In today’s SAP world, deployment in cloud is not a distant milestone but a current reality — as many enterprises quickly adapt to new challenges by migrating their SAP workloads to cloud.

Within cloud, most customers do not want to rely on third party backup restore mechanisms, but rather look for native tools and services that can solve their dilemmas of backup restore strategy finalization.

At HBA , our SAP teams work with a wide range of clients, and we asked them to tell us about the challenges and restrictions that they face with cloud-native SAP HANA backup and restore. Here’s what we learned:

“We hear you…”

One of the challenges faced by enterprise SAP users is finalizing a strategy to backup and restore their systems — an important part of the lifecycle management for SAP systems. Efficient management of backup and restore process is a must-have for all the SAP clients — moreso when utilizing the power of cloud.
Within cloud, most enterprises look for cloud-native tools and services that can solve the dilemma of finalizing their backup restore strategy. Some of the most common challenges that enterprise SAP users face when running SAP HANA systems are:

• There are very few options for tools that provide application consistent log and data backup for SAP HANA systems
• The restore mechanisms for HANA databases operate at a very slow speed
• Many enterprises have stringent compliance policies that must be followed
• The system restore process is complex
• High dependency on third-party backup and restore tools for SAP HANA databases

Within cloud, most customers do not want to rely on third party backup restore mechanisms, but rather look for native tools and services that can solve their dilemmas of backup restore strategy finalization.

Four ways service providers can help SAP HANA clients on AWS

Based on the challenges outlined above, it is imperative for service providers that deliver SAP cloud solutions to help enterprise SAP users find a way to overcome the backup and restore limitations of the cloud space.

In our view, there are four important criteria that will differentiate the best cloud-based backup and restore solutions and enable them to meet the needs of enterprise clients.

1. They must provide the technical ability to do HANA backups as well as a cost-effective way to store those backups.
2. They will also provide clients with a quick and easy restore process for their HANA systems.
3. They must be independent of any third-party backup tools, in order to avoid imitating a data center-based approach in the cloud.
4. The backups must be application consistent.

Our recommendation for SAP customers on AWS cloud

Based on these requirements, we recommend that SAP customers already using AWS as their cloud provider take advantage of the AWS backup service for SAP HANA workloads.

This solution provides application consistent log and data backups for HANA systems. It also enforces data security through centralized managing centralized data protection for SAP HANA backups on AWS. In addition, it ensures data compliance by streamlining backup plans to prevent backup conflicts or gaps. Finally, it provides the ability to copy data backups across different regions and accounts.

AWS Backup for SAP HANA – High level architecture graphic

The AWS backup service for SAP HANA provides a centralized data protection solution and a backup and restore mechanism which is fully cloud native and provides a storage solution for easy access to data and faster performance.

More information is available here or you can reach out to one of our SAP experts to learn how HBA can help provide the flexibility, security and agility your enterprise requires.