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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.

w w w. S A P i n s i d e r o n l i n e .c o m | Jan n Feb n Mar 2009

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SAP InSIder | Virtualization

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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

expert.sap@fujitsu-siemens.com. 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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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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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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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.

S-�� Jan n Feb n Mar 2009 | w w w. S A P i n s i d e r o n l i n e .c o m

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

SAPSolutions2@unisys.com 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.

special feature

SAP InSIder | Virtualization

S-��w w w. S A P i n s i d e r o n l i n e .c o m | Jan n Feb n Mar 2009

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.