Virtual Machine
CPU and Memory Sizing
This document is not a sizing instrument but delivers a guideline of technically possible configurations. For proper sizing, refer to BW on HANA (BWoH) and Suite on HANA (SoH) sizing documentation. The ratio between CPU and memory can be defined as 6.4 GB per vCPU for Westmere EX and 8.53 GB per Ivy Bridge EX vCPU. The numbers for Suite on HANA can be doubled.
See that the ESXi host and every virtual machine produce some memory overhead. For example, an ESXi server with 512 GB physical RAM can not host a virtual machine with 512 GB vRAM because the server would need some static memory space for its kernel and some dynamic memory space for each virtual machine. A virtual machine with eg. 500 GB vRAM would most likely fit into a 512 GB ESXi host.
vCPU (Westmere EX) | vCPU (Ivy Bridge EX) | vRAM | Dynamic memory overhead (est.) | ||
BWoH | SoH | BWoH | SoH | ||
10 | 10 | 15 | 15 | 64 GB | 0.2 GB |
20 | 10 | 15 | 15 | 128 GB | 0.5 GB |
40 | 20 | 30 | 15 | 256 GB | 1 GB |
60 | 30 | 45 | 30 | 384 GB | 2 GB |
- | 40 | 60 | 30 | 512 GB | 2 GB |
- | 60 | - | 45 | 768 GB | 4 GB |
- | - | - | 60 | 1 TB | 8 GB |
Virtual Machine Creation
Create virtual machine with hardware version 10 (ESXi 5.5)
Select SLES 11 64-bit or RHEL 6 64-bit as Guest OS
Configure cores per socket
It is recommended to configure the cores per socket according to the actual hardware configuration, which means:
- 10 cores per socket on HANA certified Westmere-EX processors
- 15 cores per socket on HANA certified Ivy Bridge-EX processors
Virtual SCSI controller configuration
Configure 4 virtual SCSI controllers of the type "VMware Paravirtual".
Configure virtual disks
To fully utilize the virtual resources, a disk distribution is recommended where the disks are connected to different virtual SCSI controllers. This improves parallel IO processing inside the guest OS.
The size of the disks can initially be chosen lower than the known requirements for HANA appliances. This is based on the capability of in increasing virtual disk size online.
Virtual Device Node | Disk | Mount point | Size (old conservative measure) | Size (new combined measure) |
0:0 | root | / | 80 GB | 80 GB |
0:1 | hanashared | /hana/shared | 1 * vRAM | 1 * vRAM |
1:0 | hanadata | /hana/data | 3 * vRAM | 1 * vRAM |
2:0 | hanalog | /hana/log | 1 * vRAM | vRAM < 512 GB: 0.5 * vRAM vRAM ≥ 512 GB: min. 512 GB |
3:0 | backup | /backup | - (initially 100 GB) | - (initially 100 GB) |
Configure virtual network adapters
Configure one VMXNET3 adapter for each network and connect it to the corresponding port group. See that some networks are only configured on ESXi level, such as storage and backup network.
Enable Latency Sensitivity settings
To ensure the latency sensitivity, CPU and memory reservation has to be set, too. While the CPU reservation can vary, the memory reservation has to be set to 100 %. Check the box "Reserve all guest memory (All locked)".
After creating a VM, the guest OS installation can begin.
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