Step by Step Guide on SAP S/4 HANA Sizing

An SAP HANA Sizing is a specific activity that is basically carried out to estimate the hardware requirements for the SAP HANA system that involves major components such as RAM, CPU, and hard disk. Memory is the primary component in sizing and the CPU is the secondary.

So, once we have learned about the five-step process for ITERATIVE SIZING, it’s easy to gain knowledge on SAP S/4HANA Sizing with the help of a practical example. In this tutorial, we will be discussing how to size an SAP HANA landscape if we are deploying the on-premise SAP Fiori front-end for the SAP S/4HANA system as well as the back-end server. However, the question is why do you need sizing for both front-end and back-end servers?

The answer to the question is SAPS/4HANA, which implements the SAP Fiori user experience in native mode. This SAP Fiori is based on a browser and it accesses data in the back-end.

On the Front-end Note

The SAP Fiori user interface is hosted on the SAP Fiori front-end server where the OData service calls get converted into the Remote Function Calls and to the back-end server. The front-end server is also responsible for the operation of additional services to smoothly carry out SAP Fiori Launchpad. The activities include personalizing user accounts and login functions.

On the Back-end Note

The Back-end mainly focuses on integrating the OData services, which is an essential step, allowing the SAP Fiori application to get access to the back-end data and check out the business logic and carry out various activities.  

Let’s explain this further with an illustration that you can easily co-relate with-

Suppose an organization has 10k employees, who would like to manage their working hours in the SAP S/4HANA system on a weekly basis. To offer the best service, SAP has provided with an independent application known as My Timesheet. This is one of the innovative tools that allow employees to maintain their working hours efficiently with the help of a desktop or a mobile device.

However, you must note that all employees may not record the time entries due to different reasons. So, for the peak load scenario, you can make the following assumptions:-

1. First, half of the employees will be employing the self-service application on Monday between 3 pm to 5 pm.
2. The employee will remain connected with the system for about 2 minutes and the system will get equal distribution access in the span of those couple of hours.  

We are now arriving at the main part of our tutorial discussion, so stay tuned! Now, we will learn the steps for sizing the SAP Fiori front-end and the back-end server. Remember, our aim is to deploy the ‘My Timesheet Application.’

How to Size the Back-End Server

Let’s begin with the journey.

1. First things first, you need to develop a Quick Sizer project for the My Timesheet Application.
2. Next, is choosing the questionnaire for the back-end server. You can view the following figure to get a more clear understanding.

The image indicates the questionnaire for the back-end server

3. The next step is to calculate the total number of high-activity simultaneous users and apply the peak scenario assumption that we discussed earlier.

(5000 users * 2 minutes) / 2 hours = 83 simultaneous users

5. You need to insert this output into the high-activity user field in the Quick Sizer questionnaire.
6. Now click on the option of calculating the result to size the KPIs for the back-end server.

Figure Depicting the Back-end Sizing

Make sure you are verifying all assumptions on a compulsory note. Do check the usage stats and the refined data as indicated previously in the interactive sizing procedure.  

How to Size the SAP Fiori Front-end servers

1. The sizing for the SAP Fiori front-end server also begins on a similar note as in the case of the back-end server, which is selecting the questionnaire for the SAP Fiori Front-End server. However, please mind that there is a change here. You do not need to focus on concurrent users.  But Quick sizer will pay attention to the highest number of SAP Fiori launchpad logons generated during the peak time scenario. Please be careful as this number is very important. Any increase or decrease in this number will lead to an error in sizing.

Questionnaire for the SAP Fiori Font-End Server

This means that if 5000 people are logging into the system, the SAP Fiori should manage about 5000 logons during the 2 hour peak time scenario. So, based on what we have assumed, the SAP Fiori front-end server sizing would come to 2,500 peak hours. Please have a look at the image below.

The image depicts SAP Fiori Front-end sizing results

1. The Quick Sizer also offers aggregator options to aggregate the sizing results by selecting a particular category as shown in the figure.

Quick Sizer provides the aggregating options to aggregate sizing

3. Lastly, you would get the final aggregated picture that combines both the back-end server as well as the SAP Fiori front-end server features. This also includes the CPU memory and disk requirements. Here the CPU is measured in SAPS.

Image Indicating an aggregated view of sizing results

If you have a look at the above figure, you would notice that the total memory requirement is about 210GB for which you would probably need 256GB SAP HANA box in order to make your project scalable. Do not forget to include the data growth in your project.

Why Do You Need Exact Sizing

Accurate sizing offers you a plethora of benefits.

• It helps to reduce the overall cost of ownership of your system landscape.
• It offers an assurance that your system is running seamlessly
• The customers get the facility of greenfield installations and migrations
• The SAP also offers comprehensive support to the SAP HANA-based migrations involving the ABAP related reports to determine the hardware resource needs.
• The customers who decide to deploy the SAP HANA have access to the same guidelines received by other SAP consulting business enterprises and partners.

Planning to Migrate to SAP HANA

For those SAP consulting and sales organizations, that are already using the SAP and desire to move to SAP HANA services, can take the help of migration sizing reports to figure out the accurate maximum memory consumption needed for the database. Also, it must be noted that the ABAP related sizing reports are free from the source database provider while calculating the memory requirements for the table data in SAP HANA. The similar memory size is taken into account for the temporary working memory. The other requirements that suffice the needs of the SAP HANA database include data caches in the memory, memory for the code, and other files. SAP HANA consumes less memory as compared to conventional databases.