SAP HANA Native Storage Extension: Storage option for warm data

Can you use SAP HANA and save money at the same time? Yes, you can – with SAP HANA Native Storage Extension (NSE). SAP HANA NSE is a native storage extension for warm data based on the SAP HANA in-memory database. It enables companies to make data they don’t need to access too frequently available without fully loading it into SAP HANA storage. The native storage extension complements other data tiering solutions for warm data such as SAP HANA Extension Node and SAP HANA Dynamic Tiering. SAP HANA Native Storage Extension is available as of the SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 04 release.

Optimize your data management and lower your TCO

Hot, warm and cold data

Increasingly complex IT landscapes, rising demands on system resources and rapidly growing data volumes are driving up the total cost of ownership (TCO). Data tiering offers companies the opportunity to allocate their data to different storage areas or media and thus optimize TCO.

Data can be categorized based on access frequency and importance. Hot data is business-critical information that is processed and analyzed in real time. It is continuously held in SAP HANA storage to ensure high performance. However, this also causes the highest TCO.

Warm data is accessed less frequently than hot data. Therefore, they do not need to be permanently in SAP HANA storage. Nevertheless, they are managed as a unified part of the SAP HANA database. Query performance is slightly lower for warm data than for hot data.

Data that is rarely accessed can be managed separately from the SAP HANA database. To save costs, it is a good idea to offload this cold data to slower disks, Hadoop or cloud storage.

SAP HANA NSE saves HANA storage space

As for data management in SAP HANA, certain data tiering options are available to save valuable storage space. SAP HANA Native Storage Extension is a simple way to move data from main memory to disk without the need to invest in new hardware. With just a few steps, this data tiering technology saves important main memory of the SAP HANA database. Entire tables, partitions, or even just columns can be moved to SAP HANA NSE to reduce the total storage required for the SAP HANA database.

SAP HANA NSE increases SAP HANA data capacity at reduced TCO. The Native Storage Extension supports all SAP HANA functionality and all SAP HANA data types and models. Thus, SAP HANA NSE provides an additional alternative to the SAP HANA Expansion Node and SAP HANA Dynamic Tiering options for storing warm data. With expanded disk capacity and an intelligent buffer cache that provides 10% of hot storage by default, SAP HANA NSE ensures good performance while reducing SAP HANA database storage requirements.

Conclusion: Data availability and cost efficiency in harmony

SAP HANA NSE creates a good compromise between data availability and cost efficiency. Therefore, enterprises should definitely consider the native storage extension for warm data in their data management strategy. Regardless of location, all data remains accessible at all times. Thus, SAP HANA NSE is able to increase SAP HANA data capacity and ensure high performance for big data.