May 13, 2024
•5 minute read
SAP High Availability
SAP high availability keeps mission-critical ERP systems operational through planned and unplanned outages by eliminating single points of failure, enabling rapid failover, and protecting data across clustered environments. As organizations migrate to SAP S/4HANA, RISE with SAP, and cloud-hosted deployments on AWS and Azure, high-availability requirements become more complex. Clustering tools, automated failover solutions, HANA system replication, and Linux standardization are converging to help SAP teams deliver the continuous availability that finance, supply chain, and manufacturing operations demand.
What Is SAP High Availability?
SAP high availability is the design discipline that enables SAP environments to operate continuously without failure for a designated period, typically targeting 99.999% or better availability. Achieving it requires eliminating single points of failure across presentation, application, and database layers; enabling rapid failover between primary and secondary nodes; replicating data in real time; and configuring disaster recovery to a geographically separate region. SAP tools such as the Standalone Enqueue Server 2 (ENSA2) and SAP HANA System Replication provide native HA capabilities, while SAP-certified third-party clustering solutions extend protection across cloud and hybrid landscapes.
What Use Cases Are Referenced?
Jaguar Land Rover Incident Exposes the Cost of Delayed Patching in SAP Landscapes
An unpatched vulnerability exposed for four months contributed to a five-week global plant shutdown at Jaguar Land Rover, sending 33,000 workers home and driving an estimated $2.5 billion in losses. SAPinsider cited the case as a driver for RHEL and Ansible standardization to reduce unplanned SAP downtime.
Leading Beverage Manufacturer Achieves 99.99% SAP ERP Uptime Using Failover Clustering on AWS EC2
A beverage manufacturer migrated its critical SAP ERP system to AWS EC2 and implemented failover clustering to achieve 99.99% uptime, disaster recovery, and cost savings. SAPinsider documented the case, noting that cloud failover clustering delivered true high availability without sacrificing application performance.
Zespri International Protects SAP and SQL Server Across 53 Countries With SIOS HA Clusters on Azure
Zespri International, the world’s largest kiwi fruit marketer, relies on SAP and SQL Server infrastructure spanning more than 53 countries. The organization deployed SIOS high availability clusters on Microsoft Azure to protect its systems against local and regional failures. SAPinsider documented the case.
AWS Certifies Network Load Balancer for SAP ASE HADR, Eliminating Manual Failover
AWS certified its Network Load Balancer (NLB) for SAP Adaptive Server Enterprise High Availability Disaster Recovery, enabling automated traffic routing to secondary database instances when a primary fails. The integration with SAP ASE Fault Manager removes hours of manual failover work. SAPinsider reported the certification.
SAP High Availability on Windows Requires Deliberate Cluster Design to Eliminate Single Points of Failure
Deploying SAP on Windows requires a dedicated HA strategy because the platform lacks the native redundancy found in Linux-based SAP environments. Windows Server Failover Clustering combined with SIOS DataKeeper provides data replication and failover protection for SAP databases. SAPinsider published the analysis.
What SAPinsider Research Supports This Topic?
Technology Leader’s Strategic Agenda for 2026
SAPinsider benchmark research found that 70% of technology leaders cite cost reduction and operational efficiency as their top priority for 2026. Automated SAP high availability, failover clustering, and self-healing infrastructure directly reduce the cost and frequency of unplanned downtime events.
ERP Migration and Transformation 2026
SAPinsider research shows 55% of organizations have deployed SAP S/4HANA, with 34% fully transitioned. Each migration requires Basis teams to reconfigure the high-availability architecture for HANA database replication, update cluster topologies, and implement cloud-specific failover designs.
Building Resilient and Agile Supply Chains 2024
SAPinsider research found that 60% of supply chain professionals identified operational resilience as a top priority. SAP high availability, including disaster recovery planning, system replication, and automated failover, is foundational infrastructure for the supply chain continuity that those organizations depend on.
Maintaining High-Availability for SAP in a Windows World
In the intricate landscape of enterprise IT, the choice between Windows and Linux for SAP applications hinges on a delicate balance of cost and compatibility. While Windows offers familiarity and integration benefits, it also demands meticulous high availability (HA) management to ensure uninterrupted operations. Challenges in deploying SAP on Windows include the dual-sided nature of SAP databases, presenting a nuanced approach to system management. Mitigating single points of failure is crucial, necessitating robust HA solutions that prioritize redundancy and data replication. Modern tools like Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and third-party offerings such as SIOS DataKeeper augment HA capabilities, enhancing resilience against downtime and disasters. Adopting a strategic approach to HA ensures continuous availability, supporting seamless business operations and maintaining a competitive edge in today's dynamic market landscape. As technology evolves, IT professionals must remain adaptable, embracing the latest innovations in HA technology to safeguard enterprise systems effectively.
SAP High Availability Best Practices in AWSSAP S/4HANA environments comprise multiple services that need to be maintained in suitable locations and start in the proper order. Running your SAP, NetWeaver, and SAP S/4HANA workloads in the cloud can offer many benefits. When you consider the scalability, with freedom from on-premises system maintenance, flexible disaster recovery options, and the low-cost infrastructure, all while simplifying IT operations, migrating to the cloud seems like a no-brainer. But failing to consider your high availability (HA) protection requirements for these complex systems can negate all of those benefits. Manually configuring and managing HA clusters in these complex environments can be time-consuming and prone to human errors that increase the risk of catastrophic downtime and data loss.
In this session, Brett Barwick, Senior Software Engineer of SIOS Technology Corp., and Tamara Astakhov, Sr. Partner Solution Architect for Big Data & Analytics at AWS, will discuss best practices for SAP high availability and how to achieve near-zero downtime. They will also share insights on requirements for disaster recovery for SAP and the benefits of the AWS cloud with SAP-Certified SIOS solutions to optimize your infrastructure with price, performance, and availability.
Attend this webinar to:
- Assess the business criticality of your SAP S4/HANA environments and determine the appropriate level of availability/ high availability/ DR needed in AWS.
- Understand how to implement a clustering solution with wizard-driven application-specific configuration and management to eliminate the complexity.
- Learn to create a clustering environment that will detect application operation-level downtime and orchestrate failover quickly and according to best practices.
- Identify the disaster recovery strategies to implement for SAP.
Aug 16, 2021
•1 minute read
Uncomplicating High Availability for SAPHigh availability clustering solutions – particularly in Linux environments – can be time-consuming and complicated to implement and manage. The sometimes grueling manual scripting required for customization often leaves IT teams asking difficult questions: Will failover cause application performance to crawl? Will the failover and restart of services happen at all?
This session will explore:
- High availability options, on-premises and in the cloud, with some of their common pitfalls
- How the use of advanced application-aware failover clustering reduces implementation cost and risk associated with Linux clustering
- Indirect benefits of implementing high availability in a cloud environment - even if you believe you may not have a HA requirement, the resulting cost reduction, increased performance and compliance can make it worthwhile.
Aug 13, 2021
•1 minute read
Application-Aware Clustering: The Key to Protecting SAP, HANA, and S4/HANA in the CloudConfiguring high availability (HA) clustering to protect SAP, HANA, and S/4HANA can be a daunting task that involves nearly every part of the IT stack – networking, compute, storage, application, and operating system.
Watch this on-demand webinar with Bobby Jagdev for an inside look at how application-aware clustering can simplify this complexity and ensure cluster failovers are reliable and adhere to SAP best practices. In this video you will learn:
• Four fundamental options for protecting SAP applications and HANA and S/4HANA databases in the cloud
• The importance of application-aware clustering in configuring and maintaining clusters
• Best practices for HA and disaster recovery of SAP and SAP S/4HANA
Jun 22, 2021
•1 minute read
Best Practices for SAP High Availability in AWSThe global marketplace and its supply chains are complex and volatile. Companies rely on their SAP ERP systems to manage those dynamics and engage with their suppliers and customers. While on-premise control of your SAP landscape and data centers provides advantages, it may be time to consider transitioning to the AWS cloud.
The question is, how can an SAP landscape be configured in the AWS cloud to ensure the high availability (HA) you expect? While on-premises, IT knows what to do. But in the AWS cloud?
Best practices exist to ensure operational continuity of your SAP landscape in AWS. To begin with, you should build out your HA SAP landscape across multiple AWS AZs. This ensures that if the virtual machines (VMs) or the underlying servers in one AZ go dark, the infrastructure in another AZ can be called into service immediately. For full disaster recovery you should consider creating a shadow landscape in a geographically distinct AWS region. This provides a hedge against a catastrophic failure that could take down multiple AZs in a single region.
While distributing the components of your SAP landscape among different AWS AZs is critical for HA, so too is the deployment of a landscape monitoring and management solution. You need a solution that can monitor the health of each of these components, immediately identifying any component that is not performing properly and orchestrate the process of repairing the problem as quickly as possible.
At the same time, this suite of tools must also be AWS-aware. They must be able to translate the appropriate responses to issues detected within components of the landscape to actions appropriate to AWS.
Read this article and learn:
- The difference in how the presentation, application, and database layers of an SAP ERP system are deployed in the AWS cloud compared to on-premise;
- What are the best practices to ensure operational continuity of your SAP landscape in AWS;
- What to look for in monitoring and HA management tools to examine the SAP landscape across multiple dimensions.
May 28, 2021
•5 minute read
SAP High Availability Best Practices in AWSSAP S/4HANA environments comprise multiple services that need to be maintained in suitable locations and start in the proper order. Running your SAP, NetWeaver, and SAP S/4HANA workloads in the cloud can offer many benefits. When you consider the scalability, with freedom from on-premises system maintenance, flexible disaster recovery options, and the low-cost infrastructure, all while simplifying IT operations, migrating to the cloud seems like a no-brainer. But failing to consider your high availability (HA) protection requirements for these complex systems can negate all of those benefits. Manually configuring and managing HA clusters in these complex environments can be time-consuming and prone to human errors that increase the risk of catastrophic downtime and data loss.
In this session, Brett Barwick, Senior Software Engineer of SIOS Technology Corp., and Tamara Astakhov, Sr. Partner Solution Architect for Big Data & Analytics at AWS, will discuss best practices for SAP high availability and how to achieve near-zero downtime. They will also share insights on requirements for disaster recovery for SAP and the benefits of the AWS cloud with SAP-Certified SIOS solutions to optimize your infrastructure with price, performance, and availability.
Attend this webinar to:
- Assess the business criticality of your SAP S4/HANA environments and determine the appropriate level of availability/ high availability/ DR needed in AWS.
- Understand how to implement a clustering solution with wizard-driven application-specific configuration and management to eliminate the complexity.
- Learn to create a clustering environment that will detect application operation-level downtime and orchestrate failover quickly and according to best practices.
- Identify the disaster recovery strategies to implement for SAP.
Apr 8, 2021
•1 minute read
How to Post Real-Time Usage Decisions with the Automatic Usage Decision Functionality in SAP Quality ManagementLearn the necessary customizing steps and technical prerequisites to implement the automatic usage decision immediately after posting the results recording in SAP Quality Management (QM). Key Concept Usage decision is a key part of the SAP Quality Management (QM) module. As part of the SAP Customer Connection process, the usage decision was enhanced to be […]
Apr 17, 2017
•15 minute read
Use SAP Solution Manager’s Extensive Reporting Capabilities to Ensure Consistent Performance Across Your System Landscape Through Proactive MonitoringSAP/Solution Manager Learn about SAP Solution Manager 4.0’s reporting options and how to use them to ensure consistent performance across your system landscape. Key Concept SAP Solution Manager 4.0 includes a wide range of reporting options for generating technical and administrative information about your system landscape, including SAP EarlyWatch Alert Reporting, Service Reporting, EarlyWatch Alert […]
Mar 15, 2008
•24 minute read
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