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This technical paper explores how INTERSPORT dramatically improved SAP application performance by upgrading to IBM i 6.1 running on an IBM POWER6+ processor-based server architecture, and implementing a new tiered storage environment. The new IBM System Storage DS8700 system utilizes a combination of storage media, including solid-state drives (SSDs) for high-performance applications such as SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse. Visit http://bit.ly/KWh5Dx to 'Follow' the official Twitter handle of IBM India Smarter Computing.
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INTERSPORT boosts SAP application performance with IBM i on IBM Power Systems and solid-state drive storage technologies
IBM SAP International Competence Center
“Since the beginning, we have used IBM i on IBM Power Systems to support our SAP applications, and it is still the most powerful, cost-effective and reliable platform for our needs. The integrated DB2 database provides a significant advantage for easy management of the SAP environment.”
Johann Reisinger
CIO
INTERSPORT Austria GmbH
“By using SSD technology instead of a traditional Fibre Channel setup, we have delivered a considerable performance improvement to our SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse environment, while also creating a more compact and cost-effective infrastructure.”
Johann Reisinger
CIO
INTERSPORT Austria GmbH
3
INTERSPORT boosts SAP® application performance with IBM® i on IBM Power Systems™ and solid-state drive storage technologies
Customer Objectives
Enable business expansion by providing headroom for •
growth in SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver Business
Warehouse environments
Support peak workload of up to 350 concurrent SAP •
NetWeaver Business Warehouse users
Encourage user adoption of business intelligence by •
improving SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse
performance
Improve international capabilities by introducing Unicode for •
SAP ERP
Provide faster, more scalable storage for business-critical •
data
Build a resilient architecture capable of meeting a recovery •
time objective (RTO) of less than two hours.
IBM solution
Worked with IBM and Base-IT (an IBM Business Partner) to •
design, build, test and deploy a new infrastructure for SAP
and other critical applications within 15 months
Upgraded to SAP ERP 6.0 with Unicode for financial •
accounting and controlling
Implemented two IBM Power 550 servers running IBM i, the •
first with eight IBM POWER6+ processor cores and 256 GB
of memory, and the second with six cores and 160 GB of
memory
Installed the servers at separate locations and divided SAP •
production and development/test workload between them,
enabling rapid production failover in case of problems at
either data center
Introduced two IBM System Storage DS8700 storage •
systems, one at each data center. Each has:
Two ranks (800GB) of solid-state drives (SSDs) for SAP ◦
NetWeaver BW workload
12 ranks (8TB) of Fibre-Channel (FC) disks for SAP ERP ◦
and other ERP applications
Mirrored the DS8700s via SAN fabric •
Installed IBM System Storage DS4700 storage systems for •
SAP test and development data.
Customer Benefits
Accelerated average SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse •
report generation speed by more than 66 percent
Reduced data loading and data aggregation time by 75 •
percent
Achieved compression of 110 million data sets within 17 •
hours – a task predicted to take 96 hours
Improved storage utilization from 60 percent to around 90 •
percent and avoided the need to purchase expansion
frames to house extra disks
Eliminated the need to purchase additional database •
licenses, as IBM i operating system includes built-in IBM
DB2 database
Reduced rack-space, power and cooling requirements by •
implementing two SSD ranks at each data center, instead of
investing in eight additional Fibre Channel ranks
Enabled full recovery of core business systems within two •
hours in the event of a disaster at either data center.
About this paper
This technical paper explores how INTERSPORT dramatically improved SAP application performance by upgrading to IBM i 6.1
running on an IBM POWER6+ processor-based server architecture, and implementing a new tiered storage environment. The new
IBM System Storage® DS8700 system utilizes a combination of storage media, including solid-state drives (SSDs) for high-
performance applications such as SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse.
4
Initial IT environment
Before INTERSPORT Austria began the infrastructure update
project that forms the subject of this paper, the technical
architecture for its SAP and ISIS landscape was based on a
combination of IBM server and storage technologies as shown in
Figure 1 on page 6.
The production instances of the SAP ERP, SAP NetWeaver BW
and ISIS applications were running on an IBM Power Systems
i570 server with eight IBM POWER5 processor cores and 160
GB of memory, located at the company’s main data center.
Storage for the production environment was provided by an IBM
System Storage DS8100 with eight Fibre Channel disk ranks
running at 15k RPM.
Test, development and backup instances of these applications
ran on another Power Systems server – a smaller i550 with 4
processor cores and 64GB of memory – located at a second
data center. Storage for these was provided by a second
DS8100 with the same specifications as the first.
Background, starting point and objectives
About INTERSPORT
INTERSPORT is one of the world’s largest sporting goods
retailers. Operating via a network of more than 5,300 stores in 39
countries, the company generated 2009 revenues of 9.3 billion
Euros.
INTERSPORT Austria is one of the group’s most important
national organizations in Central and Eastern Europe. The
Austrian organization employs 5,700 people at 353
INTERSPORT stores in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia
and Hungary. The organization achieved sales of 667.7 million
Euros in 2009/10.
The IT team at INTERSPORT Austria provides support for each
of the Austrian stores, as well as the shops in Czech Republic,
Slovakia and Hungary. Besides the usual Microsoft business
applications, the main systems that the team supports are:
A custom-built stock management system called ISIS•
An SAP ERP system for financial accounting and controlling•
An SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) system that •
produces reports based on data extracted from the other
two systems
For many years, the company has run these three solutions on
the IBM i operating system and IBM Power Systems servers.
5
Business challenges and project objectives
Rapid domestic and international business growth, combined
with an increasing need for real-time business intelligence within
the organization, meant that INTERSPORT Austria’s SAP ERP
and SAP NetWeaver BW environments were reaching the limits
of the existing hardware platform.
As a result, performance was suffering, particularly in the
business intelligence environment. Business users often had to
wait several minutes for reports to be generated. The problem
was particularly severe at the start of the working day, when up to
350 users log on simultaneously to access daily sales reports.
Slow response times were creating dissatisfaction and reducing
users’ willingness to access the system as part of their daily
routine.
Looking to the future, INTERSPORT Austria realized that these
performance issues were likely to become even more severe. To
create a foundation for international expansion and improve
multi-language support, the company was planning to upgrade
to SAP ERP 6.0 with Unicode support. This upgrade was likely to
increase data volumes and put even greater load on the
company’s infrastructure.
To resolve these performance issues and create a more scalable
platform for future growth, the company wanted to upgrade its
servers and storage. As part of this project, the IT team also
decided to redesign the server landscape in order to enable
faster recovery in the event of a disaster at one of the company’s
data centers.
Technical solution
(See Figure 2 on page 7.)
Server architecture
Working with IBM and Base-IT, the INTERSPORT Austria IT team
designed and deployed a new server architecture based on two
IBM Power 550 servers running the IBM i 6.1 operating system.
The primary server has eight IBM POWER6+ processor cores
and 256 GB of memory, while the secondary server has six cores
and 160 GB of memory.
The IBM i operating system includes an integrated version of
IBM DB2, which is used as the database platform for the SAP
and ISIS applications. DB2 for i is a strictly object-orientated,
self-managing database that automatically distributes data
across different drives according to an integrated algorithm.
These features help to optimize performance for the SAP
environment.
Business resilience
Unlike the previous landscape, where one main server
supported the production workload while a second smaller
server handled non-production workload, the new architecture
distributes the logical partitions (LPARs) for production between
the two machines.
The main advantage of this approach is its resilience: if a disaster
occurs at one of the company’s data centers, business-critical
production workload can be transferred to the other machine
rapidly. In addition, it is simpler to increase system utilization
when production and non-production workloads are running on
the same physical server.
21
System Storage
21
System Storage
SAP R/3 Test224 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Test430 GB
SAP R/3 Production293 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Production1190 GB
ISIS Production1170 GB
ISIS Production1170 GB
SAP R/3 Production0.8 processor cores, 6 GB memory
SAP NetWeaver BW Production 2.5 cores, 54 GB memory
ISIS Production3.0 cores,40 GB memory
SAP R/3 Production293 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Production1190 GB
ISIS Test384 GB
ISIS Development350 GB
SAP R/3 Test0.2 cores, 5 GB memory
SAP NetWeaver BW Test1.5 cores, 22 GB memory
ISIS Test0.6 cores, 15 GB memory
ISIS Development0.3 cores, 7 GB memory
ISIS BackupNo permanent resources assigned
IBM System Storage DS8100 with 8 ranks of 15k RPM Fibre Channel disks
IBM Power Systems i570with 8 IBM POWER5 processor cores and 160 GB of memory
IBM System Storage DS8100 with 8 ranks of 15k RPM Fibre Channel disks
IBM Power Systems i550with 4 IBM POWER5 processor cores and 64 GB of memory
SAN fabric
Data Center 1 Data Center 2
Initial server and storage landscape at INTERSPORT Austria(N.B. - this diagram has been simplified to focus only on the SAP and ISIS environments)
Server partitionStorage partition
KeyServerFibre Channel storage
System i5
System i5
Figure 1: Initial server and storage landscape
21
System Storage
21
System Storage
SAP NetWeaver BW Production - 770 GB
SAP ERP 6.0 Production2109 GB
ISIS Production2461 GB
SAP ERP 6.0 Production1 core, 30 GB memory
SAP NetWeaver BW Production3 cores, 144 GB memory
ISIS Production3.0 cores, 76 GB memory
SAP ERP 6.0 Test0.3 cores, 20 GB memory
SAP NetWeaver BW Test0.8 cores 40 GB memory
ISIS Test0.4 cores, 20 GB memory
ISIS Development0.2 cores, 20 GB memory
ISIS BackupNo permanent resources allocated
IBM System Storage DS8700 with 2 ranks of Solid State Drive disks and 12 ranks of 15k RPM Fibre Channel disks
IBM Power 550with 8 IBM POWER6+ processor cores and 256 GB of memory
IBM System Storage DS8700 with 2 ranks of Solid State Drive disks and 12 ranks of 15k RPM Fibre Channel disks IBM Power 550
with 6 IBM POWER6+ processor cores and 160 GB of memory
SAN fabric
Data Center 1 Data Center 2
Final server and storage landscape at INTERSPORT Austria(N.B. - this diagram has been simplified to focus only on the SAP and ISIS environments)
Server partitionStorage partition
Key
SAP NetWeaver BW Backup - No permanent resources allocated
SAP ERP 6.0 BackupNo permanent resources allocated
ServerFibre Channel storage
SSD storage
SAP NetWeaver BW Production - 770 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Test 1400 GB
SAP ERP 6.0 Test1430 GB
ISIS Development950 GB
IBM System Storage DS4700 With Fibre Channel disks
ISIS Test950 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Production1898 GB
SAP ERP 6.0 Production2109 GB
ISIS Production2461 GB
SAP NetWeaver BW Production1898 GB
System Storage DS4700
4GB/s 2GB/s
550
550
Figure 2: Final server and storage landscape
8
Storage architecture
INTERSPORT Austria upgraded its storage architecture to
eliminate I/O bottlenecks that were affecting SAP NetWeaver BW
performance. To increase throughput, the company considered
expanding its existing IBM System Storage DS8100 disk
systems with a further eight Fibre Channel disk ranks – but this
would have required the introduction of a bulky expansion unit,
occupying valuable rack-space and increasing power and
cooling requirements.
Moreover, the IT team calculated that to achieve the required
level of performance from the Fibre Channel ranks, it would not
be possible to utilize more than 60 percent of the available disk
capacity. As a result, 40 percent of the new disks would remain
unused, reducing the value of the investment.
Instead, the company worked with IBM and Base-IT to migrate to
two new DS8700 systems. Each of these storage systems
contains 12 ranks of 15k RPM Fibre Channel disks for SAP ERP
and ISIS production LPARs, as well as two ranks of Solid State
Drives (SSDs) for SAP NetWeaver BW.
The company can utilize up to 98 percent of the available
capacity of the SSDs, and provide far higher performance in
terms of throughput and response times in the SAP NetWeaver
BW environment (see Figures 3 and 4). As a result, INTERSPORT
Austria only needs two ranks of SSDs to provide the same level
of performance as eight ranks of Fibre Channel disks.
For non-production storage (SAP development and test
systems), the company uses an IBM System Storage DS4700
disk system located at the primary data center, which provides a
lower-cost storage tier for systems that do not require the same
level of I/O performance as the production environments. The
DS4700 is connected to the Power 550 servers using IBM Virtual
I/O Server (VIOS).
I/O throughput DS8100 with 15k RPM Fibre
Channel disks
DS8700 with a mixture of 15k
RPM Fibre Channel disks and
SSDs
Performance improvement (%)
Average throughput (I/O per
second)
3.0 7.0 133
Peak throughput (I/O per
second)
7.0 13.0 80
Figure 3: Improvements in I/O throughput with the new storage infrastructure
Response times DS8100 with 15k RPM Fibre
Channel disks
DS8700 with a mixture of 15k
RPM Fibre Channel disks and
SSDs
Performance improvement (%)
Average response time
(ms per I/O)
3.0 0.5 to 1.0 66 to 85
Peak response time
(ms per I/O)
14.0 7.5 47
Figure 4: Improvements in response times with the new storage infrastructure
9
Project achievements
Performance improvements
The upgrade to IBM POWER6+ processor-based servers and
IBM DS8700 disk systems with SSDs has resolved
INTERSPORT Austria’s existing SAP NetWeaver BW
performance issues, while also providing sufficient capacity to
support future growth in data volumes and user numbers.
As a result, the average time taken to load data into SAP
NetWeaver BW has been reduced from 120 minutes to just 30
minutes – a 75 percent improvement. The time taken to build
aggregates has been reduced by approximately 75 percent, and
the time taken to generate reports has been improved by
approximately 66 percent.
Data compression speed in the DB2 environment also saw
significant improvements. According to the SAP guidelines, the
compression of 110 million datasets should take approximately
96 hours, but INTERSPORT Austria achieved it within 17 hours –
83 percent faster than expected.
User satisfaction
As a result of the performance improvement, the company’s 350
SAP users are able to access business intelligence data much
more rapidly, even at times of peak load. This helps to improve
their productivity, and also encourages them to use the SAP
NetWeaver BW system as part of their daily routine.
By equipping more employees with the latest business
information, INTERSPORT Austria improves their ability to make
rapid and well-informed business decisions, which should
ultimately result in improved efficiency and increased sales. The
company has in fact experienced significant sales growth since
the solution went live – although it is difficult to quantify the
contribution of the new IT landscape to this achievement.
Faster recovery
By dividing the production workload for the SAP and ISIS
applications between the two IBM Power 550 servers,
INTERSPORT Austria has been able to significantly enhance its
disaster recovery capability.
With the previous solution, it would have taken more than two
days to re-configure the secondary server and recover all
systems. Moreover, since the secondary server was less
powerful than the primary server, the performance of the SAP
and ISIS applications would have been significantly degraded.
With the new solution, a full recovery is possible within two hours,
since both servers have identical specifications and are already
configured to handle production workload.
Energy efficiency and environmental benefits
Choosing the more compact SSD-based storage solution has
enabled INTERSPORT Austria to avoid purchasing a DS8000
expansion unit and eight additional Fibre Channel disk ranks,
saving rack-space in the company’s data center.
The combination of the SSD solution with the new Power 550
servers has also reduced power and cooling requirements. The
POWER6+ processors are considerably more energy-efficient
than the older POWER5 processors, and two ranks of SSDs
consume much less electricity than eight ranks of Fibre Channel
disks. Overall, INTERSPORT Austria reports that the new
solution has significantly reduced its electricity costs.
10
Future plans
INTERSPORT Austria foresees considerable growth in its SAP
NetWeaver Business Warehouse environment as it becomes
more widely adopted by users across the business. The
company is already working with SAP to investigate the
possibilities of extending its business intelligence environment,
and is considering introducing SAP BusinessObjects software.
The new IBM infrastructure will provide sufficient capacity to
support all the projects that INTERSPORT Austria is currently
planning. In the future, if new projects require additional
resources, the INTERSPORT IT team is confident that the
combination of IBM Power servers and DS8700 SSD storage will
provide the flexibility and scalability required to meet these
needs.
“The collaboration with IBM and Base-IT went perfectly – I can’t think of a single occasion during the project when the service they provided was less than excellent. Even today, if we encounter a problem that we cannot solve on our own, we can trust IBM and Base-IT to find a solution quickly.”
Johann Reisinger
CIO
INTERSPORT Austria GmbH
“The new IBM infrastructure will provide sufficient capacity to support all our current projects, and we are confident that the combination of IBM Power servers and DS8700 SSD storage will be flexible and scalable enough to meet our future needs as well.”
Johann Reisinger
CIO
INTERSPORT Austria GmbH
For more information:
To learn more about solutions from IBM and SAP, visit:
ibm-sap.com
For more information about SAP products and services,
contact an SAP representative or visit: sap.com
For more information about IBM products and services,
contact an IBM representative or visit: ibm.com
Contacts:
IBM
Karl-Heinz Prisching ([email protected])
Walter Lang ([email protected])
For further questions please contact the IBM SAP
International Competency Center via
SPC03292-ATEN-01 (December 2010)
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2010 All Rights Reserved.
IBM Deutschland GmbH D-70548 Stuttgart ibm.com
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