SAP HANA is a multi-model database that stores data in memory instead of on disk to handle high-speed transactions and real-time analytics simultaneously. Unlike traditional databases that rely heavily on disk I/O, SAP HANA's in-memory storage allows for significantly faster query execution and data processing, making it ideal for modern enterprise workloads.
SAP HANA supports both OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) workloads within a single system. This integration simplifies data architecture and reduces latency. Its ability to process large datasets in real-time makes it essential for applications such as SAP S/4HANA, real-time business intelligence, and big data analytics.
Backint is an SAP-certified API interface for backing up and restoring data in SAP HANA databases. It provides a standardized interface that seamlessly integrates third-party backup tools with SAP HANA. By leveraging the Backint interface, organizations can ensure reliable and efficient backup and recovery processes to protect their valuable data stored in SAP HANA databases.
Rubrik Security Cloud (RSC) is certified for use with Backint to give backup admins the visibility and control they need to protect mission-critical SAP HANA data at scale. This single platform provides air-gapped protection across on-premises and cloud deployments—backups are stored in a secure location off-site from the business. This allows for safe application-consistent backups and point-in-time recoveries that can streamline the increasingly complex demands of SAP HANA backup
The Challenges of SAP HANA Backup and Recovery
Organizations use HANA to store business-critical data and power multi-tier applications, so it is paramount to protect this data from cyber attacks, hardware failures, software bugs, and human error.
But traditional backup and recovery solutions bring in a new set of challenges that organizations must navigate to ensure data integrity and system resilience:
Data Volumes: HANA databases often handle terabytes or petabytes of data. Creating and managing backups for such massive datasets using traditional backup solutions can strain storage systems, usually resulting in extended backup windows.
Recovery Time Objection (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The HANA database is designed to support real-time analytics and decision-making, often requiring near-instantaneous data recovery in case of disruptions or failures. Traditional backup methods—which rely on periodic full or incremental backups—could fall short of meeting the stringent RTO and RPO requirements.
Complexity of backup process: HANA introduces log-based backups across multiple nodes in distributed environments for consistent backups. Traditional backup solutions may not accommodate this and can lead to inconsistent backups.
Compatibility and Integration: Traditional backup solutions don’t support HANA backups in high-availability or multi-tier environments
Air-gapped data protection solution for SAP HANA
RSC is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed from the ground up to secure, monitor, and recover data across various environments, including enterprise systems, cloud platforms, and SaaS applications. Rubrik provides multiple data protection and security solutions, offering enterprise-level protection for databases, virtual machines (VMs), physical machines, and more. Its features include air-gapped, immutable, and access-controlled backups to enhance data security.
Rubrik’s native HANA database protection is similar to the backup and recovery protection offered for VMware, Oracle, MS SQL, PostgreSQL, IBM Db2, and other workloads, consisting of the following five key components:
RSC
Rubrik Secure Vault (RSV) cluster connected to RSC
SAP HANA host in the Public Cloud or On-Premises
Rubrik Backup Service (RBS): RBS helps ensure secure communication between Rubrik and SAP HANA. The RBS software is deployed on the host or cloud virtual machine, running the SAP HANA database without impacting the host's performance.
Native Backint API: Rubrik has developed a Backint client, which gets deployed once the RBS software is deployed and configured on the host. This client leverages the native Backint API to backup and restore operations to enhance the backup process and ensure data durability and system resilience. It also allows for parallelization, where backups are executed across multiple threads, significantly speeding up the backup process and large data volumes.
Together, these elements make the architectural key components for protecting the HANA database across on-premises and cloud to simplify your data protection strategy.
Rubrik use the control path to retrieve metadata. It then uses the metadata to add the SAP HANA host and system and discover the databases. Once the system and databases (on-prem or cloud) are discovered, customers can utilize Rubrik Global SLA policies to set the backup and retention period. Rubrik then uses the data path to ingest data directly into RSV. The same data oath is used to restore the database.
Understanding Supported Backup Types for SAP HANA Databases
Backing up all data required to restore the HANA database to a consistent state is critical in database management. Backup involves creating copies of the data, configuration files, and any necessary transaction logs to ensure that in the event of a failure, the database can be restored to a specific point in time or a consistent state without data loss. Rubrik employs a comprehensive backup strategy that typically includes several types of backups:
Full: This involves taking a complete snapshot of the entire database. It serves as the foundation for other backup types and ensures a complete data set is available for recovery. For more information, read SAP HANA Data Backups.
Differential: This type of backup backs involves backing up data that has changed since the last complete backup, with the amount of data increasing with each backup. For more information, read Delta Backup Types | SAP Help Portal.
Incremental: This backup type backs up data that has changed since the last complete or delta (incremental or differential) backup. It is the smallest backup type because it does not back up unchanged data, which saves storage space and reduces the time it takes to perform backups. For more information, read Delta Backup Types | SAP Help Portal.
Log: The Redo Log captures all the changes essential for recovering the most recent committed transaction. For more information, read Log Backups | SAP Help Portal.
Storage Snapshots: RSC also supports taking storage snapshots of SAP HANA systems running on an Azure virtual machine and using those snapshots to recover your SAP HANA databases. Storage snapshots are fast, encrypted, have negligible network load, and capture the entire data area at a particular point in time at the system level with minimal impact on the HANA system. Snapshots do not consume database resources.
Administrators can set the full, differential, and incremental backup frequency to meet the RTO and RPO requirements while creating the Rubrik Global SLA policy from RSC.
A robust backup plan guarantees data integrity, minimizes downtime, and maintains business continuity in the face of unforeseen events.
Recovering HANA
The recovery of HANA databases is initiated using the customer's existing HANA tools like HANA Studio. This way, the administrators have complete control of the recovery process and can keep using their existing process. To get the details about recovery using HANA Studio, please refer to the user guide Restoring SAP HANA database using SAP HANA Studio.
Rubrik also supports cross-system restores. This is typically done when you want to use backups of one database to overwrite another database, which could be on the same or a different HANA system. For details on how to do a cross-system restore, please refer to the user guide Restoring SAP HANA database system copy using SAP HANA Studio.
Airgapped Protection: Benefits of Rubrik’s Data Protection for SAP HANA
Rubrik simplifies database management, backup, and recovery workflows from day zero and beyond by offering a comprehensive solution that provides numerous benefits:
Hassle-Free Connector: The Rubrik platform integrates SAP HANA with Rubrik Backup Service (RBS), a self-managing connector.
Certified Protection: SAP has certified Rubrik as a 3rd party backup tool for integration with SAP HANA Backint for Intel x86 (SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 07 via HANA-BRINT 1.5) and SAP HANA Backint for IBM Power Systems (SAP HANA 2.0 via HANA-BRINT PW 1.5). RBS software, once deployed on the SAP HANA host, manages the Backint configuration.
Declarative SLA Policy Engine: Streamline the protection of SAP HANA databases by assigning SLA policies that configure backup frequency, retention, archival, and replication using the same engine. Rubrik supports full, incremental, and differential backups.
Zero Trust Security: Keep your data protected with logical air-gapped backups to prevent attackers from discovering your backups from an append-only file system, ensuring backup data can't be encrypted. Globally enforced multi-factor authentication keeps unauthorized users out and prevents users from performing key operations without the approval of a secondary user (“the two-person rule”). Retention Lock can prevent snapshot deletion within the mandatory retention period and Legal Hold to preserve snapshots indefinitely.
Enterprise Scale: Protect SAP HANA Tenant Databases on a single node or SAP HANA Databases across multiple nodes for scale-up and scale-out use cases.
Point-in-Time Granularity: Leverage data and log backups to enable point-in-time recovery. Roll forward log backups on top of data backups for granular control over recovery points with the default log backup frequency of 15 minutes or lower.
- Unified Management and Reporting Platform: Enable DBAs to use existing SAP HANA tools like SAP HANA Studio while empowering traditional backup teams. Keep your SAP HANA databases protected across on-premises and cloud with centralized visibility and control. Active Monitoring allows you to view the data status and log backups from a centralized activities pane. With Comprehensive Compliance Reporting, you can view backup summary information and the latest recovery points and identify which backups have failed across your environment.
Getting started is easy if you are ready to protect your HANA data! Check out our hands-on lab for the SAP HANA Database and learn how to take the first step.