• A software-based solution, fully integrated into the SAP NetWeaver 7.0 infrastructure
• Seamlessly and transparently conforms to standard SAP-defined operating procedures
• Provides compression of at least 85%
• Runs on most popular operating systems (Tru64, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Windows)
• No special hardware required
• Can run on the same server as SAP NetWeaver BI, or on a different server
• Integrated with major archiving solutions to enable full Information Life Cycle Management in accordance with SAP’s recommended approach

Yes, SAND Technology was the very first NLS partner to be certified for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0. Certification took place on December 14, 2006.

SAND/DNA offers a broad range of unique features that set it apart from conventional archiving solutions and “nearline“ architectures:

• Efficient storage of DataStore Objects and InfoCubes from SAP NetWeaver BI, with at least 85% compression
• Direct access to nearline DataStore Objects and InfoCubes via BEx or any other certified Business Intelligence tool
• Transparent access to combined data from SAP NetWeaver BI and SAND/DNA
• Direct drill-down from InfoCubes into nearline detailed data in DataStore Objects
• Ability to feed nearline DataStore Objects and InfoCubes back into the SAP NetWeaver BI process when they are required to fulfill new analytic requirements
• Ability to use nearline DataStore Objects and InfoCubes as DataSources for Data Transfer Processes that derive new InfoCubes, DataStore Objects or Data Layers
• Integration of all operations into SAP NetWeaver BI Data Archiving Processes (DAP) and Process Chains
• Can be used in APD processes to derive new InfoProviders or to feed Data Mining processes

SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 stores designated tables in the following way:

• No creation of indexes required
• Aggregations are run “on-the-fly”
• Any table/column can be queried
• SAND/DNA data structures are created automatically
• SAND/DNA adapts automatically to structural changes in SAP NetWeaver BI

Reduced TCO due to lower resource consumption:

• Reduction of hardware & infrastructure costs for SAP BI 7.0, or “freezing” of hardware and infrastructure costs at a specified level
• Lower memory and CPU requirements
• Reduced system administration costs

Ability to efficiently meet Service Level Agreements:

• Reduced backup and recovery times
• Reduced downtime and planning when significant corporate or regulatory changes occur
• Ability to rebuild historical aggregates and InfoCubes as required when corporate changes occur
• Quicker, simpler software and release management in SAP BI
• Ability to store more history and greater granularity

Ability to manage and use very large amounts of information without compromising the performance of the underlying relational database (that is, to keep the database operating in its “sweet spot”):

• Detail information available for ad hoc analyses and rebuilding of data objects
• “Drill-to-detail” availability from InfoCubes
• Enhancement of compliance solutions

SAND Technology’s experience with existing customers for SAP BI shows that the need for a NLS solution is independent of data volumes. Customer data volumes range from 0.5 TB to > 6 TB.

It is the expected data growth and the desire to limit further investments in hardware and administration that typically drives the decision to implement SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 (even though SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 is capable of running multiple terabytes without a nearline component).

“With the SAND/DNA nearline solution, we have found a way to control the explosion of data inside SAP NetWeaver BI. The SAND solution optimizes data warehouse resource usage and allows us to fulfill our Service Level Agreements no matter how much data is involved” - Bardo Gutberlet, Head of SAP System Development / Management, RI-Solution GmbH

Yes, Volkswagen Bank in Germany is a SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 customer and has been using SAND/DNA and the SAP NLS Interface since December 1, 2006.

Volkswagen Bank was facing exponential data growth, as shown in the accompanying chart. To limit Total Cost of Ownership, Volkswagen Bank decided to adopt SAP’s recommended ILM strategy by implementing SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0.

Volkswagen Bank looked at a number of different vendors, and finally chose SAND/DNA because of the following factors:

• Compression rates of more than 85% promised the best TCO
• The absence of indexing requirements on nearline data, meaning administration requirements would be kept to a minimum
• Demonstrated ability to store multiple terabytes of data

Based on the experience of several SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI (SAP BI 3.1/3.5 and BI 7.0) customers, it is realistic to expect between 85% and 95% compression, depending on InfoObject type, data volume and data diversity.

Based on the experience of several SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI customers (SAP BI 3.1/3.5 and SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0), SAND/DNA storing data “nearline” is slower by a factor of 1.x overall than SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 keeping the same data “online” in a relational database.

The installation of SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 takes from 2 to 4 hours. Additionally, the SAP DBA must import some transport orders into SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0. After this, the system is up and running and ready to store data coming from SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 via the SAP NLS Interface.

Directly after the installation, SAND consultants will conduct a 1.5 day workshop. The workshop gives a detailed overview of the NLS Interface of SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and its interaction with SAND/DNA. In this workshop, selected InfoObjects are stored in SAND/DNA, deleted from SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 and accessed via BEx. As there is no administration (i.e. indexing) required, customers can expect the process to be straightforward. The workshop also covers recommendations for “best practices”.

Most of the customers start with an initial data “offload”, primarily involving detail data along with some InfoCubes, to get a “skinny” relational database or to free up space for new data. After this initial ”offload”, the Data Archiving Processes (DAPs) are integrated within SAP BI “Process Chains” and become part of periodically recurring data management processes.

What is the best moment within a SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 project schedule to consider SAND/DNA and the NLS Interface?

The implementation of regular nearline tasks should be done in the early rollout phase, since the basic data management operations are affected by nearline storage. That means that the ILM concept should be part of the overall data management plan and should be discussed as early as possible. It is sufficient to carry out the installation a couple of weeks before the first nearline activities in the production system.

Yes, the data to be stored in SAND/DNA can be in UNICODE. This is supported by the Nearline Interface of SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0. Both systems use UTF-8.

Yes. The smaller the systems to be consolidated, the smoother the consolidation process will be. Nearline helps to reduce the size of the systems that must be consolidated. Furthermore, this permits the task of data model integration to be done after the consolidation.

No, the SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 NLS interface does not support storage of “masterdata” nearline in any partner application.

SAND/DNA supports all the remodeling features of the SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 NLS Interface, including:

• Addition of fields
• Enlargement of field data types (e.g. char and decimal)

For details, see SAP Note 1005040.

Yes, SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 is integrated with the Nearline Lookup API (Note 985609). Usage of the Nearline Lookup API in combination with SAND/DNA for SAP NetWeaver BI 7.0 is covered in the training courses provided by SAND.

Backup and recovery of compressed files is implemented using standard software and file backup/restore methodologies. The files do not have to be uncompressed in order to be processed. Backup of the repository is implemented using a SAND utility.

SAND/DNA can be deployed on different hardware architectures or configurations to meet customer needs in terms of performance, scalability, SLAs and redundancy. To enable high scalability, parallelism is achieved using multiple instances of the SAND/DNA executor components. The number of concurrent instances running on the hardware configuration controls the level of parallelism. SAND/DNA can take advantage of any number of processors running in a single SMP server or in a distributed architecture.

A typical SAND/DNA configuration will be based on a small Blade Server equipped with a minimum of 2 processors (64 bit). The memory recommendation is 2 GB per processor, which means that a minimal configuration will be 2 processors with 4 GB of RAM.

Finally, a local disk is required to process and store temporary results. The recommendation is to use a minimum size of 73 GB with a speed of 15,000 RPM.

SAND/DNA can be installed on the same hardware as SAP BI, but sharing is not recommended if the SAP BI hardware is being used at more than 50%. From a capacity planning point of view, it is recommended to install SAND/DNA on its own hardware.

SAND/DNA Access is available for servers running:

• OSF1 HP Compaq Alpha server 5.1A & up,
• AIX version 5.3 & up
• HP-UX-11.00 & HP-UX-11.11 with clibs from 11.00
• Solaris 8 & 9
• Windows NT 2000 SP4 & up
• Linux_X86 ( RedHat 4 & SuSe 9 enterprise )
• Itanium 2 & Solaris 10 (x86) available upon request

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How does SAND provide support for their Nearline solutions?

SAP Customers can submit their SAND Nearline-related OSS messages directly to XX-PART-SAND in SAP’S OSS system, and SAND will respond.