Best Practice 14.1 – Create mount points and volume associations to align with function - SAP Lens

Best Practice 14.1 – Create mount points and volume associations to align with function

SAP filesystems have unique performance and sharing requirements. For example, the performance profile of the database may require the data filesystem to support a high number of read I/O operations, while the log filesystem is more likely to be constrained by throughput. Filesystems such as sapmnt and trans need to be shared so that all application servers can access logs and transport files. Recognizing these differences, consider the mapping of filesystems to volumes to ensure there are no performance bottlenecks and that access requirements are met.

Suggestion 14.1.1 – Identify the SAP filesystems and directory requirements for each System

SAP filesystems include system directories (root, boot), executables, page or swap, and application-specific requirements. Each of these should be analyzed to consider:

  • The impact when a file system is at capacity (100% used), particularly for the root directory

  • Consistency of build, including whether it is included in an AMI, or deployment patterns

  • Resilience requirements

  • Sharing requirements

  • Performance profile

The core SAP filesystem requirements are listed in the SAP documentation. Use these as a baseline and include other requirements specific to your organization.

Suggestion 14.1.2 – Map the appropriate AWS storage service to match with filesystem function

A filesystem can either be local or shared (NFS / SMB). For shared filesystems consider using AWS services, such as Amazon EFS and Amazon FSx, which provide reliability and availability benefits when compared with a hosted NFS server.

Amazon EC2 instance store is another filesystem option which provides temporary block-level storage for your instance. We do not recommend its use due to lack of persistence, availability across instance types, and because it prevents the use of instance recovery.

Suggestion 14.1.3 – Use supported filesystem types

The SAP-supported Linux distributions recommend a number of different file system types. Later versions are standardizing on XFS, but support should be reviewed to ensure there is no performance or functionality impact for your operating system and database version.