a graphical environment, you will not be using the
version very often. The web version,’hdblcmweb’, can be used for updates, not for
an initial installation.

You might also have noticed ‘hdbinst’, ‘hdbuninst’, ‘hdbupd’ and ‘hdbsetup’. These
are the tools that the lifecycle manager calls to perform the particular platform LCM
action. When performing an SAP HANA server installation, you should use hdblcm
and not any of the stand-alone tools. When installing the SAP HANA client, for
example, on another system, using hdbinst or hdbsetup is perfectly fine. HDBLCM is
only available for server installations.

For more information, see

 General Troubleshooting for the SAP HANA Platform LCM Tools

Here we are running ‘hdblcm’ from the HDB_SERVER_LINUC_X86-64 directory

directly, Alternatively, we could have used the included Lifecycle Manager from
HDB_LCM_LINUX_X86_64.

hdblcm

On the first screen, the Lifecycle Management tool will display detected components.
These are all the components which you can install together with the (database)
server. Should the list be empty, you can use the call option –
component_root=<path> or –component_medium=<path> to specify to the
installer the location of the installation media (download).
hdblcm: Choose an action

The next screen, you are prompted to provide a comma-separated list of the
components you want to install. The full SPS 02 release includes the SAP HANA
client, SAP HANA studio, Smart Data Access (SDA) for data virtualization, SAP HANA
XS Advanced (XS Classic is included by default), SAP HANA AFL (Application Function
Library) and EML (External Machine Language Libary) and, to enable access for SAP
Analytics Cloud, Lumira and other EPM tools, the EPM-MDS plugin.

hdblcm: Select component

Next, you will be prompted to provide the installation path with the default mount
point ‘/hana/shared‘ provided. For this, see the topic

 Recommended File System Layout – SAP HANA Server Installation and Update
Guide
SAP HANA is designed to scale and it is incredibly easy to create a distributed system
(what other vendors might call a cluster) because the file layout is exactly the same.
The program files (binaries), data files and (redo) log files are all stored in a location,
a mount point, that is intended to be shared across multiple instances. Only files that
are relevant to the local installation like server trace and log files, server-specific
configuration files, etc. are stored on the local file system which defaults
to ‘/usr/sap‘.

After entering the installation path and, typically, accepting the value for the local
hostname, you will also be prompted if you want to add more hosts. This is where
you add the hana2 and hana3 below and this is the only difference between
installing SAP HANA on a single server or installing on 3, 5 or 20 servers. Amazing!
Next, you are prompted to enter the SAP System ID (SID) and instance number. The
SID must be three alphanumeric characters with uppercase letters and start with a
letter with some restrictions: SAP or SID are off-limits. The SID must be unique
throughout your organization. Choose with care, as the SID will be included in
several configuration items and changing the SID will require downtime.

The instance number must be a two-digit number between 00 and 97. In a

distributed system, both SID and instance number will be the same.

 sid – SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide

Next, you are prompted to provide the worker group of the server (localhost). The
default value is ‘default’ which will also be the most common value used here for this
parameter. Alternative values are, for example, ‘standby’,
‘extended_storage_worker’ (for Dynamic Tiering), ‘xs_worker’ (for XS Advanced), etc.

Next, you are prompted to select the ‘system usage’ with ‘custom’ default value.
Only when selecting ‘Production’, this parameter has an effect on the behavior of
certain client tools. For example, the system will automatically be added to the
Production group of SAP HANA cockpit, and, when executing SQL, a warning will be
triggered. The value will be stored in a system parameter and can easily be modified
after the installation: global.ini > [system_information] > usage
ㅍ

hdblcm: continued

Data and log volumes default to the same shared mount point location with the SID
appended.

For non-productive usage, you can install multiple HANA systems on a single host
(assuming enough memory is available to support such a configuration). In this case,
you might want to restrict the maximum memory allocation. Another reason might
be that you have licensed SAP HANA for x GB whereas the server has y GB of RAM.
Again, this is governed by a system parameter: global.ini > [memorymanager] >
global_allocation_limit

 Change the Global Memory Allocation Limit – SAP HANA Administration Guide

Next, you will be prompted for the certificate hostname for the server. This is where
you specify how the HANA server will be known on the internet (or intranet), the
public name. This way, when you connect with SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA to
http://mydevelopdb.myorgname.com you will not get any invalid hostname
certificate warning when the actual hostname is AXY5676.dummydomain.
Certificates: There is a problem

Next, you will be prompted to enter the password for the operating system
administration account, <sid>adm. This is a local Linux account. You can change the
password at any time using the Linux ‘passwd’ command. The Linux password policy
defines what are valid entries and what not.

 Suse Doc: Security and Hardening Guide – Leveraging an Effective PAM stack
 Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Security Guide – Passwords

The system administrator home directory, login shell, and user ID default values are
perfectly fine for 99% of the installation scenarios. The Linux user ID needs to be the
same on all hosts of a distributed system and starts at 1000 for the next available ID.
Assuming all hosts of a distributed system are the same, this will not be an issue but
should, on one of the systems, additional users have been created, you might want
to start at a higher number, e.g. 7000.

You will also be prompted to enter the password for the database superuser SYSTEM.
This will be the password for both the system database and the default <SID>
tenant database. Here the SAP HANA password policy applies, default: [Aa1], 1
uppercase and 1 lowercase letter and one digit.

For productive environments, SAP recommends to deactivate the SYSTEM user and
to create lesser privileged users for particular purposes:

 Deactivate the SYSTEM User

hdblcm: continued

Finally, you will be prompted if you want the SAP HANA database to start when the
operating system starts (the actual question is ‘Restart system after machine reboot’
but also covers system startup). This defaults to no, which means that you will have
to start the SAP HANA database yourself after Linux has started.

Configuring this behavior afterward is not as straightforward as you might expect.

You will need to edit the autostart parameter in the profile. There is no graphical
user interface for this.
<sapmnt>/<SID>/profile/<SID>_HDB<instance_number>_<hostname>
When all parameters have been provided, the ominous sounding “Summary before
execution” is displayed asking you if you want to proceed or not.

hdblcm: Do you want to continue (y/n)

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

The actual installation of SAP HANA server is a quick process. The files are extracted
(preparing package …), copied to the installation directory (installing package …),
after which the system is created and the processes started.
hdblcm: Starting processes

For a list of the different SAP HANA services and the role they perform, see

 SAP HANA Services – SAP HANA Administration Guide

When all processes have started, default content is imported. This concerns web
applications for SAP HANA XS, classic method. Some delivery units are only available
for downward compatibility reasons and do not contain any content (HANA_ADMIN
for SAP HANA cockpit 1.0, for example).

For a complete list of the delivery units, see

 Components Delivered as SAP HANA Content – SAP HANA Security Guide

Also, note that XS classic (and the hdbxsengine) have been deprecated with the SPS
02 release:
  2465027 – Deprecation of SAP HANA extended application services, classic
model and SAP HANA Repository

hdblcm: Importing Delivery Unit

Finally, a resident version of the SAP HANA Database Lifecycle Manager tool is
installed. This tool can be used for any subsequent platform lifecycle management
tasks like adding hosts or renaming the SID.

We can also see that SAP HANA host agent configurations are deployed. Each SAP
HANA server installation includes the SAP HANA host agent.

There is a feedback form to share your experiences and a log file, should any issue
have occurred.

 Troubleshooting – SAP HANA Server Installation and Update Guide

hdblcm: Log file written to …

What’s Up?
With the ‘HDB info’ command you can check the status of the different SAP HANA
server processes. The ‘sapstartsrv’ process will have started the hdbdaemon process
which, in turn, will have started the system database (hdbnameserver), the tenant
database (hdbindexserver) and different supporting processes.

If you want to know how this works exactly, see

 SAP HANA Under The Hood: SAPInit and SAPStartSrv

HDB info

References
For more information see: