SAP HANA Sidecar Scenario – An Ultimate Guide of Just 7 Mins!
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After completing data compression techniques in SAP HANA, we will move forward to learn a more complex topic; SAP HANA Sidecar. What comes to your mind, when you see the word sidecar? A cocktail filled glass? Well sorry, but this tutorial does not have any connection with that cocktail.
The concept of SAP HANA Sidecar is as catchy as its name. So, without wasting any time, let’s start our tutorial.
SAP HANA Sidecar Overview
SAP HANA Sidecar is an SAP HANA platform serving as a secondary database and computing platform to an already existing system with its own traditional database.
Its approach uses SAP HANA system for storage and computational capabilities to carry out operations related to the data and database objects of other systems.
Primarily, SAP ECC (SAP ERP Central Component) system uses SAP HANA Sidecar as a secondary database. The traditional database replicates its data into the SAP HANA database from the SAP ECC systems.
The replicated data is read directly from the HANA database via a secondary database connection that is established to run reports in the SAP ECC system.
SAP HANA Sidecar Architecture
As you can see in the simple illustration of SAP HANA Sidecar’s architecture, it involves some basic elements.
The SAP Business Suite or SAP ECC system stores its business modules and complete data set into a traditional database. Now, SLT (SAP Landscape Transformation) tool replicates these module objects or data tables into the SAP HANA system serving as the Sidecar.
The SLT tool is capable of doing real-time data replication.
Once, the data replicates into SAP HANA database with the help of SLT, reports running on SAP ECC system can read data directly from SAP HANA database (via a secondary database connection), instead of processing it from the traditional database.
In addition to this, other BI and reporting tools can also use this data for analytical and reporting purposes.
Use Cases of SAP HANA Sidecar
Below are the four important use cases of SAP HANA Sidecar:
1. SAP ECC system is a part of SAP Business Suit and contains business-related modules such as profitability analysis module, sales, purchasing, COPA, material analysis, etc. We replicate the data from these modules into the SAP HANA system. Now, instead of reading data from traditional databases which are generally slow, SAP ECC system users read data from HANA database for reporting purposes as it is quick by virtue of its in-memory database.
2. The logics created for reporting in SAP ECC can be tried first on SAP HANA’s native modeling tools like SAP HANA Information Modeler.
3. We can test SAP HANA as a tool to decide to buy a full-service version of it and make SAP HANA their primary database. Using SAP HANA Sidecar as a secondary database allows the customer to assess its performance and capabilities. Upon realizing a performance improvement, customers buy a full-fledged enterprise version of SAP HANA. Then, replicate their entire database on it to make it fully operational.
4. We can also create reports from the SAP Business Objects reporting tools utilizing the models created on SAP HANA before using them on SAP ECC.
Limitations of SAP HANA Sidecar
Besides all the advantages and applications of SAP HANA Sidecar, there are a few limitations of this approach:
1. It requires SLT whenever we need a change or update in the HANA database. Also, there is a limitation of the requirement of real-time data loading with SAP HANA Sidecar.
2. We can load data into the SAP HANA database only from other databases using either ABAP custom code or SLT or Data Service tool.
3. Custom ABAP programs are necessary to avail HANA capabilities as these programs are performance optimized on SAP HANA. The ABAP programs are must for data retrieval, data updates, data insertion, etc., as we optimize them to run SQLSCRIPTS.
4. HANA hardware requirements demand to have SUSE LINUX SP11.
Summary
This concludes our tutorial on SAP HANA Sidecar. We hope the content was informative and helped you understand the concept of Sidecar properly.
If you have any queries or suggestions, drop them in the comment section below. We will be happy to help.
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Hello,
I have a requirement where SAP Environment Health & safety(EH&S/EHS) module runs on ECC (side car) and all other business processes e.g MM, SD, PP runs on S/4HANA 1809. I just want to know if this is possible ? If so how can we achieve this? what can be the challanges?
Hello Ashish Pradhan, did you ever get your question answered? As you likely realize, there are many methods and strategies around SAP sidecar deployments, all of which are typically affected by myriad of factors unique to each scenario. It is absolutely possible to implement SAP EHS solutions alongside a foundation instance, but if understanding your note correctly you are looking at possibility to run EHS on ECC? Why would you not consider implementing the EHS solutions directly on the S/4 instance already in place if underlying data and source processes are already there? This is typically preferred method, but as mentioned, there are other permutations depending upon the factors involved.
Hello Experts,
we want to move our current HANA 1.0 SP12 to HANA 2.0 on new H/W with more Memory is there any Readiness check tool for HANA sidecar to do correct sizing ?
Thanks,
Hello,
Is HANA 2.0 version is compatible for sidecar senario?