HANA Backup
In this post we will try to understand what are all HANA backup types and significance of those backups.
Also how to manually take backup via SAP HANA Studio.
What is Data Backup?
- A data backup includes all the data that is required to recover the database to a consistent state.
- With a data backup, only the actual data is backed up; unused space in the database is not backed up.
- The data area is backed up in parallel for each of the SAP HANA services. If SAP HANA is running on multiple hosts,
- While a data backup is running, some data integrity checks are performed. If these checks are successful, the data is written to the backup destination.
- Each time you start a file-based data backup, you have the option to change the default backup destination or to specify a different destination from the default only for the current backup.
- By default, file-based data backups are written to $DIR_INSTANCE/backup/data.
What is Delta Backup?
- Delta backups allow you to reduce the amount of data that is backed up, compared to full data backups. In turn, this means that delta backups are normally faster to create than full data backups.
- Delta backups are supported with SAP HANA SPS10 or newer.
What is Differential Backup?
- Differential Backup consists of the data changed since the last full data backup.
- Backup size of differential backup is the amount of data to be saved with each differential backup increases.
- If your backup strategy is based on only full data backups and differential backups, only two backups are needed for a recovery: a full data backup and one differential backup.
What is Incremental Backup?
- Incremental Backup consists of the data changed since the last full data backup or the last delta backup (incremental or differential).
- If your backup strategy is based on only full data backups and incremental backups, to recover the database, SAP HANA needs the following backups:
- The full data backup on which the incremental backups are based
- Each incremental backup made since the full data backup
- In some situations, a large number of incremental backups may be needed for a recovery.
You could recover SAP HANA to a specific point in time using the following sequence of backups:
- Full data backup
- Differential backup
- Incremental backup 1
- Incremental backup 2
- Log backups
Now we will try to take complete backup of our production system via HANA Studio.
To install and configure SAP HANA Studio please refer other post in this website.
Select the system and dropdown to open all available options. Right click “Backup” and click “Back Up System”
We can also double click “Backup” button and click below highlighted button to take system backup.
Now we will be prompted to choose “Backup Type” and “Destination Type”
Select a backup type.
Select a destination type:
In below screen it will provide summary of system definition and Backup definition.
Now backup has started and all 3 servers (XSEngine, Name Server and Index Server) backup takes place in parallel.
For more details on servers please refer another post on this website.
Once backup is completed, we will receive backup completed screen.
Inside Backup Catalog we can see history of backups.
So here we see that the backup is completed-.
When we check at OS level Backup path, we will have 4 data backup files
Please note:
For production systems, we should schedule daily automatic backup (preferably at non-business hours). System don’t need to be shutdown to perform complete system backup.
