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Installation & SAP tuning
SLES for SAP installed to the SAP notes, with saptune applying the kernel, memory and I/O settings HANA expects. Untuned Linux is one of the most common causes of "SAP is slow" that nobody can explain.
Your SAP partner looks after the application. Somebody has to look after everything underneath it — the SUSE Linux servers, the SAP HANA database, the storage, the backups, the patches and the 2 a.m. disk alert. That is the layer we run: designed properly, maintained on a schedule, backed up in a way that actually restores, and covered by an AMC or a fully managed contract priced in AED.
SAP infrastructure support covers everything SAP runs on: the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system, the SAP HANA database, the physical or virtual servers, storage, network, security, and backup and recovery. Nifty supports that layer for SAP Business One on HANA and SAP S/4HANA environments across the UAE — installation, patching, performance tuning, monitoring, HANA backups and restore testing — under an annual maintenance contract (AMC) or a fully managed service.
We do not sell SAP licences and we do not do functional consulting or ABAP development. We work alongside your SAP partner, so the application team can stop chasing full disks and expired certificates and get back to the business processes.
Most SAP problems that land on a functional consultant's desk are not SAP problems at all. They are a HANA log volume that filled up, a Linux patch nobody applied, a backup that stopped three weeks ago or a certificate that expired on a Friday. Drawing the line clearly is what stops two suppliers blaming each other while your users wait.
Functional configuration, add-ons, reports, ABAP, user training, licences
Version upgrades, Service Layer, SLD and licence server, system copies, transports
Installation, revisions, memory and disk, alerts, users and security, system replication
SLES for SAP, saptune, patching, subscriptions, hardening, high-availability clustering
Certified hardware, firmware, VMware / Hyper-V, Azure and AWS VMs, storage
HANA backups, off-site and immutable copies, firewall, VPN, remote access, monitoring
The "shared" layer is agreed task by task and written into the contract — for example, we prepare and back up the server before a Business One upgrade, your partner runs the upgrade wizard, and we verify the system afterwards.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the operating system most SAP HANA systems in the region run on, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is the edition built for it — with SAP-specific tuning, high-availability tooling and longer service-pack support. We run it the way SAP expects it to be run, not the way a general Linux server is.
SLES for SAP installed to the SAP notes, with saptune applying the kernel, memory and I/O settings HANA expects. Untuned Linux is one of the most common causes of "SAP is slow" that nobody can explain.
Security and kernel patches tested against the SAP release you run, applied in a maintenance window, with a snapshot or backup first. Live patching where the subscription includes it, so critical kernel fixes do not always need a reboot.
We track which SUSE subscriptions you hold, when they renew, and whether each server is still in general support, in extended support, or quietly out of support altogether.
SSH locked down, root login removed, unused services off, firewall rules set, and admin access audited. SAP servers hold the company's finances; they should not be reachable from the internet on a default password.
Pacemaker clustering with the SUSE HA tooling for HANA system replication, so a failed node hands over automatically instead of waiting for someone to notice. Fencing and failover are tested, not assumed.
SLES 12 to 15, service-pack moves inside SLES 15, and planning for SLES 16 — checked against SAP's Product Availability Matrix first, because the OS version has to be certified for your exact SAP and HANA release.
SLES 12 is past general support and survives only on paid long-term service-pack support. If your HANA server sits on it without that cover, it is no longer receiving security fixes. Moving to SLES 15 is usually paired with a HANA revision update — we plan both as one maintenance event.
SLES 16 replaced service packs with 16.0, 16.1 releases, and SLES for SAP 16 removed the older SAPHanaSR cluster packages in favour of SAPHanaSR-angi. An in-place upgrade on a HANA cluster without migrating that first breaks failover. SLES 15 is supported for years yet; move when SAP certifies your release, not before.
SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA, is the SAP ERP most UAE SMEs actually run. It is a capable system on a demanding platform: an in-memory database on Linux, usually looked after by a finance team and an SAP partner who are neither Linux nor database administrators. That gap is where we fit.
B1 on HANA is sized on memory, not just users. We size from SAP's guidance and your data growth, build on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server — the Linux platform SAP lists for the Business One server components — and confirm the combination against the B1 Platform Support Matrix before anything is ordered.
SAP HANA installed, revision-matched to your Business One release, and kept current. B1 upgrades often require a newer HANA revision first — we handle that step so your partner's upgrade does not stall on the database.
Service Layer, the System Landscape Directory, licence service, analytics, job service and the Business One backup service — the background components that, when one stops, make the client "slow" or simply refuse to log in.
Secure access for branch offices, warehouses and staff on the road — site-to-site VPN, remote desktop gateways or the web client behind a properly configured firewall, rather than the HANA ports opened to the internet.
E-invoicing raises the stakes. The UAE eInvoicing mandate starts going live on 1 January 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more, and on 1 July 2027 for the rest. Once invoices flow through your ERP to an accredited service provider, an ERP outage is a compliance problem as well as an operational one — and invoice data must be stored in the UAE. Uptime and backup design for Business One should account for both.
Mainstream maintenance for SAP ERP 6.0 (ECC) ends on 31 December 2027, with optional extended maintenance to the end of 2030 at extra cost. Whichever route you take to S/4HANA, it runs only on SAP HANA — which means new sizing, certified infrastructure and a landscape that has to be right before the conversion project starts.
Development, quality and production systems sized from SAP's sizing output and your data, with growth headroom — HANA memory is expensive to add later and painful to run short of.
Production HANA must run on SAP-certified appliances or validated components. We specify HPE ProLiant and other certified platforms against SAP's hardware directory, not against a generic server spec sheet.
SAP-certified VM families on Microsoft Azure or AWS where cloud fits better. We confirm the certified instance types are available in the region you need before committing — see cloud solutions.
HANA system replication to a second node or a second site, clustered failover on SUSE, and a written recovery time per system. Designed to the business's tolerance, not the maximum the budget allows.
Target systems built, network and storage throughput tested, and backups in place before your SAP partner starts the conversion — so the project plan is not waiting on servers.
Firewall segmentation between SAP, users and the internet, encrypted backups, admin access logging and patch compliance — the controls auditors ask about first.
We build and run the infrastructure for S/4HANA. The conversion or greenfield implementation itself — data migration, functional design, custom code remediation — is your SAP partner's project, and we work to their plan.
SAP HANA rarely fails without warning. It fills its log volume, runs short of memory, lets a certificate expire or keeps running on a disk that has been reporting errors for a month. Scheduled maintenance is the discipline of reading those warnings before they become an outage.
An in-memory database cannot be backed up like a file server. A copy of the disk taken while HANA is running is not a reliable backup. SAP HANA needs its own data backups, continuous log backups for point-in-time recovery, and a tool that talks to HANA properly — then the same off-site and immutable protection as the rest of the business.
Scheduled full and incremental data backups plus continuous log backups, so the database can be restored to a specific minute — just before the bad posting, the deleted company or the ransomware.
Backint is SAP's interface for certified backup tools to stream HANA backups directly — Veeam's Plug-in for SAP HANA is one SAP-certified example. Backups land in the same managed repository as your other servers, with retention and alerting in one place.
The B1 backup service configured, its target moved off the HANA server itself, and the output picked up by the platform backup — a backup stored on the disk it is protecting is not a backup.
A second copy away from the server room, and an immutable one ransomware cannot delete. We use the platforms we already support — Veeam, NAKIVO or Acronis — and choose on fit.
Storage or VM snapshots are useful for a fast rollback before an upgrade, but only when HANA is told to prepare a consistent snapshot first. We script that step, and never treat a snapshot as the only backup.
A real restore of the HANA database to a test system, recovered to a point in time, with the duration recorded. That number is your actual recovery time — everything else is an estimate.
When log backups stop — a full backup target, an expired credential — the log volume keeps filling. When it is full, the database stops accepting changes and SAP stops with it. This is one of the most common HANA outages we see, and it is entirely preventable with monitoring.
We regularly find SAP systems whose backup jobs report success while the backup files are unusable, incomplete or stored on the same server. The health check includes a restore test for exactly this reason.
Two ways to buy the same expertise. An infrastructure AMC suits companies with an internal IT person who wants scheduled maintenance and a team to call when things break. Managed SAP infrastructure suits companies who want the whole layer run for them, with monitoring, patching, backups and reporting handled end to end.
| What is included | SAP Infrastructure AMC | Managed SAP Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled preventive maintenance visits | Included | Included |
| Break-fix support for OS, HANA and hardware | Included | Included |
| Continuous monitoring and alert handling | Optional add-on | Included |
| SUSE and HANA patching | Planned during visits | Run for you, monthly |
| Daily backup verification | Checked during visits | Included |
| Quarterly restore test with written results | Optional add-on | Included |
| Subscription and renewal tracking | Included | Included |
| Coordination with your SAP partner | On request | Single point of contact |
| Monthly health and capacity report | Quarterly | Monthly |
| Response times | Written into the contract | Written into the contract |
| Pricing | Get Quote | Get Quote |
Both are annual contracts quoted in AED, priced on the number of SAP systems, servers and environments covered rather than a flat package. Hardware warranty and SUSE or SAP subscriptions are separate lines, so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
We review the SUSE and HANA versions, support status, patch level, capacity, backups, security and hardware warranty. You get a written report ranked by risk — yours to keep whether or not you contract with us.
A short responsibility matrix: which tasks are ours, which are theirs, and which are shared. Agreed up front so nobody discovers the gap during an outage.
Servers, systems, versions, credentials vault, backup schedule, network paths and recovery steps — written down, handed over, and owned by your business rather than one person's memory.
Unsupported OS versions, failing backups, full disks, exposed ports — whatever the health check ranked highest is remediated in an agreed maintenance window.
A full HANA restore to a test system, recovered to a point in time, with the duration recorded. That document is your real recovery objective.
AMC visits or managed monitoring begin, renewals are diarised and reports arrive on schedule. Standalone, or as part of a wider managed IT contract.
Trading, distribution, contracting and manufacturing companies running SAP Business One and S/4HANA from Deira, Business Bay, Al Quoz, Jebel Ali, DMCC and Dubai Silicon Oasis — on-site from our Deira office.
Head offices and industrial sites in Mussafah, KIZAD, Al Reem and the city centre, with remote support day to day and on-site attendance for hardware and planned maintenance.
Factories, warehouses and free-zone businesses in Sharjah, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah — often multi-branch Business One estates connected over VPN.
Support runs Monday to Friday, with emergency assistance arranged outside those hours and maintenance windows scheduled for evenings or weekends so SAP users are not interrupted.
Everything SAP runs on: the SUSE Linux operating system, the SAP HANA database, the physical or virtual servers, storage, network, security, and backup and recovery. In practice that means installation, patching, performance tuning, monitoring, capacity planning, HANA backups and restore tests, hardware fault handling and renewal tracking.
It does not include functional SAP configuration, ABAP development or licence sales — those stay with your SAP partner.
No. We work alongside them. Your SAP partner owns the application and business processes; we own the infrastructure underneath. Most SAP partners are glad to hand over Linux, database and backup work, because it is not where their consultants add value — and it removes the "is it SAP or is it the server?" argument during an outage.
Yes. Business One on Microsoft SQL Server runs on Windows Server, which we support as part of our wider server and storage work — patching, SQL backups, performance and hardware. If you are considering moving from the SQL version to the HANA version, we size and build the HANA server and your partner handles the data migration.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the Linux platform SAP lists for the Business One, version for SAP HANA server components, typically the SLES for SAP Applications edition. The exact supported SLES version depends on your Business One and HANA release, so we confirm it against SAP's Business One Platform Support Matrix before building or upgrading anything.
SLES for SAP Applications is the SUSE edition built for SAP workloads. It adds SAP-specific tuning through saptune, the high-availability extension for clustering HANA, and a longer support window per service pack, so production SAP systems are not forced into upgrades as often. For HANA in production it is almost always the right choice.
Yes, in a planned way. SLES 12 is past general support and only receives fixes under paid long-term service-pack support. Moving to SLES 15 is the usual path and is often combined with a HANA revision update in one maintenance event. We check SAP's Product Availability Matrix first, because the target OS has to be certified for your exact SAP and HANA versions.
Not until SAP certifies it for your release, and not without planning. SLES 16 changed the versioning to 16.0, 16.1 and so on, and the SAP edition replaced the older SAPHanaSR cluster packages with SAPHanaSR-angi — so HANA high-availability clusters need migrating before an upgrade. SLES 15 remains supported for years, so there is no reason to be first.
Mainstream maintenance for SAP ERP 6.0 ends on 31 December 2027, with optional extended maintenance to the end of 2030 at a premium. S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, so moving means new sizing, SAP-certified hardware or cloud instances, a development-quality-production landscape and a backup design for HANA. Building that early keeps the infrastructure off the project's critical path.
Yes — both Microsoft Azure and AWS offer SAP-certified virtual machines for HANA. What varies is which certified instance sizes are available in each region, including the UAE regions. We confirm availability for your size before recommending a region, and weigh it against latency, data residency and the cost of running on-premises. See cloud solutions.
With HANA's own data backups plus continuous log backups, so the database can be recovered to a specific point in time. Those backups should stream through Backint to an SAP-certified tool or be written to a separate backup target, then copied off-site with at least one immutable copy. A plain disk or VM copy of a running HANA server is not a reliable backup on its own.
Almost certainly the log volume filled up. HANA keeps its transaction logs until they have been backed up; if log backups stop, the log area fills, and once it is full the database stops accepting changes. It is one of the most common HANA outages and is prevented by monitoring log backups and log-volume usage — part of every AMC and managed contract we run.
An AMC gives you scheduled preventive maintenance and break-fix support — ideal if you have an internal IT person. Managed SAP infrastructure adds continuous monitoring, monthly patching, daily backup verification, quarterly restore tests and monthly reporting, with us as the single point of contact between your users, your SAP partner and the hardware vendors. Both are annual, quoted in AED.
Our support desk runs Monday to Friday, with emergency assistance arranged outside those hours under the contract. Planned maintenance — patching, upgrades, restore tests — is scheduled for evenings or weekends so SAP users are not interrupted. The response times that apply to your systems are written into the contract rather than promised on a web page.
Yes. We start with the free health check, document what exists, and fix the highest-risk items before taking on the contract. Inherited SAP servers almost always have at least one surprise — an unsupported OS, a backup that has not worked for months, or credentials that only the previous supplier knew.
About this page. SAP and SUSE lifecycle dates and product capabilities were reviewed in October 2026 and are described in general terms; supported versions, maintenance dates and certified platforms change, and what applies to your systems depends on your exact releases and subscriptions. Nifty Information Technology LLC provides infrastructure support for SAP environments and works alongside clients' SAP partners — we make no claim to SAP or SUSE partner status, and we name only the HPE Partner Ready programme for hardware. SAP, SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business One are trademarks of SAP SE; SUSE is a trademark of SUSE LLC. Everything quoted for your environment is confirmed in writing before you commit.
The free SAP infrastructure health check covers your SUSE and HANA versions, support status, patch level, capacity, security and backups — including whether a restore would actually work. Written report ranked by risk, yours to keep either way, with AMC and managed options quoted in AED alongside it.
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