SAP HANA Express on KVM/QEMU
Introduction
This blog details steps to deploy HANA Express on Kernel-based Virtual Machine(KVM), I will be using QEMU as hypervisor but the instruction can be used for any KVM based hypervisor.
SAP HANA Express is available for free to use in variety of installation options. Most common installation options are virtual machine images, docker container in Linux and manual binary install. There is plenty detailed information available on SAP developer portal for installation using VMware Workstation Player/Pro, VMware fusion or Oracle VirtualBox. However, there is no mention of installation on KVM based hypervisors, commonly used in native Linux based hypervisors like QEMU, proxmox or unraid.
A couple of reason why I use QEMU over VMware or VirtualBox.
- KVM is a native Linux kernel module
- No proprietary drivers, binaries or blobs
- Easy to install on any Linux distribution
- Easy to find community support
- and finally, why not it's fun
1. Download HANA Express Virtual machine image using the Download Manager
Register on the HANA Express site or login with the existing user ID and download the required files using the Download manager, for more details refer : https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/hxe-ua-download-vm.html
Once download is complete the download directory will contain multiple files based on the selection in the download manager, we are interested in hxexsa.ova (server + applications) or hxe.ova (server) for the initial VM installation. for better understanding I will refer to server + application installation, if you prefer to install just server you need to change file name accordingly.
2. Converting OVA for use with KVM / QCOW2
The QEMU tool set in Linux contains built in tools to convert OVA file to QCOW2, which is QEMU default file format for virtual disks.
The OVA file is nothing more than a TAR archive, containing the .OVF and .VMDK files. Easy! Simply extract those things...
$ tar -xvf hxexsa.ova
Now take a look at the extracted files, specially hxe.ovf XML file, it gives insight on excepted environment required to run this image.
The actual VMDK disk image is compressed image in OVA, so we need to unzip VMDK disk using GUNZIP.
$ gunzip hxexsa-disk1.vmdk.gz
Now we have everything required to convert .vmdk to .qcow2 file.
$ qemu-img convert -O qcow2 hxexsa-disk1.vmdk hxexsa.qcow2
3. Create Virtual Machine
Create a new virtual machine in virt-manager for HANA Express
Choose Import existing disk image and select hxexsa.qcow2 converted in earlier steps.
Assign system resources (Use installation guide for resource assignment, HANA is memory intensive application so higher memory is better). SAP recommendation : https://developers.sap.com/tutorials/hxe-ua-installing-vm-image.html
Finally confirm the selection and make sure to check "Customize configuration before install"
Before we start installation we need to change disk bus from "virtio" to "SATA" under VM Configuration -> SATA Disk1 -> Advance options -> Disk bus -> SATA
That's it! Now you can continue installation as per installation guide from step "Set Keyboard and Time zone" located at https://developers.sap.com/group.hxe-install-vm.html