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IBM Power Virtual Server certified profiles for SAP HANA

IBM Power Virtual Server certified profiles for SAP HANA

When you provision IBM Power Virtual Servers, you can select from the following families of profiles: Small, Balanced, Compute Intensive, Ultra Memory, and High Memory.

Certified profiles for SAP HANA are a complementary offering from IBM Power Systems, with low latency access to IBM Cloud services

A profile is a combination of instance attributes, such as the number of vCPUs, amount of RAM, and network bandwidth. The attributes define the size and capabilities of the virtual server instance that is provisioned. You can select the most recently used profile or click View All Profiles to choose the profile that best fits your needs.

Profile families

The published names are subject to change.

The following section provides an overview of the SAP-certified profiles with IBM Power Virtual Servers and available profile families.

Families Description
Custom Custom profiles are for nonproduct development for testing or development use only. These profiles are not intended for production deployments and are not supported or certified for SAP production.
Small Small profiles are best for balanced workloads that require less CPU and storage consumption.
Balanced Balanced profiles are best for midsize databases and common cloud applications with moderate traffic.
Compute Intensive Compute Intensive profiles are best for moderate to high web traffic workloads. Compute profiles are best for workloads with intensive CPU demands, such as high web traffic workloads, production batch processing, and front-end web servers.
Ultra Memory Ultra High Memory profiles offer the highest vCPU to memory ratios to serve in-memory OLTP databases, such as SAP.
High Memory Very High Memory profiles are best for server OLAP databases, such as SAP NetWeaver.

Custom

IBM Power Virtual Servers are available with fully adjustable CPU Cores and Memory (RAM GiB). When you create a virtual server instance, you can define a custom size of the IBM Power Virtual Server profile to use for nonproduction SAP HANA instances, in accordance with existing SAP HANA for IBM Power Systems best practices and guidance from SAP.

Custom profiles are for nonproduct development for testing or development use only. These profiles aren't intended for production deployments and aren't supported or certified for SAP production. You cannot use this profile to go from a nonproduction environment to a production environment.

Each profile must have at least two dedicated cores. For required storage performance you should follow Storage Guidelines for SAP HANA. For more information about storage, see the What is a Power Systems Virtual Server? storage tiers section.

Small

SAP HANA servers Small profile family
Profile CPU Cores CPU Threads (also known as vCPU that uses SMT-8) GiB RAM Minimum Storage (GiB) SAPS SAP HANA Processing Type
ush1-4x128 4 32 128 500 24,000 OLAP/OLTP
ush1-4x256 4 32 256 910 24,000 OLAP/OLTP
ush1-4x384 4 32 384 1,240 24,000 OLAP/OLTP
ush1-4x512 4 32 512 1,650 24,000 OLAP/OLTP
ush1-4x768 4 32 768 2,140 24,000 OLAP/OLTP

Balanced

SAP HANA servers Balanced profile family
Profile CPU Cores CPU Threads (also known as vCPU that uses SMT-8) GiB RAM Minimum Storage (GiB) SAPS SAP HANA Processing Type
bh1-16x1600 16 128 1,600 3,170 96,000 OLAP/OLTP
bh1-20x2000 20 160 2,000 3,570 120,000 OLAP *
bh1-22x2200 22 178 2,200 3,810 132,000 OLAP *
bh1-25x2500 25 200 2,500 4,130 150,000 OLAP *
bh1-30x3000 30 240 3,000 4,610 180,000 OLAP *
bh1-35x3500 35 280 3,500 5,090 210,000 OLAP *
bh1-40x4000 40 320 4,000 5,570 240,000 OLAP *
bh1-50x5000 50 400 5,000 6,610 300,000 OLAP *
bh1-60x6000 60 480 6,000 7,570 360,000 OLAP/OLTP
bh1-70x7000 70 560 7,000 8,610 420,000 OLAP *
bh1-80x8000 80 640 8,000 9,570 480,000 OLAP *
bh1-100x10000 100 800 10,000 11,970 600,000 OLAP *
bh1-120x12000 120 900 12,000 13,570 720,000 OLAP *
bh1-140x14000 140 1,120 14,000 15,970 840,000 OLAP

Compute Intensive

SAP HANA servers Compute Intensive profile family
Profile CPU Cores CPU Threads (also known as vCPU that uses SMT-8) GiB RAM Minimum Storage (GiB) SAPS SAP HANA Processing Type
ch1-60x3000 60 480 3,000 4,610 360,000 OLAP
ch1-70x3500 70 560 3,500 5,090 420,000 OLAP *
ch1-80x4000 80 640 4,000 5,570 480,000 OLAP *
ch1-100x5000 100 800 5,000 6,610 600,000 OLAP *
ch1-120x6000 120 900 6,000 7,570 720,000 OLAP *
ch1-140x7000 140 1,120 7,000 8,610 840,000 OLAP

High Memory

SAP HANA servers High Memory profile family
Profile CPU Cores CPU Threads (also known as vCPU that uses SMT-8) GiB RAM Minimum Storage (GiB) SAPS SAP HANA Processing Type
mh1-8x1440 8 64 1,440 3,010 48,000 OLAP
mh1-10x1800 10 80 1,800 3,410 60,000 OLAP
mh1-12x2160 12 96 2,160 3,730 72,000 OLAP *
mh1-16x2880 16 128 2,880 4,450 96,000 OLAP *
mh1-20x3600 20 160 3,600 5,170 120,000 OLAP *
mh1-22x3960 22 176 3,960 5,570 132,000 OLAP *
mh1-25x4500 25 200 4,500 6,130 150,000 OLAP *
mh1-30x5400 30 240 5,400 7,010 180,000 OLAP *
mh1-35x6300 35 280 6,300 7,890 210,000 OLAP *
mh1-40x7200 40 320 7,200 8,770 240,000 OLAP *
mh1-50x9000 50 400 9,000 11,170 300,000 OLAP *
mh1-60x10800 60 460 10,800 12,770 360,000 OLAP *
mh1-70x12600 70 560 12,600 14,370 420,000 OLAP *
mh1-80x14400 80 640 14,400 15,970 480,000 OLAP

Ultra Memory

SAP HANA servers Ultra Memory profile family
Profile CPU Cores CPU Threads (also known as vCPU that uses SMT-8) GiB RAM Minimum Storage (GiB) SAPS SAP HANA Processing Type
umh-4x960 4 32 960 2,490 24,000 OLTP
umh-6x1440 6 48 1,440 3,010 36,000 OLTP *
umh-8x1920 8 64 1,920 3,490 48,000 OLTP *
umh-10x2400 10 80 2,400 3,970 60,000 OLTP *
umh-12x2880 12 96 2,880 4,450 72,000 OLTP *
umh-16x3840 16 128 3,840 5,410 96,000 OLTP
umh-20x4800 20 160 4,800 6,370 120,000 OLTP *
umh-22x5280 22 176 5,280 6,850 132,000 OLTP *
umh-25x6000 25 200 6,000 7,570 150,000 OLTP *
umh-30x7200 30 240 7,200 8,770 180,000 OLTP *
umh-35x8400 35 280 8,400 10,370 210,000 OLTP *
umh-40x9600 40 320 9,600 11,170 240,000 OLTP *
umh-50x12000 50 400 12,000 13,570 300,000 OLTP *
umh-60x14400 60 480 14,400 15,970 360,000 OLTP

Profile types that are marked with an * asterisk, are not listed on the SAP HANA Hardware Directory by SAP but are certified for running SAP HANA production systems. The directory lists the smallest, median, and largest within each profile family. This action was taken by SAP to avoid too many records, as the scalability of IBM POWER hardware enables significantly more granular sizing. For more information, see SAP Note 2947579 - SAP HANA on IBM Power Virtual Servers.

Understanding IBM Power Virtual Server profile names

The IBM Power Virtual Server for SAP HANA have profile names that are contextual and sequential. SAP HANA has multiple families of profiles, each associated with the required Service Level Agreements (SLAs):

  • cnp1 = Nonproduct development for testing or development use only. Not intended for production deployments; not supported or certified for SAP production.
  • ush1 = Small for OLAP/OLTP workloads that don't require as much CPU and storage consumption
  • umh = Ultra Memory HANA for OLTP that use 1:240 as the cpu:memory ratio
  • mh1 = High Memory for OLAP that use 1:180 as the cpu:memory ratio
  • bh1 = Balanced for OLAP that use 1:100 as the cpu:memory ratio
  • ch1 = Compute Intensive for OLAP that use 1:50 as the cpu:memory ratio

The Virtual Server profile names are contextual and sequential. The following table uses an SAP HANA certified server as an example:

Profile naming scheme for SAP HANA
Profile name Naming convention component What it means
umh-16x3840 umh Ultra Memory SAP HANA for OLTP (higher on the CPU to Memory ratio), 1:240 ratio
spacer
16 16 CPU Cores
x spacer
3840 3840 GiB RAM
Directory information for profiles
Directory Purpose
root volume 100 GiB fixed
/usr/sap 52 GiB required in the test system
/hana/data Matches the GiB RAM value
/hana/log Matches the GiB RAM value up to a maximum of 512 GiB
/hana/shared Matches the GiB RAM value up to a maximum of 1 TB
/export Local storage for exported images
/backup A preliminary backup on disk

Profiles available on Hourly Consumption Billing

All IBM Power Virtual Server are available with Hourly pro-rata on Monthly Billing.