Red Hat Announces Enterprise Linux 8 for SAP Solutions

Dubai, UAE 15 September 2019:  Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 for SAP Solutions to empower SAP HANA workloads for enterprises in the region. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 for SAP Solutions is an intelligent OS designed to provide a solid foundation that spans the hybrid cloud and one that fuels mission-critical workloads. Building on the successful launch of RHEL 8, SAP production will support RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions for running SAP HANA 2.0 (SPS 04 or later) on the Intel x86 (64-bit) platform. In addition, validation on the IBM Power9 platform is underway.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 for SAP Solutions is an intelligent OS designed to provide a solid foundation that spans the hybrid cloud and one that fuels mission-critical workloads. Building on the successful launch of RHEL 8, we are pleased to announce SAP production support of RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions for running SAP HANA 2.0 (SPS 04 or later) on the Intel x86 (64-bit) platform. In addition, validation on the IBM Power9 platform is underway. For more information, please consult the SAP Note 2235581.

Streamlined operations with faster warmup and restarts 

RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions provides several new capabilities to improve performance of modern workloads including SAP HANA. One such improvement in RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions is full support for Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory (pMEM) File System DAX (FS-DAX), which offers high memory density, lower latency, and persistence. Persistent memory can be hugely beneficial for in-memory databases that require data to be pre-loaded into memory prior to serving application traffic. Combining persistent memory with DRAM increases the overall system memory density, allowing for hot data to be processed more quickly with fewer resources. 

With persistent memory, hot data can be stored closer to the CPU for low latency access while keeping the higher latency calls to fetch data from the storage subsystem to a minimum. This can accelerate database warmup and reduce the total cost of ownership for other operational tasks such as reboots. 

Deeper system insights with RHEL 8 for SAP Solutions 

Based on more than 25 years of customer support experience and learnings from 1,000,000+ support cases, Red Hat Insights provides predictive operating system analytics and SAP-specific rules to more quickly discover whether or not your SAP deployment is running optimally. This expertise-as-a-service offering can also help to proactively prevent system risks before they impact your business continuity. 

Based on recommendations from Red Hat and SAP, Red Hat Insights is regularly refreshed with new rules to alert operators of misconfigurations, and other system risks such as security vulnerabilities. For enterprise-scale SAP deployments, Red Hat Insights serves as a force-multiplier for IT operations teams by proactively checking systems against known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and notifying the appropriate teams with suggested remediations. Additionally, it complements SAP Early Watch, so you can get insights across your entire operating system and SAP stack. 

When combined with the upcoming live patching capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 for SAP Solutions, IT operations teams can lean on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions and Red Hat Insights to not only find and analyze potential problems, but also fix them more quickly with little-to-no production downtime. Live patching is available today for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 for SAP Solutions customers through Extended Update Support (EUS).