Recovery of older revision of HANA on newer revision?

[mert_karakilic]

It is mentioned to me that restoring an older revision of HANA backup on newer revision of HANA is okay as far as the Backup and Recovery guide goes. In our case the restore is being attempted from rev 93 to 112. I have not seen this statement myself but it was quoted and seems rather odd why this dangerous statement would be part of the official guide.

Knowing that HANA has different schemas and settings between two revisions, how would it be suggested to restore on higher version, I don't quite understand? I can clearly see some base schemas and certain privileges get wiped out if you do such restore after my clean install of 92 and restoring a backup of on clean install of 112. What are your thoughts?

Is there a safe way to do such restore while copying all data, schemas and additional user/roles/pther catalog objects implemented on top of the base installation to the higher version of HANA? The main objective here is to replicate whatever was configured and populated already on one instance, to another one without having to upgrade the source instance to prevent disruption to the source use and simply switch over to the new one once the testing is completed with the new version.

PS: The other alternative of course I am trying is the install a fresh copy of 93 on another instance, restore the backup on it then upgrade that to 112 which has its own issues too which I am checking on another thread.

Thanks for your input.

[Former Member]

Hello Mert,

Indeed, in the HANA Administration Guide, the following is stated:

"A SAP HANA database cannot be recovered to an SAP HANA database with a lower software version. The SAP HANA software version used for the recovery must always be the same version or higher than the SAP HANA database used to create the data backup or storage snapshot."

It's not that dangerous a statement imho, since the backup you're restoring will consist of all data in the database (all deployed HANA content, all data of a SAP installation in the SAPABAP1 (default) schema, database users and their schema's, roles, etc.).

The potential problem you sugest is related to the database content, which you are completely replacing with the content from the backup. You will have the revision 93 database content running on HANA with 112 binaries. I don't see a problem with that right away. You might get issues when you subsequently want to update this 112 to another revision, as then you'll get the post processing for the new revision on your restored data. I have no field experience with this last scenatrio, but have performed a restore to a higer revision without problems.

Kindest regards, Wilbert

[mert_karakilic]

Hi Wilbert,

Thanks for your reply.I have seen first hand it removing tables under SYSTEM user as well as changing privileges and such. WE have restored once an SPS7 rev 70 on SPS9 rev 92 and some of the default system privileges were revoked and had to be re-granted for instance for the hana cockpit.

Then again when we restored Hana 92 on 112 with XS Advanced enabled, all XS Advanced default schemas were gone as well as a few others that were added in SPS11. It actually killed XS Advanced when restored on it. The service was red

Yes my colleagues were saying the same thing about i never had an issue as well but I don't believe it anymore having seen these issues pop like this even on default base installation before I add any of my own things

[lbreddemann]

Wilbert Jeuken wrote:

You will have the revision 93 database content running on HANA with 112 binaries. I don't see a problem with that right away. You might get issues when you subsequently want to update this 112 to another revision, as then you'll get the post processing for the new revision on your restored data.

This reads as if the recovered backup from a SPS 9 version would run with SPS 11 binaries in some sort of SPS 9-mode.

That's not the case.

In fact upon restart, SAP HANA finds that this is an old version of a SAP HANA database and performs the required catalog upgrade procedures automatically.

What it doesn't automatically do is the import of of the delivery units that come with each revision.

So these will need to be manually imported - just like the upgrade would do - in order to get all pieces correctly working on the new SPS.

It should be clear, that the recovery-and-upgrade approach is not meant to be the main upgrade procedure. Instead, in-place upgrades are what is mainly expected and documented.

[mert_karakilic]

Thanks for pointing that out. I have re-installed the delivery unit that has complained to have failed installed and activated fine. However, under HANA Studio in the visual import delivery unit manager, when i selected that specific delivery unit to install, everything was in green status in terms of activation even before I proceeded with re-import. It makes me wonder if there was a false negative about the delivery unit import.

The other thing I wonder, is there some documentation outlining in which order these delivery units should be imported? For XS for instance, you need to import them in certain order if I am not mistaken. Any recommendations there? Considering the error was thrown for one of the core hana delivery units, it makes you concerned naturally

Thanks a bunch.

[Former Member]

Hello Lars,

That's not what I meant but I can see how it might read to others. Thanks for the clarification!

Kindest regards, Wilbert