Preparing for SAP HANA application protection

Before you start protecting SAP HANA applications, you must prepare your environment for application data protection. Preparing your environment for SAP HANA application data protection includes the following tasks:

Task	Instructions
Get familiar with your data protection environment specifics.	Getting familiar with your data protection environment specifics
Make sure R‑Cloud can access applications that you want to protect.	Enabling access to application data
Configure SAP HANA application backup options.	Configuring SAP HANA application backup options

Getting familiar with your data protection environment specifics

When setting up your environment for data protection, you must get familiar with all prerequisites, limitations, considerations, and/or recommendations that are specific to protecting SAP HANA applications.

Prerequisite

The data mover must have access to the applications that you want to protect and to the targets that store the protected data. To ensure this, configure application backup options so that the data mover uses the appropriate subnet. For instructions, see Configuring SAP HANA application backup options.

 Tip You can check under which subnet the applications and the targets are accessible in your cloud provider management console.

Consideration

R‑Cloud uses an external IP address to access Google Cloud APIs if Private Google Access is disabled on subnets. If your data protection environment requires the use of an internal IP address, make sure Private Google Access is enabled on subnets. For details, see Google Cloud documentation.

Enabling access to application data

After you assign credentials to instances as described in Enabling access to data, the process of application discovery starts automatically. When the application discovery task completes, the discovered applications are listed in the Applications panel.

Each discovered application has one of the following statuses:

Discovery status	Description
	R‑Cloud can access discovered applications that you want to protect with instance credentials. However, if your applications require database-level authentication, you must make sure to provide also application-specific credentials before you can start protecting your data. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic. Otherwise, you can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SAP HANA applications.
	The instance credentials do not have proper permissions and R‑Cloud cannot access applications. To enable R‑Cloud to access the applications, reassign credentials to instances so that they have proper permissions. For instructions on how to assign credentials to an instance, see Enabling access to data. After the discovery status of your application is , make sure to provide also application-specific credentials if your application requires database-level authentication. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic.

Discovery status

Description

R‑Cloud can access discovered applications that you want to protect with instance credentials. However, if your applications require database-level authentication, you must make sure to provide also application-specific credentials before you can start protecting your data. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic. Otherwise, you can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SAP HANA applications.

The instance credentials do not have proper permissions and R‑Cloud cannot access applications. To enable R‑Cloud to access the applications, reassign credentials to instances so that they have proper permissions. For instructions on how to assign credentials to an instance, see Enabling access to data.

After the discovery status of your application is , make sure to provide also application-specific credentials if your application requires database-level authentication. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic.

Procedure

In the Applications panel, select the applications that you want to protect.
Click Configuration.
On the Credentials tab, depending on the credentials that you want to use, do one of the following:
- If you want to use the application-specific credentials, do the following:
  1. Disable the Use OS Credentials switch.
  2. Enter the credentials for a user account with required permissions and access to the applications.
- If you want to use the instance operating system credentials, enable the Use OS Credentials switch.
Click Save.

You can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SAP HANA applications.

You can later unassign the credentials from an instance or delete the instance credentials that you do not need anymore. For details, see Enabling access to data. Keep in mind that you can do this only if the discovered applications running on the instance do not have assigned policies or available restore points. Therefore, before unassigning or deleting credentials, make sure to unassign policies or mark restore points as expired.

Configuring SAP HANA application backup options

Before you start protecting SAP HANA applications, you can adjust application protection to the needs of your data protection environment by configuring backup options. You can configure backup options for a single SAP HANA application or for multiple SAP HANA applications at the same time.

Backup options

Backup option	Description
Data Movers	Enables you to assign a data mover configuration to specify the location (compute and the networking details) where data movers will be created. For instructions, see Procedure
Backups	Enables you to configure the backup chain length. In this case, a new backup chain is started when the number of the full and subsequent incremental backups in a backup chain exceeds the value you specify. The default value is 7.

Prerequisites

Only if you plan to configure backup options for multiple applications. All applications must have the same values set for each option that you plan to configure.

Only if you plan to assign a data mover configuration that uses a Google Cloud project for compute. VPC Network Peering must be configured. For details on how to configure VPC Network Peering, see Google Cloud documentation.

Considerations

If you do not configure the Data Movers backup option, the default configurations is VM Default. This means that the data movers will be created in the original Google Cloud project and in the network of the application.
Only if you plan to assign a data mover configuration to the application. If the application already has a data mover configuration assigned automatically from its source, the manually assigned data mover configuration will be used for creating the data movers.

Recommendation

If you plan to use targets for storing the protected data, optimize the egress data costs by configuring application backup options so that the data mover uses the same region as the target that stores the protected data.

Procedure

In the Applications panel, select the applications for which you want to configure backup options.
Click Configuration. The Application Configuration dialog box opens.

Depending on what you want to do, perform the required action:

I want to...	Instructions
Assign a data mover configuration.	On the Data Movers tab, use the Data Movers drop-down menu to do one of the following: By clicking Add New, you are automatically redirected to the dialog box that enables you to add a new data mover configuration. For details, see Creating a data mover configuration. Select an existing data mover configuration.
Configure the backup chain length.	On the Backups tab, in the Backup chain length field, specify when you want a new backup chain to be started.

I want to...

Instructions

Assign a data mover configuration.

On the Data Movers tab, use the Data Movers drop-down menu to do one of the following:

By clicking Add New, you are automatically redirected to the dialog box that enables you to add a new data mover configuration. For details, see Creating a data mover configuration.
Select an existing data mover configuration.

Configure the backup chain length.

On the Backups tab, in the Backup chain length field, specify when you want a new backup chain to be started.

Click Save.