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special feature
SAP InSIder | Virtualization
S-�
Thanks to improved tools and technologies, workers today
are incredibly efficient. But with each new labor-saving tool
we’ve thrown at employees, the IT landscape that supports
those technologies has grown exponentially. When exactly
did the “server room” become a “server farm”?
Why can’t IT systems be as cost-efficient as the average
workforce? What many companies don’t realize is that
they can. One of the major technological trends to enable
this efficiency is virtualization — and not just server
virtualization, as this technology can also be used in other
IT infrastructure components, including storage devices
and network resources. Companies are increasingly
turning to virtualization to reduce IT costs and boost
their bottom lines.
So what impact can virtualization have for SAP customers?
Here are three scenarios that can keep any IT manager up
at night, areas where a virtualized environment could have
a direct impact on the bottom line:
Overbuilding IT systems to accommodate occasional
peaks of service, such as a month-end or year-end
closing. When designing an IT landscape, there is a
tendency to size it for peak use. In some cases, this
means that dozens or hundreds of servers sit idle for
most of the year, waiting for those few days a month
when they are called into service. And as they sit, they
draw power, take up real estate, and require cooling.
But imagine an environment — a virtual environment —
where you appropriate server resources that are not
being used by other applications. This concept makes it
possible to easily balance performance peaks across
server resources.
Maintaining servers 24x7 for occasionally used appli-
cations, such as training systems. Every IT landscape
has servers devoted to applications such as training
systems that are only used occasionally or during con-
centrated periods. With virtualization, you can create a
“system parking lot,” where applications can be “parked”
on the storage system and started up again on a free
resource. Don’t need it for two weeks? Then just park it.
Supporting separate “day” and “off-hours” applications.
There are many applications, such as business intelli-
gence (BI) solutions, that have different performance
patterns during daily and nightly operations. During the
night, for example, batch jobs could be running, while
during the day, dialog users might want to access a
fast-reacting system. By employing virtualization, the
Roland Wartenberg Enterprise Virtualization
StrategistSAP Labs, LLC
SAP and Virtualization: Partnering to Increase Flexibility, Improve Scalability, and Reduce TCO
Gunther SchmalzhafProduct Manager Virtualization and
Adaptive ComputingSAP AG
InsideS-3 |Coping with Growing Demand and a Shrinking IT Budget?
Fujitsu Siemens Computers
S-6 |Dramatically Improve the Responsiveness of Your Data Center Egenera
S-9 |Open Up New Possibilities for Your SAP Landscape VMware
S-11 |Going Virtual? Novell Helps Companies Do It Right Novell, Inc.
S-13|Looking for Cost-Effective, Enterprise-Class Technology? Red Hat
S-15|Want Higher ROI and Increased Agility from Your SAP Infrastructure? Microsoft
S-16|Take Virtualization to the Next Level Sun Microsystems
S-17|Citrix End-to-End Virtualization Helps Deliver the Full Value of SAP Applications Citrix Systems, Inc.
S-18|The Unisys Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP Environments Gets Customers Back on Track Fast Unisys Corporation
Þ
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required server and application resources can easily be
assigned for the different requirements.
Virtualization abstracts computing resources and enables
an IT organization to manage its resources more efficiently.
SAP and its technology partners have provided virtualiza-
tion technology in several layers of the SAP landscape and
the underlying IT infrastructure.
Responding to Customers: The Adaptive Computing Controller Four years ago, SAP introduced the adaptive computing
concept, where a virtualization layer resides between an
SAP system and its underlying operating system (OS) — in
essence, the SAP system is decoupled from the underlying
OS. SAP then provided the Adaptive Computing Controller,
a central tool for managing the SAP systems in an adaptive
computing landscape. The Adaptive Computing Controller,
available within SAP NetWeaver, enables SAP customers
to manage SAP systems on servers, within networks, and
in storage, nimbly assigning resources in the landscape as
needed. With the Adaptive Computing Controller, customers
can reduce the complexity, increase the flexibility, and, by
extension, reduce the cost of running their SAP systems.
The Adaptive Computing Controller evolved as a result
of feedback we received from SAP customers who insisted
that we simplify the management of SAP systems. At the
same time, customers demanded that SAP applications
perform more and more complex business processes and
offer more powerful functionality. Also, they wanted their
SAP systems to be more flexible, to easily react to changing
business needs. And they wanted to reduce overall costs.
Our approach, therefore, was to create the Adaptive
Almost from the start, SAP has been working closely with
its partners and customers in the virtualization space.
The Adaptive Computing Council, a community SAP
founded together with its partners in October 2003,
primarily focuses on making adaptive computing avail-
able on all partners’ respective IT infrastructure plat-
forms. A large partner community meets regularly with
SAP’s adaptive computing team to provide appropriate
adaptive computing solutions for SAP customers. An
important result of this collaboration is the Adaptive
Computing Compliance Test, which partners can per-
form to prove that their components can be used in an
adaptive computing landscape. For more information
about this test, see https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/
adaptive → Compliance Tests.
Another community is the Enterprise Virtualization
Community, founded in April 2008 by AMD, Cisco, Citrix,
EMC, HP, Intel, NetApp, Novell, Red Hat, SAP, Sun, and
VMware (F5 joined the community in June 2008). This
community brings together the major virtualization
vendors to discuss strategies, concepts, and possible
solutions around business-driven virtualization, a tech-
nical strategy that allows customers to run scenarios
completely integrated with a virtualization infrastructure.
In addition to collaborating with partners in these
communities, SAP also supports virtualization through
in-person events. This April, SAP will host the third
SAP Virtualization Week, which will bring customers,
partners, and SAP together to learn about customers’
experiences running SAP solutions in virtualized envi-
ronments. There will also be opportunities to review the
latest products and technologies from the partner com-
munity and see how SAP is working with them to offer
integrated solutions to joint customers.
Another strong example of SAP’s commitment to
collaboration with its partners is the SAP Co-Innovation
Lab. The mission of the lab is to enable our customers
and partners to join SAP to collaboratively work on joint
projects and promote new and innovative business
solutions and technologies.
For example, NetApp, VMware, and SAP recently ran a
collaborative project at the SAP Co-Innovation Lab to
create and validate a disaster recovery solution using
virtualization. The project was a success, and has allowed
us to deliver a solution that ensures business continuity
while at the same time reduces management costs. This
disaster recovery solution is easily tested, centrally
managed, and completely automated — and with it, an
organization can develop disaster recovery procedures
that match its specific environment requirements.
After opening the first SAP Co-Innovation Lab in Palo
Alto, California, in June 2008 (together with HP, Intel,
NetApp, and Cisco as founding sponsors), SAP recently
launched a second lab in Tokyo.
Embracing Partner Collaboration in the Virtualization Space
Article continues on page S-19
We’re certain that,
using the Adaptive
Computing
Controller, SAP
customers can
reduce the total
number of servers
needed to run
their applications.
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special feature
SAP InSIder | Virtualization
S-�
Virtualization has been widely touted as a way to cut costs
in the data center — a goal that’s become increasingly
important in recent economic times. IT managers are facing
heightened business demands, leading to a boost in the
number of servers, operating system (OS) copies, network
ports, storage capacity, and applications required to meet
business needs.
In addition, IT faces progressively more aggressive service-
level agreements (SLAs). As these demands grow, however,
IT budgets are being trimmed, meaning that IT managers
must find new ways to increase the efficiency of operating,
extending, and maintaining their data centers.
But how? We at Fujitsu Siemens Computers believe that
virtualization is a key approach to dealing with the growing
number of components in a modern data center — and their
associated complexity. To help companies take advantage
of the benefits of virtualization, we offer our FlexFrame
platform (see sidebar below).
FlexFrame for SAP solutions provides an operating envi-
ronment with a holistic approach to data center manage-
ment that enhances the way customers set up, operate, and
Coping with Growing Demand and a Shrinking IT Budget?FlexFrameandVMwareDriveVirtualizationinSAPDataCenterstoPeakCostEfficiency
Bernhard FriessBusiness Development
Manager — SAP and OracleFujitsu Siemens Computers
maintain their data centers and resources — such as serv-
ers, networks, storage, and applications. FlexFrame sup-
ports full virtualization and allows companies to run
physical and virtual servers within the same single, shared
environment.
FlexFrame for SAP Solutions: Features and BenefitsThere are many benefits to running our FlexFrame virtual-
ization solution. Let’s look at a few:
Increased flexibility and server utilization. FlexFrame,
in conjunction with the Adaptive Computing Controller
tool from SAP, enables both server and application virtu-
alization — which involves separating SAP applications
and the associated databases from the underlying OS
and server hardware. With this virtualization, companies
can more flexibly use both virtual and physical servers
since they can move applications among servers and run
any service on any server. This means, for example,
that companies can do more testing during an upgrade
In 2001, the average SAP customer ran fewer than 10 SAP applications. However, as SAP broadened its portfolio,
companies began to rely more heavily on these offerings for their business operations. We expected that this would
increase the number of SAP applications running per customer.
To preemptively support these customers, SAP, Network Appliance, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers established
a joint development project. Through the project, SAP developed the Adaptive Computing Controller tool and Fujitsu
Siemens Computers developed the FlexFrame solution. And now that predictions have come to fruition — with some
data centers reporting that they run up to 100 SAP applications per customer — FlexFrame customers report that
our solution enables them to run their systems with fewer resources than they would otherwise have been able to.
In the meantime, VMware evolved to be a leading platform for server virtualization. Running SAP software on
VMware’s virtualized platform allows customers to share one physical server among multiple virtual servers and thus
multiple applications. FlexFrame supports these virtual servers with its capabilities to run heterogeneous server environ-
ments. These capabilities also seamlessly support virtual servers — like those run by VMware — as separate models.
FlexFrame for SAP Solutions: A Brief History
Virtualization is a
key approach to
dealing with the
growing number of
components in a
modern data
center — and
their associated
complexity.
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project without having to install additional dedicated
virtual or physical servers.
Reduced efforts to operate and maintain servers. For
OS provisioning, FlexFrame provides companies with the
unique concept of a shared operating system. This means
that all servers in a server pool can run off of a single
copy of the OS whereas, traditionally, companies would
have to make copies of the OS for each server that was
running it — in turn increasing the effort required to
operate and maintain these servers.
FlexFrame’s shared OS concept addresses this depen-
dency on multiple OS copies by reducing the number of
required OS copies, and helps companies reduce the time
and effort needed for OS operation and maintenance.
Even hundreds of servers can easily be driven with less
than five OS copies.
Lower costs associated with network ports. Most data
centers build individual concepts and infrastructures for
their networks. However, the cost of operating and main-
taining such networks can become unwieldy as the num-
ber of ports within that network grows. FlexFrame has a
fully standardized, redundant, built-in network concept,
which can be operated and maintained automatically for
minimal additional cost and effort (see Figure �). Servers
and storage systems are connected easily through exter-
nal ports to the data center’s back end.
With this setup, even 100 servers, which would tradi-
tionally require at least 200 network ports, can be con-
nected through only a handful of external ports. This is
another strong example of where FlexFrame can cut
costs as compared to traditional environments.
High system availability without the need to imple-
ment clusters. FlexFrame contains a unique, agent-
based concept to help your company maintain high
application availability. This agent is built with specific
knowledge of the service types in SAP environments.
As part of the FlexFrame-enabled shared OS, the agent
starts automatically on each and every server at start-up
time and monitors the local server. When an application
starts, the agent will automatically detect the application
type and other specific attributes, like IP address or sys-
tem identifier. Then, if a local error occurs, the agent will
fix it — by restarting the affected process or the entire
application, for example.
Additionally, the FlexFrame control station is able to
realize when a server dies and will restart the affected
application automatically on a spare server. Thus, Flex-
Frame guarantees the kind of availability level for appli-
cations that was traditionally promised by clusters, but
without requiring the extra effort for building and main-
taining these clusters.
Greater return on investment. Some customers have
reduced costs by as much as two-thirds (see Figure 2)1
since installing FlexFrame. One company, for example,
used to run most of its SAP applications on a traditional
� Theinformationforthisgraphicwastakenfromthe“CommercialViabilityofanAdaptiveComputingControllerSolutionfortheSAPBusinessSuitefromFujitsuSiemensComputers”study,whichwasperformedbyBearingPoint.
FiguRe 1 u Based on
customer feedback,
Fujitsu Siemens
has found that
companies using
FlexFrame require
dramatically less
effort to set up,
operate, and main-
tain network ports
than they do in
traditional
environments
With FlexFrame,
even hundreds of
servers can easily
be driven with
less than five
OS copies.
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Unix configuration with virtualization capabilities built
into the CPU, operating system, and even storage access.
When this customer moved half of its SAP systems
(in terms of resource consumption) to the FlexFrame
platform, the result was an impressive reduction of
operating and maintenance costs, which decreased by
over 60%!
Running VMware on Top of FlexFrame for SAP Solutions: A unique CombinationWhen customers run VMware on the FlexFrame platform,
they can reap some unique benefits. One such benefit
comes to light for companies using third-party, virtualized
middleware or databases. In the event of a failure, some of
these third-party providers require their customers to
reproduce that failure on a physical environment. In such
cases, customers need to complete a virtual-to-physical
(V2P) server migration. This could be quite an undertaking
in a traditional IT environment.
When running FlexFrame with VMware, on the other
hand, companies can simply stop the affected database on
the virtual server and restart it on a physical server. Then,
after the affected system has been fixed, it is just as easy
to stop the database on the physical server and move it to
a virtual one — making the normally time-consuming
physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration as easy as issuing a stop
and start command.
Additionally, the combination of VMware and FlexFrame
allows customers to leverage our holistic and evolutionary
approach; we cover the entire data center and all the
required resource types — both physical and virtualized —
that are needed to run SAP applications.
Learn MoreFujitsu Siemens Computers has more than 200 FlexFrame
customers, and FlexFrame’s virtualization capabilities
provide them all with a golden opportunity to increase
their efficiency in operating, extending, and maintaining
data centers to a peak level.
For more information on FlexFrame for SAP solutions,
please visit www.fujitsu-siemens.com/flexframe or email
[email protected] . n
FiguRe 2 t According
to a study conduct-
ed by BearingPoint,
customers running
FlexFrame have
seen a decrease
in their TCO as
compared to those
using a more
traditional, physi-
cal infrastructure
How Does Virtualization Fit In with Fujitsu Siemens Computers’ Dynamic Data Center Concept?Fujitsu Siemens Computers Dynamic Data Center
(DDC) is a concept for a next-generation hardware
and software architecture that focuses on end-user
services and service-level agreements. This combi-
nation enables on-demand computing, and virtual-
ization is an essential layer in this DDC concept.
The ideal DDC uses virtualization, automation, and
integration technologies to move companies onto a
service-oriented architecture (SOA), in which com-
puters and database resources can be dynamically
assigned to applications. This yields increased flexibility
and reliability, as well as a considerable improvement
in the cost-effectiveness of the IT infrastructure.
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special feature
Virtualization | SAP InSIder
For many companies, virtualization has become synony-
mous with hardware consolidation. But it’s much more than
that. Today’s virtualization technologies have the potential
to transform your data center from a technology service
provider to the keystone of a nimble, competitive business
strategy. For enterprises that depend on SAP applications
and business solutions, making the most of virtualization
can mean the difference between keeping pace with the
competition and surpassing it.
The data center infrastructure underlying a multi-tiered
SAP landscape can be complex, especially for companies
with extensive volumes of automated business data and
processes. This infrastructure — made up of client and server
hardware, operating systems, storage systems, and net-
works — provides the computing environment necessary for
running SAP applications.
But companies can fall short of achieving the levels of
performance, availability, and scalability they expect from
their infrastructures because they rely on costly, time-
consuming practices, such as maintaining static server
configurations, over-provisioning resources, and employing
labor-intensive maintenance procedures. Consequently,
data center infrastructures become segmented, brittle, and
difficult to manage over time. And the budgetary and com-
petitive costs of this strategy can only grow because of the
need to support continuously changing business demands.
Enterprises that want to improve IT agility and resilience
should treat their data center infrastructure not as a loosely
connected set of computing silos, but as shared pools of
virtualized resources that can instantly satisfy the perfor-
mance and availability requirements of complex business
applications. This approach is not about virtualization for
the sake of virtualization, but rather an intelligent use
of virtualization technologies combined with an intuitive
management framework. The resulting infrastructure estab-
lishes the foundation for the reliable, dynamic data center.
enabling the Reliable, Dynamic Data CenterTo help companies build a reliable, dynamic data center,
Egenera offers several software-based capabilities (see
Figure �). PAN Manager Software by Egenera is an advanced
management suite that aggregates servers into pools of
processing resources — just as a storage area network (SAN)
creates virtual pools of data storage. This approach provides
IT administrators the flexibility to assign SAP components
to servers based on processor and memory requirements,
without having to worry about hardware or software
configurations. PAN Manager automatically provisions servers
with the appropriate software stacks, storage resources,
and network identities.
Additionally, PAN Manager’s processing pools can contain
both physical and virtual servers, giving administrators the
flexibility to manage a combined SAP infrastructure using a
single set of tools. PAN Manager also enables applications to
retain their bindings to network addresses and storage logi-
cal units, regardless of which server hosts the application.
Dramatically Improve the Responsiveness of Your Data CenterSimplifyYourITInfrastructurewithPANManager
Christine CrandellExecutive Vice President of
Global Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer
Egenera
FiguRe 1 q
PAn Manager
provides virtual
infrastructure
management
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PAN Manager is built on an integrated, two-tiered frame-
work. The bottom tier combines three virtualization functions
that together form an integrated, shared processing area
network (PAN):
The intelligent communication fabric is an intra-PAN
communication path that transmits storage, network,
and control data internally among system components
and between servers and shared external interfaces. The
fabric offers a higher throughput rate than is typically
found in data center networks. SAP applications can
achieve accelerated performance with this fabric because
TCP/IP streams flow across it without leaving the PAN.
All physical storage and data network interfaces accessed
by the servers within a PAN reside in separate, redun-
dant I/O controller nodes. The controllers, together with
the fabric, provide PAN Manager’s I/O virtualization
capability. With this capability, all storage and network
I/O is abstracted, thus ensuring secure, priority-based
data flows between servers and their storage and network
resources. I/O virtualization lets IT administrators treat
physical servers as logical entities, without the need to
cable, configure, and manage individual interface devices.
PAN Manager does not utilize local storage or state infor-
mation on the servers. Instead, each server operates in a
stateless environment, which removes the static configura-
tion information from the servers that would require
cumbersome backup and restore operations, or servers to
be manually configured. Operating system and application
images, network names, and addresses are stored within
the SAN and invoked when the server is booted.
A unique element of PAN Manager is an XML-based facility
that lets IT administrators create logical server definitions.
These definitions include all of the information needed to
automatically assign an SAP application service to any
available physical or virtual server without configuring the
hardware or installing a software stack. This capability enables
IT administrators to provision servers and allocate applica-
tions in minutes, ensuring optimal use of computing equip-
ment and reducing the number of servers in the data center.
Manage Processes Within a Virtualized infrastructureIn addition to its infrastructure virtualization technology,
PAN Manager offers four component modules that both
automate and simplify infrastructure management:
PAN Builder Software by Egenera provides foundation
management functionality for configuring, monitoring, and
controlling the PAN. With PAN Builder, IT administrators can
assign pools of physical resources, virtual environments,
and network and storage assets where and when needed.
PAN Server Portability Software by Egenera allows
administrators to migrate software running on one server
to an alternate server for both scheduled and unscheduled
events. This can help companies recover from a server out-
age or scale an application in response to spikes in usage.
In the case of failover, each server’s identity, including
network and storage mappings, is automatically preserved
and reestablished without user intervention.
PAN Portability Software by Egenera helps enterprise
operations reliably recover from data center outages.
It enables administrators to bring the data center back
online within minutes after a failure — without complex
run book scripts or costly backup and restore operations.
PAN Portability eliminates the need for one-to-one
backup sites while enabling rapid recovery that is
consistently correct.
PAN vmBuilder Software by Egenera seamlessly inte-
grates virtual machine technology into PAN Manager, allow-
ing administrators to fully manage a combined physical and
virtual server environment without having to juggle separate
management tools.
is a Static infrastructure Holding You Back?Most companies rely on unnecessarily expensive and com-
plex data center infrastructures to support their applica-
tions. The static nature of these infrastructures has several
unfortunate side effects, including:
Egenera: Embracing the Strength of PartnershipEgenera has been an SAP global technology partner since 2005. In that
time, SAP customers around the world have turned to PAN Manager to help
them manage their data center infrastructures. Egenera has received certi-
fication for SAP solutions running on major operating systems, including
Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
Egenera also maintains SAP Customer Competence Centers (SAP CCCs)
in North America, Europe, and Asia. In addition, Egenera has received
the Adaptive Computing certificate of conformity for integration with
SAP NetWeaver on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
For more information about Egenera’s partnership with SAP, please visit
www.sap.com/ecosystem/customers/directories/technology/egenera.epx.
PAn Manager
brings high
availability and
disaster recovery
to all applications.
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Backup systems that are useful after a system or site
outage, but unproductive the rest of the time
The need to purchase costly, over-provisioned servers
in anticipation of future increases in utilization
Difficulty synchronizing test and development configu-
rations with production configurations
An inability to repurpose servers based on workload
schedule
Disaster recovery systems that are available for only a
portion of the applications
Lengthy downtime for hardware and operating system
updates
The bottom line is that a static infrastructure inhibits a
company’s ability to add and modify automated business
processes on demand. With PAN Manager, IT administrators
can quickly add new SAP functionality, matching servers
to the processor and memory requirements of new compo-
nents. And when spikes in user demand call for more
resources, those components can be moved to higher-
performing servers in minutes, either through manual
intervention or in automatic response to utilization policies.
There is no need for wasteful over-provisioning.
Of particular concern in a static infrastructure is the
issue of managing a growing army of backup servers. High
availability and a solid disaster recovery system are critical
to maintaining user productivity and business continuance.
But in a static infrastructure, backup servers require costly
and time-consuming maintenance procedures to ensure
they remain synchronized with production servers. This
synchronization process is prone to error and likely to
inhibit the rapid transition to the backup systems. Further-
more, backup servers cannot be used for other processing
duties, leaving costly equipment sitting idle.
PAN Manager, however, brings high availability and
disaster recovery to all applications. PAN Server Portability
provides an N+1 high availability feature that lets IT admin-
istrators designate one server to back up any component
that may fail. PAN Server Portability uses this same tech-
nology to provide N+1 disaster recovery. A single disaster
recovery site, for instance, can function as backup for
multiple production sites. PAN Manager automatically
archives and synchronizes the logical server definitions,
ensuring that the failover operation will replicate the
production configuration exactly. And these backup servers
need not sit unused. Egenera customers typically use disas-
ter recovery systems for production or development work-
loads until they are called upon for recovery operations.
Additionally, many IT departments run their back-end
SAP databases on physical servers while placing applica-
tion services on virtualized servers. To support this mixed
configuration, PAN Manager works with leading server
virtualization software products, enabling IT administrators
to manage both physical and virtual servers using the same
tools and procedures and sharing the same pools of network
and storage resources.
ConclusionPAN Manager establishes the dynamic foundation that is
necessary to sustain a resilient SAP application environment.
The result is a data center that responds to changing busi-
ness needs while lowering costs and easing management
complexity. To learn more about Egenera’s PAN Manager,
visit www.egenera.com. n
Maintaining a Resilient SAP Environment: PAN Manager Use CasesUpgrading HardwareTask: Move an SAP component from a dual-core to a quad-core processor.
Operations: Insert a quad-core server into the chassis. Use PAN Manager to
automatically move an entire software stack to a new server.
Benefits: The server is automatically connected to storage and network
resources. PAN Manager installs new hardware drivers and ensures that the
identical software stack is moved to the new server.
Cloning an SAP SystemTask: Create a duplicate SAP production system for training or for deter-
mining problems.
Operations: Create a copy of the SAP databases. Copy SAP software con-
figuration profiles using PAN Manager. Adapt the configuration profiles as
necessary for the new environment and databases. Identify and allocate
physical servers. Start the configuration using PAN Manager.
Benefits: Clones the entire SAP system in minimal time without requiring
physical configuration. Duplicates the production environment and main-
tains all network associations among SAP components. Servers can be
rapidly repurposed once the clone system is no longer needed.
Adding New SAP ApplicationsTask: Add a financial application to the SAP landscape.
Operations: Create logical server definitions for the application, including
operating, network identities, and storage resources.
Benefits: The server definition need only be specified once and then used
to migrate the new application into production.
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special feature
SAP InSIder | Virtualization
S-�
The benefits of virtualization are clear: By running several
operating systems and applications at the same time
on a single computer, you can dynamically rebalance
applications while increasing system resource utilization
across test, development, quality assurance, training, and
production environments. You can also save money on
hardware, space, and power needs. So how can you start
taking advantage of these benefits?
VMware Infrastructure is a flexible and cost-effective
industry-standard hardware virtualization suite for SAP
solution implementations. With it, your SAP solutions-based
environments can cost less and be more productive than
they can within a purely physical infrastructure. VMware
Infrastructure helps companies apply the full range of
virtualization benefits — from server consolidation and
containment to business process and data center automa-
tion — to all sizes of SAP deployments. SAP customers are
already using VMware’s solutions to:
Optimize data center resources
Ease system upgrades, implementations, and platform
migrations
Meet service-level agreements (SLAs)
Support service delivery to the business
Let’s look at each of these opportunities in more detail.
Optimize Data Center ResourcesIn a typical SAP deployment, every layer of the environment
is hosted on dedicated physical servers, which are often
underutilized. By enabling companies to run multiple
applications on virtual machines, VMware Infrastructure
helps companies cut back on the number of physical servers
they need. This virtualization technology also addresses
one of the increasingly painful costs of underutilized
hardware resources: high energy consumption. Energy
costs are on the rise, and many data centers simply lack
1.
2.
3.
4.
the power or space to continue supporting large numbers
of physical servers.
In fact, industry analysts estimate that the annual cost
of powering a server will soon exceed its acquisition cost.
By enabling server consolidation and reducing server
sprawl, VMware virtualization solutions allow users to
dramatically cut hardware and energy costs while increas-
ing hardware utilization.
ease System upgrades, implementations, and Platform MigrationsUpgrades present a golden opportunity to move system
landscapes from older, proprietary platforms to cost-
effective, industry-standard servers and operating systems.
But these upgrades must be thoroughly planned and
tested to ensure the smoothest and least disruptive
transition possible.
An important task in any upgrade project is setting up
environments — whether it’s the initial environment setup
or ad hoc deployments of new environments for test or
development purposes. Providing new environments is
especially important if the project includes a migration or
an operating system upgrade. In a traditional native
deployment, this process tends to be time consuming and
can cause project delays, especially if the available hard-
ware is not sufficient.
VMware virtual machine templates allow you to enforce
consistency among application instances. You can build an
archive of development and test environments that you can
deploy at a moment’s notice, eliminating time-consuming,
manual tasks associated with setting up system configura-
tions. This also makes it easier to clone environments for
ad hoc or production purposes.
Using VMware software, you can also take snapshots
that capture the state of a virtual machine before applying
and testing changes to SAP code or the operating system.
You can then roll back to a known good state in minutes,
allowing more tests cycles in a shorter time window.
Open Up New Possibilities for Your SAP LandscapeVMware’sVirtualizationOfferingsHelpYouOptimizeYourSoftwareInvestments
Christoph ReisbeckDirector
Global SAP AllianceVMware
SAP provides full
support for its
solutions in 64-bit
Windows-based
and Linux-based
production
environments
that are running
on VMware eSX.
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With these snapshots, you can also make platform migra-
tions easier. These migrations can take several hours and
involve extensive testing and tuning to minimize risk of
failure. VMware snapshots can capture the state of an
application at multiple intermediate points during the
process, making it easy to test sub-phases of the upgrade
under multiple scenarios.
In case of problems, snapshots also enable a quick roll-
back to the pre-upgrade state, providing worst-case insur-
ance that your environment can be rapidly returned to a
functional state, limiting any potential downside to the
business.
Meet Service-Level AgreementsSAP application owners, Basis administrators, and IT staff
are responsible for meeting service-level agreements that
guarantee availability and performance targets for solution
users. VMware has several virtualization solutions that
work alongside SAP-provided functionality to deliver high
availability for critical business functions and improved
infrastructure and application performance:
In the event of physical server failure, VMware High
Availability automatically restarts virtual machines on
servers that have spare capacity, minimizing downtime
and service disruption and eliminating the need for
dedicated standby hardware. It also provides high
availability benefits for SAP environments without the
complexity of setting up cluster configurations.
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler dynamically
balances computing capacity across hardware resources
that are aggregated into logical resource pools. It
monitors utilization and intelligently allocates available
resources among virtual machines based on predefined
rules that reflect business needs and priorities. When
load increases on an SAP virtual machine, the VMware
Distributed Resource Scheduler automatically redistrib-
utes virtual machines across physical servers to ensure
resource availability so applications can continue to
perform at expected levels.
VMware VMotion enables the live migration of virtual
machines from one physical server to another with
minimal downtime. With VMotion, you can perform hard-
ware maintenance without scheduling system downtime
that disrupts business operations. Your IT staff can do
maintenance work during regular business hours, rather
than during late-night or weekend shifts.
With VMware Site Recovery Manager, you can implement
a unified disaster recovery process without investing in
an exact replica of the hardware. This solution integrates
with storage replication software from third-party storage
vendors to eliminate complex manual recovery steps and
enable nondisruptive testing of recovery plans, making
failover and recovery rapid, reliable, affordable, and
manageable.
Support Service Delivery to the BusinessVMware Infrastructure enables companies to deploy service-
oriented architecture (SOA) rapidly and cost effectively.
Consider a system that operates within set business param-
eters — at a certain number of SAP transactions per second,
for example. The system can use VMware Infrastructure
capabilities to move resources dynamically into the appli-
cation resource pool as load increases, or to shift resources
away from the pool as load diminishes.
Mergers and acquisitions, for example, can present a
host of challenges to IT organizations, particularly when it
comes to maintaining the integrity of data and transactions
in financial, customer, and other operational systems,
building communication among application systems,
transitioning data and users from one application to
another, and so forth. VMware virtualization software
reduces the cost and complexity of merging disparate IT
environments by converting legacy applications and data-
base environments to virtual machines. These virtualized
workloads can run on the latest industry-standard servers
and are easily incorporated into the existing landscape.
Furthermore, as you integrate the acquired company’s data
and processes into the existing SAP systems, the virtualized
architecture provides flexibility to effectively address the
increased load on the systems.
Learn MoreWith rising power costs, shrinking budgets, and increasing
pressure to do more with less, IT organizations would be
well served to consider virtualization. Many companies are
already using VMware virtualization tools and solutions for
their SAP environments.
Visit www.vmware.com/sap to read case studies, down-
load white papers, and learn more about the benefits of
VMware Infrastructure. n
VMware virtual-
ization solutions
allow users to
dramatically cut
hardware and
energy costs
while increasing
hardware
utilization.
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Virtualization is a hot topic in today’s data centers and a top
priority for many organizations. Enterprises worldwide —
including those that run SAP solutions — are using virtual-
ization to increase the efficiency, utilization, and flexibility
of their existing data centers. Virtualization can also
dramatically reduce your IT purchasing, provisioning, and
maintenance costs by consolidating business applications
and services and enabling you to respond more dynami-
cally to rapidly changing resource and application needs.
However, if a virtualization solution is deployed incor-
rectly, it can wreak havoc. With virtualization, you have the
power to move data resources in an instant — but the wrong
move can actually hinder user performance and increase
management costs. Without careful planning and the
right tools, virtual machines and hypervisors can rapidly
proliferate with an IT landscape, leading to poor resource
utilization and excessive IT overhead — the very problems
that virtualization is meant to solve. This makes capacity
planning and modeling crucial to avoid resource bottle-
necks and virtual server sprawl.
That’s where Novell comes in. Novell delivers a complete
infrastructure, with solutions and support for virtualization,
workload migration, and workload lifecycle management
from one source — for both Linux and Windows.
Optimize the infrastructure Supporting Your SAP ApplicationsVirtualizing your SAP environment requires a new approach
to managing your infrastructure — including upfront planning,
workload lifecycle analysis, and continuous monitoring — to
optimize IT resources while ensuring that your SAP applica-
tions continue to run seamlessly. Some SAP workloads run
more efficiently on physical hardware, while other work-
loads run better on virtualized systems.
With virtualization solutions from Novell, you can con-
solidate the right SAP applications from multiple underused
servers onto one powerful server. Our core strength in the
virtualization area is our ability to assess, plan, and move
physical workloads into virtual machines and back to a
physical environment as required. We can also take a snap-
shot of your environment so you can test those virtual
machines with minimal downtime and risk of failure.
With Novell virtualization solutions, you can remotely
measure server assets and workload resource utilization
trends to identify ideal candidates for consolidation (see
Figure �). By completely automating the measurement,
analysis, capacity planning, and movement of thousands
of servers into virtual environments, you’ll dramatically
accelerate your server consolidation and virtualization
projects, reducing the time it takes to complete these
projects from years to weeks.
Protect Your SAP Applications: The Broader Business Case for VirtualizationMany organizations embark on virtualization projects simply
to consolidate their servers. However, as these projects
mature, we’ve seen the value proposition of virtualization
Going Virtual? Novell Helps Companies Do It RightMaketheMostofYourVirtualizedSAPEnvironment Sabine Soellheim
Solution Marketing Manager, Virtualization
Novell, Inc.
FiguRe 1 p novell’s virtualization solution uses partitioning and abstraction,
simultaneously dividing and sharing a computer’s resources; this enables
flexible, highly automated deployments of SAP solutions in the data center
With virtualiza-
tion, you have the
power to move
data resources in
an instant — but
the wrong move
can actually
hinder user
performance and
increase manage-
ment costs.
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shift toward additional benefits for system management,
such as:
Seamless disaster recovery
Reduced planned downtime (through live or quick
migration) for your data center
Faster development efforts
Many companies also employ their virtualization infra-
structure to help ensure business continuity and enhanced
system management. For example, disaster recovery
solutions from PlateSpin, a Novell company, allow you to
replicate a whole server image by streaming it over the
network to an available virtual machine host that has
been allocated as a warm standby system.
This live transfer functionality enables incremental
synchronization at user-defined intervals to maintain
currency between the production environment and the
virtual standby system. In the event of a primary server
outage, the standby system can be activated to immedi-
ately take over the workload while the production server
is being restored. After recovery, you can move the system
back to a physical server or to a virtual machine server.
Not only does user productivity suffer when your data
centers are not consistently available, but the impact can
also extend to customers and vendors, affecting customer
loyalty and damaging marketplace competitiveness.
Employing virtualization solutions for business continuity
— and for the wider benefits these solutions bring — lets you
get more out of your virtualization investment.
Manage Your Virtual SAP environment — AutomaticallyVirtualization solutions can help you cut costs by increasing
server efficiency and agility; however, increased manage-
ment costs could offset these gains if you don’t properly
manage your virtual machines. Effectively managing a
virtualized environment means:
Optimizing the balance between physical and virtual
infrastructures through ongoing workload monitoring
and the automatic consolidation, deconsolidation, and
free movement of server workloads throughout the
network
Analyzing selected servers and streaming them across
the network to the most appropriate physical or virtual
infrastructure, based on server resource supply and
application workload demand
Ensuring that servers are continually allocated to the
most appropriate infrastructure and maximizing perfor-
mance for the most demanding applications while mini-
mizing hardware costs
Integrated management tools from Novell allow you
to manage and provision all of your computing resources
— regardless of whether they’re physical, virtual, or
both. The objective is to create an agile, policy-based
orchestration environment that will automate and facilitate
the management of identities, systems, storage, and
virtual machines.
And while many virtualization management tools only
allow you to manage one hypervisor, Novell delivers auto-
mation and an agile data center by providing a vendor-
agnostic approach. Whether you have already chosen
VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, or nothing at all, Novell can help.
Learn MoreAs an SAP Technology Partner, Novell offers SAP customers
a virtualization environment that supports their SAP
solutions. Our integrated Xen virtualization technology is
officially supported by SAP. As a result, our virtualization
solutions will operate seamlessly with your existing
infrastructure and deliver an integrated suite of tools for
virtualization management and automation.
For more information, please visit www.novell.com/
partners/sap and www.novell.com/virtualization. n
Specialized Service for SAP CustomersBecause your SAP environment is business critical, Novell has created a special offering exclusively for customers
virtualizing their SAP applications using SUSE Linux Enterprise. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority Support
for SAP Applications provides these customers with a single point of entry to Novell support through
SAP Solution Manager. With this, you can streamline issue resolution, reduce complexity, and lower the cost of
owning your Novell virtualization solution. Please visit www.novell.com/products/server/sap.html.
With virtualiza-
tion solutions
from novell, you
can consolidate
the right SAP
applications from
multiple under-
used servers onto
one powerful
server.
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Many companies assume that potential overhead of x86
virtualization technology renders it difficult to deploy with
business-critical applications, such as those offered by SAP.
However, by using the virtualization technologies included
in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, your IT
department can improve IT flexibility without jeopardizing
the performance of the applications that are critical to your
company’s daily operations.
It is an established best practice that a business-
critical application should be protected from hardware
failures. Typically this requires high-availability clustering
and redundant systems. In fact, Red Hat has provided
high-availability clustering (Red Hat Cluster Services) as
a core function of its Enterprise Linux operating system
(OS) since 2002, and it has been used in thousands of
installations.
Adding a virtualization layer in a high-availability cluster
further insulates the application and end users from the
hardware layer. In practice, the result is improved uptime,
faster recovery from failure, and simplified IT maintenance.
On the other hand, introducing additional technologies
into the infrastructure is not without risk. When building
your IT infrastructure, you need to balance performance,
scalability, and complexity to develop a solution that will
meet your business’s needs. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Advanced Platform provides both a leading virtualization
technology and a mature high-availability solution — all in
one package.
Not only does the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating
system scale well on multi-core x86 servers, it also includes
a very low-overhead virtualization layer. Tight integration
with the OS and support for the latest x86/x86_64 hard-
ware enhancements enable Red Hat systems to virtualize
even high-performance applications. The advantages of
a Red Hat solution, in which the OS and the virtualization
layer are tightly coupled, are particularly beneficial for
applications that have high demand for network and
storage traffic.
Red Hat’s Virtualization Technology: What’s in it for SAP Customers?Red Hat has long partnered with SAP to deliver a reliable,
scalable, secure, and affordable platform that combines
the best of SAP solutions and Red Hat technologies. Many
customers looking for a platform that can help them
affordably grow their IT architectures for the future are
running their SAP solutions on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
SAP customers can use the complete Red Hat solution
to achieve:
Impressive performance — Red Hat’s virtualization tech-
nology brings with it high system performance. In indus-
try benchmarks, Red Hat’s virtualization tests performed
within 10% of systems without virtualization; in some
cases, the overhead was as little as 2%.
A greener IT infrastructure — By consolidating the number
of servers companies run, virtualization also reduces the
amount of energy needed to cool and power these servers.
Network World recently recognized Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5 for its green operating system.1
Reduced costs — Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5’s open
source virtualization capabilities are integrated into the
OS to reduce added technology costs. And with Red Hat’s
open source technologies, customers are able to leverage
commodity hardware, eliminating the need to purchase
expensive proprietary alternatives.
Increased manageability — Through open standards,
managing virtualized systems also becomes easier. To
enable this, Red Hat founded the libvirt project with a
goal of creating a hypervisor-agnostic interface for
managing virtual machines. The libvirt standard has
� Seewww.press.redhat.com/2008/06/26/red-hat-gets-the-green-light-as-greenest-operating-systemformoreinformation.
Looking for Cost-Effective, Enterprise-Class Technology?RedHatDeliverswithIntegratedVirtualizationCapabilities Joel Berman
Senior Director Global Field Marketing
Red Hat
Many customers
looking for a
platform that
can help them
affordably grow
their IT architec-
tures for the future
are running their
SAP solutions on
red Hat enterprise
Linux.
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since been embraced by many manufacturers, software
vendors, and OS vendors, and is currently shipped in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and many of the community
Linux distributions.
Test Results Prove Red Hat’s Virtualization ReadinessIn February 2008, SAP LinuxLabs conducted a Linux
Virtualization Certification Workshop to demonstrate
the readiness of different technology partners to run SAP
applications in virtual servers. As a result of this workshop,
SAP affirmed that Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization is
ready for production use with SAP solutions. Please see
www.redhat.com/solutions/sap for more information on
this testing and its results.
In November 2008, an SAP-certified result of 5,156 SD
users was achieved by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 using
SAP ERP 6.0, SAP NetWeaver 7.0, and IBM’s DB2 running on
an IBM System x3850 M2. Find more information on this
benchmark at www.redhat.com/f/pdf/Cert0�0��.pdf.
In December 2008, Red Hat demonstrated the scalability
of its solution in a virtualized server environment, earning
an SAP-certified result of 4,400 SD users running in a
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 para-virtualized guest (see
sidebar above and Figure �). Testing results can be found
at www.redhat.com/solutions/sap.
Learn MoreRed Hat works closely with SAP to ensure that SAP solutions
are certified and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to
deliver the robust, secure, and high-performance solutions
companies depend on to manage their businesses. Red Hat
also regularly publishes new white papers, benchmarks,
reference architectures, and other documentation. To
access this documentation and find out more about the
many benefits of running your SAP environment on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, visit www.redhat.com/solutions/sap. n
Traditional virtualization products relied on hardware emulation — intercepting and translating hardware requests
from guest virtual machines. This approach creates significant overhead, especially for I/O-intensive workloads, and
limits the scalability of the virtual environment. For these reasons, enterprise class workloads such as databases or
ERP systems are seldom virtualized in production.
Previous customer experience might tell us that any system that needs high performance or needs to be scaled is
not a candidate for virtualization. After all, applications, such as those for financial trading, that require low latency
or are time sensitive have often been unable to benefit from virtualization. Until now.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat optimized the OS to work in a virtualized environment, using para-
virtualization to eliminate the I/O bottlenecks and remove the need for complete system emulation. Removing this
overhead results in significantly better performance, especially for I/O-intensive workloads. Para-virtualization solves
traditional virtualization challenges such as clock-skew — in which problems synchronizing the clock between the hy-
pervisor and multiple virtual machines cause time to be “lost” as the guest clock runs more slowly than the host.
Red Hat Virtualization also supports dynamic resource allocation, allowing memory and CPUs to be added or
removed from a live virtualized server. For example, if the system needs more CPU resources to complete a resource-
intensive processing job, the user can add more virtual CPUs on the fly. Then, when the job completes, the extra
CPUs may be removed and reassigned to other guests. Red Hat integrated virtualization supports up to 32 CPUs per
virtual machine, providing a stable and scalable platform for your enterprise applications (see Figure 1).
Optimize Your Operating System With Para-Virtualization
red Hat is working
closely with SAP
to ensure that
SAP solutions are
certified and
supported on red
Hat enterprise
Linux to deliver
the robust,
secure, and high-
performance
solutions compa-
nies need.
FiguRe 1 u The results
of red Hat’s recent
virtualization
benchmark tests
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To Microsoft, virtualization means improving business
continuity while helping IT departments maximize ROI
and cost savings across the enterprise. That’s why we’ve
created a portfolio of products that address all aspects of
the physical and virtual infrastructure — servers, storage,
networks, applications, and desktops — and that can be
easily managed through a centralized console. But what
does this mean for SAP customers?
improve Server utilization Without Affecting PerformanceWith the growing breadth of SAP solutions and services in
companies’ IT landscapes, the number of physical servers
in an SAP infrastructure has likewise grown. However, the
servers that support these solutions are typically underuti-
lized, prompting many companies to turn to virtualization
to consolidate their applications onto one physical server.
This process requires a level of isolation between the
solutions to be successful. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is
hypervisor-based virtualization technology that enables
the full isolation of virtual machines without significantly
affecting performance. For example, Hyper-V can efficiently
run Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in parallel
on a single server.
enable Business Continuity and ProvisioningSome may be concerned that consolidating application
services onto one server may create a single point of
failure. Hyper-V addresses this by allowing users to create a
Quick Migration cluster — a Windows Server failover cluster
that uses Hyper-V’s Quick Migration capability to relocate
virtual machines to different physical servers within the
cluster. Hyper-V, along with its Quick Migration capability,
is available with Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and
Datacenter editions at no additional cost.
By implementing a Quick Migration cluster for a pool of
physical servers, IT departments not only avoid downtime but
also add flexibility to their operations. For example, with such
clusters users can create new virtual machines on any server
in the pool with the appropriate resources, relocate that server
whenever needed, and configure it to limit CPU consumption.
Hyper-V also makes it simple to provision new services or
servers; users only need to encapsulate SAP application
services in the virtual machine, create a library of virtual
machines, and start a service at any time on any available
server in the cluster — or they can add a new server to the
cluster and relocate virtual machines as needed (see Figure �).
Learn MoreCompanies can use Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to
consolidate servers and improve infrastructure planning
and agility — all while saving time and reducing costs. Visit
www.microsoft.com/virtualization to learn more about
Microsoft Virtualization solutions and www.sdn.sap.com/irj/
sdn/windows for information on SAP’s support of Hyper-V. n
Want Higher ROI and Increased Agility from Your SAP Infrastructure?Microsoft’sHyper-VSolutionPavestheWay
Dai VuDirector of Virtualization
Products and Solutions Marketing
Microsoft
Centralized Management for Physical and Virtual LandscapesVirtualization technologies, along with a centralized management solution,
can deliver many benefits. To this end, Microsoft has released the System
Center Virtual Machine Manager, which provides management features
such as support for Hyper-V and VMware ESX Infrastructure, physical
machine to virtual machine conversion functionality, and the ability to
intelligently place virtual machines on the right hosts. For more informa-
tion, visit www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/virtualmachinemanager.
System CenterVirtual Machine Manager 2008
SAP ERP pool SAP NetWeaver BI pool
Dev/QA pool
Fiber channel or iSCSI shared storage
Manage Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and VMware ESX virtualized infrastructures with intelligent placement of virtual machines
?
X
QuickMigration
cluster
QuickMigration
cluster
QuickMigration
cluster
FiguRe 1 p Pools for
individual SAP
functions can
be configured as
Quick Migration
clusters and stored
in a single, shared
format
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Virtualization | SAP InSIder
Dr. Christoph Brune Global Technical Account
Manager — SAPSun Microsystems
Take Virtualization to the Next LevelSun’sVirtualizationSolutionsExtendfromtheDesktoptotheDataCenter
Facing rapid growth, increasing energy and real estate
costs, and constantly changing market conditions, many
companies are looking to simplify their IT infrastructures
and leverage computing resources more effectively by
implementing virtualization technologies. To make the
most out of virtualization, however, companies must ensure
that it is available and integrated throughout the business
— at the desktop, server, and storage levels.
Accordingly, Sun Microsystems offers the Sun Virtualization
Suite of Services, through which Sun experts help you
choose the right technologies from our end-to-end virtual-
ization portfolio to build your company’s next-generation
virtual environment.
Virtual Solutions for Your entire SAP environmentSun delivers virtualization technologies to help companies
build, implement, and manage their entire SAP environ-
ment across the operating system (OS), desktop, server,
and storage system levels. Sun’s architectural experts can
help you choose which hardware virtualization technologies
will most benefit your environment, depending on the
requirements of your SAP landscape and the specific needs
of your company. Sun’s virtualization solutions include:
Virtual desktops: Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Software allows users to access virtual desktops from
nearly any OS on the network without the maintenance,
upgrades, and operational costs that traditional PC
architectures require.
Partitioned servers: Sun’s server virtualization technol-
ogies — Dynamic Domains, Logical Domains, and Sun xVM
Server — allow users to partition servers to run different
types and versions of systems and SAP applications on a
single server. This helps reduce the number of servers
you need for production, testing, quality assurance,
training, and upgrades.
Virtualized storage: Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage
manages all storage resources as a single pool, which in
turn decreases the burden of managing large tape
libraries, increases system usage and efficiency, and
reduces costs.
Beyond Virtual HardwareOnce you virtualize your hardware, the next step is to
virtualize the OS and your system applications as efficiently
as possible to deliver savings in energy, cost, and space. To
do so, the experts at Sun can help you implement Solaris
Containers and Solaris ZFS file systems.
Solaris Containers provide advanced OS and application
virtualization features that follow common commands
across Sun’s entire server line, regardless of the underlying
technology. Additionally, the Sun N1 Advanced Architecture
supports Solaris Containers, which can manage a virtualized
SAP environment and enable users to easily create, start,
stop, and move SAP instances across pools of hardware.
Sun is also working to provide similar capabilities with
Sun xVM Ops Center, which is intended to provide a unified
management framework to manage physical and virtual
environments across heterogeneous systems.
In addition, the open Solaris ZFS file system pools
together storage resources to manage storage as a single
resource. That way, your virtualized applications have easy
access to the storage they need, when they need it.
Sun is continuing to work with SAP to integrate and
certify emerging virtualization technologies — like Sun xVM
software — with SAP solutions. Sun Logical Domains and
Solaris Containers are currently supported with SAP software.
get Virtualization Help NowVirtualized and well-managed platforms are helping many
companies simplify their IT environments — and in turn,
achieve greater economies of scale while reducing the
ecological impact of their hardware.
To find out more about Sun Microsystems or to schedule
a virtualization assessment, please visit www.sun.com/
sap/virtualization. n
Sun’s architectural
experts can help
you choose which
hardware
virtualization
technologies will
most benefit your
environment,
depending on the
requirements of
your SAP land-
scape and the
specific needs of
your company.
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Matt LullDirector
Global SAP AllianceCitrix Systems, Inc.
Citrix End-to-End Virtualization Helps Deliver the Full Value of SAP Applications
SAP not only offers exceptional products, but also works
with partners to make sure enterprise customers realize
the full value of their SAP solutions. Getting this value
means increasing end-user productivity and satisfaction,
business agility, and IT efficiency — all of which are directly
affected by application delivery.
No matter how robust your business applications are, a
poor delivery infrastructure can jeopardize their perfor-
mance. Citrix Systems, Inc. helps companies realize the true
value of their SAP applications. Many SAP customers — and
SAP itself — use Citrix technology to securely deliver
applications to users anywhere, providing them with high
performance at low cost.
Today, Citrix virtualization technologies offer new choices
for enhancing the flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and speed of
application delivery. Virtualization is an important enabler of
application delivery because it allows resources — servers,
applications, and desktops — to be dynamically coupled and
reassembled on the fly. This, in turn, allows organizations
to respond quickly to changing business and operational
requirements without adding staff or infrastructure.
end-to-end Virtualization: Citrix Delivery CenterThe Citrix Delivery Center solution offers comprehensive
virtualization technologies for application delivery, enabling
IT to control and manage applications, desktops, and server
infrastructures from the data center.
Application virtualization with Citrix XenApp: Applica-
tion virtualization — the foundation of application delivery —
enables enterprises to deliver SAP applications to office
and mobile workers from a secure, central location. XenApp
server-side application virtualization separates where the
application is used from where it runs. All application compo-
nents, such as SAP GUI, SAP NetWeaver Business Client, or a
securely patched browser, remain in the data center while
the user interface is delivered over the network. XenApp also
provides client-side virtualization, streaming applications on
demand to a secure isolation environment on the desktop.
Desktop virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop: To
manage distributed desktops while still allowing workers to
use the full capabilities of their PCs, XenDesktop centrally
manages, assembles, and delivers a customized desktop
operating system and required applications at each logon.
Server virtualization with Citrix XenServer: Delivering
critical applications in a fluid business environment used to
require complex solutions to make hardware maintenance
transparent to users and manage the entire life cycle of
projects. Now, with server virtualization, organizations
can reduce complexity and turn static data centers into
dynamic resources.
Citrix Application Delivery Solutions Optimize ROi for SAP CustomersWhen selecting SAP solutions, companies want the best
return on their investments. Optimizing application deliv-
ery helps them get there, benefiting end users, IT, and the
business as a whole. Citrix’s application delivery solutions
provide several advantages, including:
Productivity and satisfaction: Users benefit from high
application performance, availability, and the freedom to
access their applications or desktops from anywhere.
Lower costs: IT teams benefit from centralized applica-
tion management and support, which relieves them of
maintaining applications on the local desktop and helps
them see dramatic reductions in administrative costs
and infrastructure requirements.
Agility and fast response: The organization benefits
from greater agility because applications and desktops
can be delivered quickly to new users or new locations.
For example, virtualization is a powerful tool for disaster
recovery, offshoring, mergers, and acquisitions.
Together, Citrix and SAP help customers optimize the
value of SAP business applications through a complete
application delivery solution. To learn more, please visit
www.citrix.com/sap. n
no matter
how robust
your business
applications are,
a poor delivery
infrastructure can
jeopardize their
performance.
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special feature
Virtualization | SAP InSIder
The nature of catastrophes is that they come without
warning, giving us no time to plan. Without a consistently
reliable disaster recovery process, many companies can
never fully recover once disaster strikes. While executives
worry about fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages,
and earthquakes, their disaster recovery plans often over-
look outages caused by human error.
These outages continue to rise as the complexity of IT
environments increases. What’s more, competitive, supply
chain, and regulatory compliance pressures are leading
companies to designate more systems as mission critical,
requiring not only 24x7 availability, but also demonstra-
tions of this availability through testing.
Ensuring that your SAP applications are always available
is a key element of any disaster recovery plan. Each minute
of downtime affects the bottom line; failures in system
availability can lead to both short-term and long-term rev-
enue losses. The amount of revenue lost in just an hour of
downtime can often justify the cost of a business continu-
ance solution, yet many companies are still unprepared.
Why Traditional Disaster Recovery Solutions Fall ShortFor most companies, traditional disaster recovery solutions
are too expensive to deploy and too difficult to manage.
Moreover, testing these solutions is almost impossible,
typically involving upwards of 500 manual procedures,
monopolizing employee time, and requiring a huge invest-
ment in recovery hardware. What’s worse, even with this
significant investment, usually only a fraction of high-end
servers are included in a disaster recovery implementation.
Move Toward Continuous AvailabilityThe Unisys Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP environ-
ments offers a cost-effective way to address today’s
disaster recovery needs in both physical and virtualized
infrastructures. This integrated solution addresses the needs
of SAP landscapes, enabling federated database support,
The Unisys Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP Environments Gets Customers Back on Track FastKyle Warfield
RTI Global Competency Center,
SAP Performance EngineerUnisys Corporation
automated failovers, and fail backs of both the data and
application servers, ensuring that you can confidently
respond to component, application, and complete site fail-
ures. The solution comprises three integrated components:
Unisys SafeGuard provides data replication
Unisys uAdapt repurposes physical and virtual servers
Unisys uOrchestrate automates the entire disaster
recovery process
The Unisys Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP environ-
ments is a highly automated data protection and applica-
tion restoration software suite that is affordable, effective,
and readily testable. The moderate incremental investment
to implement the solution, as compared to traditional
approaches, is offset by its ability to repurpose existing
nonproduction servers — such as those used for test and
development — in the event of a failure. This reduces the
need for capital investment in idle, duplicate hardware.
The Unisys solution automates data and server replica-
tion, repurposes servers, and can complete the entire pro-
cess of failure condition detection, notification, verification,
service-level agreement, and approval before automati-
cally implementing a corrective action. This automation
greatly reduces manual labor and human error, thereby
reducing operational costs.
Plan Ahead, Think unisysA disaster recovery solution that significantly reduces busi-
ness downtime, recovery failures, and wasted staff time
can be the difference between bouncing back from catas-
trophe and staying down for the count. The Unisys Disaster
Recovery Solution for SAP environments — which is inde-
pendent of storage, host, and operating systems — gets
companies back up and running fast while improving
compliance with business service-level agreements and
external regulations. For more information on Unisys —
an SAP Technology Global Partner — please contact us at
[email protected] or visit www.unisys.com. n
A disaster
recovery solution
that significantly
reduces business
downtime,
recovery failures,
and wasted staff
time can be the
difference
between bouncing
back from
catastrophe and
staying down for
the count.
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Continued from page S-2
Computing Controller as a management tool that would
be operator-enabled — the tool hides the complexity of
the underlying IT infrastructure so that an SAP Basis
administrator can start, stop, and relocate SAP systems in
the landscape without intervention from his or her
colleagues on the infrastructure side. Furthermore, the
Adaptive Computing Controller can also perform mass
operations for start, stop, and relocation. All operations
executed by the Adaptive Computing Controller are
supported by its resource management capabilities.
We’re certain that, using the Adaptive Computing
Controller, our customers can reduce the total number of
servers needed to run their applications, and therefore get
better control and achieve the reduced complexity,
increased flexibility and scalability, and decreased costs
they’re looking for.
Over the past few years, we have seen the Adaptive
Computing Controller go from a nice-to-have tool to a
business-critical investment. And in this uncertain world
economy, every dollar, pound, or euro saved goes directly
to an ever-shifting bottom line.
Virtualization: Outside Looking inWhile SAP has been approaching virtualization from the
application side, our partners have been tackling it from
the server, operating system, storage, or network side.
Today more than a dozen partners offer virtualization
solutions, many of which are highlighted within the pages
of this SAP Insider special feature.
From the beginning, our customers have asked us to
work in close collaboration with their preferred hardware
and software vendors to ensure that SAP solutions run in
virtualized environments, and to provide a superior inte-
gration of our solutions to an underlying virtualization
infrastructure.
That’s why it’s not a question of choosing one or the
other — of using the Adaptive Computing Controller versus
any other vendor’s virtualization solutions. Each solution
can run independently of the other. But together, they
create a potent recipe for optimizing the operation and
management of SAP solutions in customers’ data centers.
We also directly engaged partners involved in virtual-
ization and worked with them to make sure that SAP
solutions are properly running in productive customer
environments. You can find a current list of supported
virtualization platforms at https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/
sdn/virtualization.
Committed to Holistic SupportIt’s one thing to share the stage with our partners in virtu-
alization, but it’s another thing to commit to supporting
such a program. Customers will no doubt find our unique
“one-stop shopping” support approach a welcome change
of pace from other systems and applications. Because of
our close relationship with our partners, we have created
a support model in which customers can call SAP for
help with any SAP-supported product in a virtualized
landscape.
For example, if you run your SAP application software on
servers of a dedicated virtualization platform and you have
an issue, you need only to contact SAP and we will work
with those vendors to identify and resolve the issue.
What SAP Customers Can Do Now to embrace Virtualization — and What Lies AheadThousands of companies have already discovered the
benefits of virtualization, from both inside the SAP space
via the Adaptive Computing Controller and outside through
one of our multiple partners.
Perhaps you have already implemented the Adaptive
Computing Controller and want to know how it works with
other virtualization technologies. Or perhaps you have
implemented the virtualization platform of one of our
partners and want to discover how to extend it into your
SAP landscape.
To learn more about virtualization and how it can directly
support your own efforts to boost flexibility, increase
scalability, and reduce TCO, please visit:
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/adaptive for a broad
range of information about adaptive computing
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/virtualization for
information about virtualization technology from our
technology partners
https://cw.sap.com/community/esc/cag�� for informa-
tion about the Enterprise Virtualization Community
In the near future, virtualization will extend beyond the
server to networks and even desktops. Desktop virtualiza-
tion, in particular, also has great potential for efficiencies
and cost savings for our customers, as it will make it easier
to free desktops not only from their hardware, but also
from the bounds of their offices or other brick-and-mortar
locations. n
Thousands of
companies
have already
discovered the
benefits of
virtualization,
from both inside
the SAP space
via the Adaptive
Computing
Controller and
outside through
one of SAP’s
multiple partners.