I am still puzzled by the fact that so many folks in the SAP ecosystem worldwide are still unaware of or are not educated on the topic of SAP HANA TDI. The name alone is misleading. TDI (Tailored Datacenter Integration) is a silly name for something most of us have been doing since decades. Building our own SAP system with the hardware components we prefer; to achieve the business benefits that justify the system’s existence in the first place. This is true for SAP HANA just as much as for all earlier SAP systems. Yes, it is an in-memory database and a really cool platform, but it is also just another system requiring a Server, network, and storage. SAP HANA is just another workload in your data centers. So, let me clear – TDI is supported!!! TDI is supported!!! TDI is supported!!! And yes, also for production workloads – since nearly 3 years now!!!
Granted, SAP HANA has specific requirements due to its in-memory nature, but they are easily met by following well established and documented rules. To ensure that we all benefit from the promised functionality and speed of SAP HANA, SAP has defined specific KPIs that each component has to meet. And so, all HW vendors need to certify their components to ensure these standards are met.
So, why on earth would you deploy an SAP HANA appliance that is dedicated to only SAP HANA workloads, that you cannot share with other applications, that you need more than one of for all your non-production systems, that requires special skills to maintain and operate, and that does not change easily as your requirements change or the processor type needs to be upgraded?
SAP maintains a SAP HANA Product Availability Matrix for your reference.

SAP HANA TDI certified
SAP HANA TDI has been announced on the last day of Sapphire in May 2013, which makes TDI now 3 years old. EMC & Virtustream together are proud providing the platform for about 900 productive SAP HANA customers, most of which run on TDI deployed SAP HANA systems. TDI is the only way SAP HANA will be widely adopted in the long run.

HANA TDI mainstream

 

I had the pleasure to write a business white paper on this topic together with Antonio Freitas, which can be referred to here. You find plenty of help in the document to win your TDI discussion

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TDI mainstream part 2

 

 

And we recently published the second chapter of this whitepaper jointly with Andrew Chen here, which gives you a deeper technical understanding of TDI and its choices.

 

 

 

We have also created a SAP HANA TDI “cheat sheet” here, which summarizes all EMC related SAP HANA TDI choices in a very concise format. All of these documents work actually on any mobile device, to make it easy for you. Or just google SAP HANA TDI and you find a ton of documentation and FAQs also from SAP.
TDI is not rocket science!
Maybe I should create a T-Shirt and give it away which says “Yes, TDI is supported!!!” Meet my EMC team mates at #SAPPHIRENOW in Orlando at booth 434 from 5/17 – 5/19 or contact me via twitter @cstreubert.

Please see my live discussion with Silicon Angle’s John Furrier during #SAPPHIRENOW 2016 from 5/18/2016 on this topic.