AWS has recently announced the general availability (GA) of its new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) High Memory U7inh instance, developed in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). This instance is designed to support large, mission-critical in-memory database workloads, such as SAP HANA.
The U7inh instance operates on HPE's 16-socket Compute Scale-up Server 3200 and is built on the AWS Nitro System, ensuring, according to the company, a fully integrated and managed experience consistent with other EC2 instances. Powered by fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (Sapphire Rapids), it offers 32 terabytes (TB) of memory and 1,920 virtual CPUs (vCPUs), making it the highest compute performance instance in the AWS Cloud for such workloads.
In comparison to the previously launched U7i instances, which supported up to 896 vCPUs and 32 TB of memory, the U7inh instance provides double the vCPUs and increased Elastic Block Store (EBS) bandwidth, offering up to 160 Gbps. This enhancement allows for faster data hydration, backup, and restore operations. Additionally, the instance supports up to 200 Gbps of network bandwidth and is compatible with ENA Express.
The U7inh instance is SAP-certified to run Business Suite on HANA, Business Suite S/4HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA (BW), and SAP BW/4HANA in production environments. It also supports scale-out SAP HANA OLTP workloads, enabling the deployment of up to four U7inh instances (totaling 128 TB) in a cluster for even larger workloads.
In an Intel blog post, the author wrote:
The new instance is designed explicitly for scale-up configurations for the largest SAP Landscapes, offering a robust and scalable option for running SAP in the cloud. This development provides these organizations with a new, highly reliable option to support their extensive SAP workloads, ensuring seamless integration and operation within AWS's virtualized environment.
And Channy Yun, a Principal Developer Advocate for AWS cloud, stated:
Customers want the performance combined with the additional CPUs, memory, and SAP certification to generate real-time business insights as they continue to scale their business applications. Other customers currently running on-premises with HPE servers have also asked how we can help them migrate to AWS to take advantage of cloud benefits while using HPE hardware.
Supported operating systems for the U7inh instance include Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server. For SAP HANA workloads, supported OS versions are SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3 for SAP and above and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6/9.0 for SAP and above.
The U7inh instance is currently available in the US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions. Customers can purchase it through a 3-year Savings Plan.
Lastly, Customers looking to migrate SAP HANA to AWS can visit Migrating SAP HANA on AWS to an EC2 High Memory Instance in the SAP HANA on AWS Guides and the AWS Launch Wizard for SAP in the AWS Launch Wizard User Guide.
