VMware Global Alliances Blog

Posted by Andre Kemp
Principal - SAP Business
Practice, Americas

In a post last week, Elliot Fliesler alluded to some exiting news that we would soon share around our SAP partnership. And where better to finally unveil that news than at Sapphire Now 2012 and here on our alliances blog?  It’s now official: SAP has validated its Sybase High Performance OLTP Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) Database on VMware cloud infrastructure.

This validation announcement is notable for a number of reasons:

• It assures customers and prospects running SAPSybase ASE databases as virtual machines that they can achieve high-performance results that match their physical infrastructure.
• It enables customers and prospects to stop worrying about virtualizing business-critical applications—including their most important databases.
• It signals the beginning of further testing by VMware and SAP to support the virtualization of other key SAP products, such as SAP Sybase IQ, Replication Server and SQL Anywhere on VMware cloud infrastructure.

 Commentary from the Show

One of the reasons I enjoy coming to Sapphire every year is to hear firsthand how customers are currently using and prospects are thinking about using our joint solutions and services. Yesterday, I co-presented a session (2307) with one of our customers, Fonterra. This $16B (NZD) dairy company virtualized its entire SAP landscape in 2010 and is now deploying automated disaster recovery on the VMware vSphere^® platform.

From Fonterra and other attendees, I have learned that the launch of vSphere 5 has really done more to unlock the potential value of SAP landscapes. For example, customers virtualizing their SAP landscape with VMware solutions are benefitting from enhanced business agility. They also are able to provide superior service levels and improve asset turnover while lowering TCO.

More customers today are moving from server consolidation (the IT Production phase that begins the VMware Journey) into virtualizing business-critical applications (phase two or the Business Production phase). What this tells us is that a greater number and a wider variety of customers—enterprises and small and midsize businesses (SMBs)—are embracing IT transformation. They are all moving ahead with us on the journey from virtualization to cloud computing and IT as a service—at their own pace.

As I gather new insights from customers during the many meetings that I’m participating in this week, I’m reminded about how far we have come with virtualization and cloud infrastructure. At first, our products helped technical customers to overcome IT challenges and save money. Now, there is tremendous demand from CIOs and line-of-business stakeholders for more extensive services and solutions that move their business applications to a virtualized and cloud environment that solves real business issues. In this way, we are helping to transform enterprises, and this makes me look forward to working even more closely with SAP on solutions that are yet to come. Let us know how virtualizing SAP has made a difference to your business, in the comments section below.

Photo: A packed VMware theatre session at the booth yesterday.

Posted by Elliot Fliesler
Director, SAP Alliance
Marketing

We are only a few weeks away from SAPPHIRE NOW 2012 in Orlando, FL and VMware has some exciting news to share with you around our SAP partnership… However, you will have to wait until the conference starts!  I will give you a hint: it includes LVM, Sybase and Cloud Foundry.  Now that I have your attention you might be interested in some of the activities we have planned at this year’s conference.

Visit us at booth #1293 where you will get hands on live demonstrations of VMware’s solution for SAP Landscapes that include IT as a Service with our flagship VMware vSphere products, VMware vCenter SRM for automated backup and recovery, integration with Landscape Virtualization Manager, Fault Tolerance (SAP Landscape) and VMware vCloud Director.

Joining us in our booth will be several key SAP and VMware partners presenting on our joint solutions and offerings.  So be sure to come to the booth to see the schedule.

• VMware Presentation – The Easiest Way to Deploy SAPGui – Ever!
• VMware Presentation – Improved Disaster Recovery with Virtualized SAP Deployments
• VCE Presentation – Paving the Way from Bare Metal to SAP Virtualization with VCE
• NetApp Presentation – Build a Secure Foundation for the Cloud with SAP Applications Built on Flexpod
• EMC Presentation – Virtualize SAP with EMC & VMware
• CapGemini Presentation – Benefits of SAP Landscape Virtualiztion with VMware
• CSC Presentation – Accelerate Change with CSC Cloud UI for SAP
• RunE2E Presentation – Take Back Control!

And after a long day of training, education, and vendor/customer meetings drop by our booth from 3:00-4:00p.m. We will be serving beer, wine and conversation with the VMware team and our partners.

On Tuesday, May 15th VMware will be co-presenting with Fonterra, a $16B (NZD) dairy company who virtualized their SAP Landscape with VMware titled “How a World-Class Dairy Producer Virtualized Their SAP Landscape, Including HA, DR, and ACC” (Session ID 2307) This is one session you will not want to miss!

We look forward to seeing you at SAPPHIRE NOW!

Posted by Abigail Lee
Alliance Marketing
Manager

 Introducing “IT from the Inside,” a new website featuring comments, videos, photos, Tweets and more from VMware customers. Visiting the site is your chance to hear directly from end-users and IT professionals about how they are using VMware and partner solutions.

Whether you are a large enterprise or a small and midsize business, we encourage you to bookmark the site and submit your story. Tell us how VMware and our partner solutions are improving your IT agility, enhancing end-user productivity, reducing costs, lowering operating expenses or just simply making your life better!

So grab your phone and send us a video. Log onto Twitter and show us your Tweet. Take a screen shot. Write up a tip. Share a best practice. Offer a suggestion. Provide a strategy. What you choose to send about VMware and your partner solution is up to you!

And for a limited time, we’ll enter you in a contest to win a free trip or pass to VMworld 2012—when you submit a video by April 30.  So grab your camera and get started.  We look forward to seeing you in the limelight.

Posted by Kannan Mani
Technical Solutions Architect

Check out the video below where Jason Kosaftis from EMC and I discuss on the upcoming joint webcast series -  virtualizing Oracle databases. The combination of VMware vCenter™ and EMC FAST Cache dynamically provisions server and storage resources to allow maximum performance at scale in virtualized Oracle environments. With the latest release of VMware vSphere® and the fully automated Storage Tiering capabilities of EMC VNX Unified Storage, Oracle DBAs and IT infrastructure teams can now accelerate server and storage resource provisioning and minimize database performance tuning while maintaining maximum availability.

During these webcasts you will hear from EMC and VMware Engineers, as well as end customers and IT executives from some of our largest customers discuss on cost savings, performance and efficiency they have achieved using VMware and EMC technologies. Please visit the links below and register today.

Maximum Performance and Availability for Virtualized Oracle Databases with VMware and EMC
Hosts: George Trujillo, Tier One Database Specialist, VMware and Sam Lucido, Solutions Consultant, EMC

Thursday, February 16, 2012, 8:00 AM PST
Register today!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 9:00 AM PST
Register today!

Posted by Jay Workman
Director, HP Alliance
Marketing

VMware and HP Drive Virtualized SAP Landscapes into the Mainstream

With VMware and HP virtualization solutions, your SAP solutions-based development, test, training, and production landscapes can cost less and be more productive than within a purely physical infrastructure. From server consolidation and containment to business process and data center automation, the full range of virtualization benefits can be applied to all sizes of SAP deployments. 

Learn more by registering to attend the Webcast Your SAP Landscape, Virtualized, on January 31 at 8:00 a.m. PST, 11:00 a.m. EST, to understand the benefits of implementing a cost-effective, available, scalable, and secure virtualization platform for your SAP software landscape with HP ProLiant servers based on Intel® Xeon® processors and running VMware vSphere 5.

By attending this Webcast you'll learn:

• How an effective virtualization strategy provides a future-ready scalable landscape
• How to meet and exceed your SAP software landscape performance service-level agreements with virtualization
• How to lower your total cost of ownership while increasing availability, scalability, and security
• How virtualizing SAP software adds little, if any, performance overhead

Experts from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and SAP will discuss SAP's recent announcement about virtualization as well as studies outlining the benefits of virtualizing your SAP software landscape. Register today!

Webcast Sponsored by:

Posted by Vaughn Stewart
NetApp, Director & Virtualization
Evangelist

Since VMworld 2011 there’s been a noticeable increase in customer confidence around the ability to successfully virtualize the most demanding business critical applications. The list of applications commonly being considered often includes business applications powered by database technologies like Oracle RAC and Microsoft SQL Server and Messaging and collaboration platforms like Microsoft Exchange Server and SharePoint. With all of this activity the application that is generating as many discussions as any of the others is SAP.

With customers confident  in the capabilities of vSphere 5 to facilitate significant infrastructure cost reductions with multi-tier SAP landscapes, many still have questions on how to successfully virtualize such a large-scale architecture. You have to understand that for many customers SAP is ‘THE’ mission critical application within their organization. An interruption to SAP can have massive impact to an organization, thus there is no room for any unexpected ‘lessons learned’ like the early days of server consolidation, desktop virtualization, or lab automation initiatives.

Customers often pose the question…

                                  “How do I successfully virtualize SAP?”

 From my perspective this is a relatively simple question to answer…

“Deploy as SAP has, virtualize SAP with VMware on NetApp!”

SAP Runs SAP Virtualized with VMware and NetApp

In order to reduce ever increasing infrastructure costs and to automate the delivery of IT services, SAP committed to a ‘Virtualization First’ strategy in their global IT, SAP NetWeaver, SAP Center of Excellence and SAP Business ByDesign (SaaS & PaaS cloud service offerings) datacenters. To accomplish these goals SAP abandoned legacy architectures and began deploying their future with technologies and platforms from VMware and NetApp.

By the end of 2010 these efforts resulted in over 40% of SAP’s compute systems virtualized on VMware vSphere and 70% of their worldwide storage requirements residing on NetApp. Frankly, I don’t know if one can make it a simpler or more compelling case around how to virtualize SAP.

It’s not just SAP virtualizing SAP with vSphere on NetApp. Below is a list of customer case studies published within the past 12 months that highlight the outstanding results of their efforts.

• MAGURA GmBH & Co. KG
• Magna International
• Hero Foodservice
• Extend IT
• Computacenter
• Baldwin-Wallace College
• Oesterreichische Kontrollbank
• K+S Group and Fujitsu FlexFrame
• Siemens
• Dominion Enterprises

vSphere 5 Powers SAP at Near Bare-Metal Levels

As one might expect, customers often want to understand a bit more than simply the architecture in which to virtualize SAP.. Many want assurances around the performance capabilities of the vSphere platform. Fortunately, there are a number of recently published benchmarks that demonstrate the capabilities of vSphere 5. In August, Fujitsu published the first SAP sales and distribution (SD) benchmark on vSphere 5 along with a corresponding benchmark comprised of a bare metal deployment comprised of the same hardware.

The benchmarks took advantage of the new larger VM support in vSphere 5, supporting 4,600 SD Users and 25,150 SAPs from a 24-vCPU VM on the Fujitsu Primergy server. These results were within 6% of what was obtained from the bare metal configuration (4,875 SD Users and 26,630 SAPs).

HP published an even larger scale benchmark, comprised of a three-tier SAP Landscape on vSphere 5 which supported 32,125 SD Users and delivered 175,320 SAPs. The results produced in all of these benchmarks are a testament to the performance capabilities of vSphere 5 and it’s ability to meet real world workloads.

FlexPod, CVDs, and Partners: Delivering Virtualized SAP Applications & SAP Landscapes

Building on the foundational architectures and performance capabilities, many seek assurances around the design and implementation of their solution. This is where the efforts of the FlexPod engineering teams really stand out. They have recently published a Cisco Validated Design for deploying SAP Applications and SAP Landscapes in vSphere on the FlexPod platform.

This private cloud architecture covers the entire infrastructure stack including SAP, Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), NetApp Unified Storage, VMware vSphere, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle Database. For those who need secure separation of resources in their shared infrastructure the CVD includes the designs for deploying in a Secure Multi-Tenancy architecture.

A number of FlexPod partners specialize in delivering SAP and have developed expertise in the area of migrating SAP to a virtualized FlexPod architecture. One leader in this space is Accenture, who has developed the SAP Private Cloud Solution. Collaboratively designed by engineering teams from Accenture, SAP, Cisco, NetApp, VMware and Red Hat, this solution expands the FlexPod CVD architecture by including services such as consulting, migration, and project management. Together these capabilities help make the migration of SAP to vSphere simple.

Through partners like Accenture, customers receive a standardized virtual infrastructure for SAP, dramatically shorter migration timeframes, advanced SAP automation and a number of advanced features such as SAP analytics and mobility capabilities.

Wrapping Up This Post

The move to virtualizing business critical applications like SAP is viewed by many as critical to the advancement of the maturity of their private cloud. Such applications are often significantly more complex in areas of design and scale. Projects to virtualize such complex and critical application are typically monitored a bit more closely and their success measured a bit more precisely than previous virtualization projects like server consolidations.

Ensuring the success of our customers and their virtualization initiatives is the focus of VMware, NetApp, SAP and our mutual technology partners. In this post I hope to have shared with you that the time is now to begin virtualizing your SAP Landscape. As I’ve shared in this post; SAP has done it, vSphere 5 can power it, the FlexPod platform was designed for it, and our SAP focused partners can deliver it!

If you’re interested in additional information around virtualizing SAP on VMware & NetApp please checkout the following links:

• SAP Technology Partner Overview: NetApp
• SAP Technology Partner Overview: VMware
• NetApp SAP Solutions
• NetApp SnapManager for SAP
• VMware SAP Solutions
• VMware Virtualizing SAP Kit

Posted by Bob Goldsand
Alliances Partner Architect

When VMware and NetApp team up, customers get a demonstration of our solutions’ abilities—availability, manageability, flexibility and mobility. That’s exactly what happened at Green Mountain Power (GMP), the  second largest utility provider in Vermont servicing more than 100,000 customers. GMP is a leader in wind and solar power generation.

During the company’s initiative to virtualize Oracle Applications and RAC Databases (see blog Episode I), Vermont was hit very badly by Hurricane Irene. Quickly, GMP had approximately 50,000 customers without power and call volumes to GMP went from about 4,500 calls per week to nearly 15,000 during the course of the hurricane.

At GMP, the mission-critical Storm Manager applications used during the crisis were virtualized and running on vSphere. GMP decided to shut down several test instances of Oracle and vMotion, non-critical applications running in its vSphere cluster to provide additional resources for its Global Information and Outage Management Systems. These mission-critical systems were being used by first responders, dispatch and customer service representatives throughout the disaster. The GMP decision to leverage vSphere workload management capabilities on its hosts was instrumental in keeping GMP mission critical systems from overloading as these very important systems running on vSphere remained 100 percent available throughout the hurricane and subsequent storm recovery.

GMP’s experience is just one example of how vSphere frees enterprise infrastructure from the physical limitations of a single server, and delivers the fundamental ability benefits—availability, manageability, flexibility and mobility—of running mission-critical systems in a virtualized infrastructure. By running its systems on vSphere, GMP was able to respond to its business needs faster and more efficiently than it ever could have running in an entirely physical infrastructure environment. With VMware and NetApp solutions, GMP restored 4 servers in less than two hours.

Lesson 4: Be Prepared and Know the Bottleneck

In a major event such as a hurricane, a lot happens and it happens very quickly. In GMP’s case, some of the non-critical vSphere hosts required recovery. The fact that these hosts were virtualized and deployed on NetApp storage greatly simplified and facilitated the recovery process. Using vSphere features such as host profiles and templates, as well as NetApp utilities like SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructures (SMVI) and SnapManger for Oracle (SMO) significantly reduced the recovery times from days to a matter of hours.

GMP’s Paula Fortin, a senior system administrator, believes the recovery would not have been possible if GMP had still been on physical servers. Hearing Paula Fortin describe what happened during Hurricane Irene and the subsequent recovery should help anyone still wondering about virtualization to answer the question: “Why should I virtualize?”

Lesson 5: Choose the Right Storage Provider

It’s critical to work with the right storage provider when deploying mission-critical applications. Not only do NetApp solutions integrate with vSphere, but the NetApp unified storage platform also integrates with Oracle features including Real Application Clusters (RAC), Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Automated Storage Management (ASM). Plus, as I mentioned, NetApp technologies played a significant role in the deployment strategies and recovery efforts.

Learn More

The GMP virtualization journey is proof that you can effectively run mission-critical Oracle enterprise solutions on vSphere and gain all of the ability benefits from a vSphere and NetApp environment. Whether your organization is running a single instance database, RAC databases or Oracle application suites, vSphere and NetApp solutions can run them more efficiently.  

Hear more from Nayab Saiyad and Paula Fortin of GMP from VMworld 2011.

Posted by Bob Goldsand
Alliances Partner Architect

The question of whether mission-critical databases could be virtualized on the VMware platform was emphatically answered “yes” when we released VMware vSphere 4.0 in 2009. Since then, we have consistently rolled out features that support database virtualization and make management easier for database administrators (DBAs). For example, with the introduction of vSphere 5 this summer, DBAs now have the ability to scale up to 32 virtual CPUs. Since adding this new critical functionality, the question has become: “What database workloads can’t be virtualized on vSphere?”

To ensure that vSphere remains the best platform for virtualizing databases, we recently teamed up with strategic partner NetApp to assist a joint customer considering virtualizing its Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure. Together, VMware and NetApp participated as extended team members in the virtualization journey of Green Mountain Power (GMP), the second largest utility provider in Vermont servicing more than 100,000 customers. GMP is a leader in wind and solar power generation.

The GMP Initiative to Virtualize Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure

GMP was in the process of rolling out the Oracle Utility Suite, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Fusion Middleware and the Business Intelligence (BI) Suite. This comprehensive upgrade was an excellent opportunity for both VMware and NetApp to get a first-hand understanding of the customer’s virtualization path. Over a six-month period, VMware and NetApp participated in all phases of GMP’s Oracle project, including the initial design and review, deployment, functional testing, acceptance testing and ultimately, its move to production.

During the project with GMP, VMware and NetApp quickly learned that how to virtualize Oracle Enterprise Infrastructure on vSphere isn’t the question our customers are wrestling with internally. Both NetApp and VMware have published ample best practices documents, as well as tips and tricks white papers on these subjects. Rather GMP and other customers want to better understand why they should virtualize and what level of support they can expect for their Oracle implementations. What GMP learned is outlined in the following lessons:

Lesson 1: Oracle Supports VMware Solutions and Provides Excellent Support

GMP could not have accomplished such a dramatic transformation without Oracle support. During the project, GMP opened up more than 40 service requests with Oracle support and was never denied support or asked to reproduce issues in a physical environment. Any specific questions related to virtualization were correctly directed by Oracle to VMware. Listen to senior DBA, architect at GMP, Nayab Saiyad, discuss the excellent support he received during GMP’s transformation.

 To understand the VMware Support Policy with Oracle see the VMware Support Policy.

Lesson 2: Successful Virtualization Initiatives Require Executive Sponsorship

The GMP management staff includes visionaries that are supportive of the company’s journey. Unlike selecting a server, virtualization is a strategic objective at GMP and choosing an established vendor whose core competency is virtualization was a key consideration. VMware and NetApp worked closely with executives and technical personnel to provide them with logical and factual information that explained the benefits of virtualization—including expected capital and operational expense savings—and the realities surrounding Oracle solution support. Like we do for any customer, VMware provides extended Oracle support as part of its existing support agreement at no additional cost.

Lesson 3: Limited Resources Don’t Have to Limit the Environment

The GMP project was and is still quite complex. In just six months, GMP went from an almost 100 percent physical environment to approximately a 70 percent virtualized environment on vSphere. The ability for GMP to quickly backup and provide data protection to its Oracle environment is significantly increased because it has virtualized its Oracle environment using VMware and NetApp solutions. With the company’s limited resources, it is unlikely it would ever be able to effectively manage such a robust Oracle environment without its Oracle applications and databases running on VMware and NetApp technology. 

But this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for Episode II and more lessons learned during a very difficult time…

Posted by Elliot Fliesler
Alliance Marketing Director

Oracle isn’t the only company that knows something about big data. For several decades, EMC has been delivering solutions to better manage, share, protect and extract more value from all kinds of data.

“Besides information technology, I.T. really stands for industry in transition,” said Joe Tucci, Chairman and CEO of EMC, to attendees of his opening-day Oracle OpenWorld 2011 keynote. Citing a recent IDC study—measured for the first time in zetabytes—he explained the digital universe will grow 44x. With both structured and unstructured data increasing at approximately 50 percent a year and IT staff expanding at only four percent, enterprises need better data infrastructure and management capabilities to increase productivity. Enter the cloud.

A new wave of disruption, cloud computing enables enterprises to increase agility. By leveraging the hybrid cloud, IT can improve efficiency and control, while still enabling choice. For VMware and EMC customers with big data stored in Oracle databases, cloud computing offers a massive opportunity.

Run Oracle Applications Better than Oracle

Modern applications are characterized as Web-oriented, data-intensive, dynamic, virtualized and real-time. They continually consume and generate data. As a result, enterprises need a modern approach to harness the true value of their data.

Virtualization is the foundation for cloud computing. In virtualized environments, EMC’s tiered storage platforms provide uniquely simple, efficient and powerful support for Oracle applications. They enable customers to develop, deploy and manage all Oracle workload tiers—from application to middleware to database—more efficiently and from a single platform.

EMC’s platforms feature consolidated, fully automated storage tiering with block, file, and object storage. They include multi-protocol support and simple and highly automated management. EMC’s platforms combine extensive integration with the industry’s leading virtualization platform, VMware vSphere^®, and the foundation for virtualized management, VMware vCenter™, to deliver:

• Extreme performance at the lowest TCO
• Improved database administrator (DBA) efficiency by up to 90%
• Optimized management of physical and virtual Oracle environments
• Enhanced Oracle high availability   

The Results at American Tire

 We can tell you that our joint solution delivers benefits, but we would rather you hear it from a peer.

The largest distributor of wheels and tires in the U.S., American Tire Distributors selected EMC^® VNX^® unified storage, EMC backup and recovery solutions, and  VMware vSphere for its 99 percent virtualized private cloud infrastructure. On its journey to the private cloud, American Tire has virtualized its mission-critical Oracle eBusiness Suite to increase performance and scale during usage peaks.

Tony Vaden, vice president and CIO of American Tire Distributors, explains his team’s decision. "When we looked to technology vendors with expertise and knowledge to help us plan, build and execute a cloud – EMC and VMware were the clear choice. We selected EMC VNX unified storage for its simplicity, efficiency and performance. We needed the ability to auto-provision our tier-one storage to critical applications without competing with tier-two applications.”
By combining the big data you have in Oracle systems with a cloud computing approach, your organization can also yield big benefits.

Technically Speaking: 4 Ways Our Joint Solution Improves Oracle

1. Maximizes performance while meeting SLAs – In Oracle Database 11g OLTP environments, application workloads change over time. This requires Oracle DBAs to constantly monitor and tune the database to maintain SLAs. EMC developed FAST VP technology to deliver more efficient storage management. The combination of EMC FAST VP with VMware vSphere provides the following performance advantages:

• Applications can extract 44% more performance (TPM) with negligible change in response times.
• System performance scales more efficiently as workloads increase (single instance or RAC).
• SLA performance tuning required by DBAs is reduced from hours to minutes.

2. Lets you deploy more Oracle servers in less time - Oracle environments require DBAs to constantly perform the time-consuming processes of setting up and managing test, develop­ment and maintenance environments in support of production environments. VMware and EMC replication software allow more Oracle envi­ronments to be set up and managed in less time and with less effort. With virtualization, DBAs can set up and deploy more instances of Oracle on the same hardware in less time. In addition, virtualization improves the mobility of databases by allow­ing DBAs to move Oracle applications quickly and seamlessly across servers and storage infrastructure, enabling the setup of new instances without application impact.

3. Lets you scale and protect applications without impact – Complementing the value to test and development, EMC and VMware solutions greatly enhance IT teams’ ability to increase database server and storage capacity on demand, while improving overall system availability.

4. Increases server utilization and reduces cost through consolidation – The time and complexity of provisioning new Oracle instances in a physical environ­ment causes many enterprises to run Oracle servers at less than 20 percent utilization. This utilization rate allows for spikes in performance and headroom for growth. However, leveraging vir­tual machines for Oracle environments allows IT to deploy more Oracle instances on the same server hardware and enables those instances to be deployed and/or removed quickly and efficiently with far fewer required configuration steps than in physical environments. For Oracle customers, using VMware intelligent virtual infrastructure can typically increase utilization rates from approximately 20 percent to as much as 80 percent, delivering server consolidation savings.

If you’ve invested in Oracle, now you can leverage EMC and VMware solutions to make your investment pay even greater dividends. Take a minute to find out how by viewing these VMware and EMC white papers.