By: Christian Fernando
When using SAP native tools such as SAP Solution Manager, there isn’t visibility into the underlying virtualization layers, leaving a blind spot in understanding the complete performance story. The virtualization layer includes, but is not limited to, the virtual machine, ESXi server, CPU, memory and storage. If I am an SAP administrator, the ability to quickly see contention of infrastructure resources and find root causes of performance or outage incidents is very valuable to keep my user base happy and access/uptime SLAs at a high level.
In this post, I’ll provide insight into an example topology of a virtualized environment and dashboards that offer in-depth views into the infrastructure-monitored environment. The second in this two-part blog series will provide insight for the IT administrator, showcasing how visibility into the layers below virtualization will help determine usage patterns in the business and how to dynamically respond to those changes without affecting SLAs.
Topology of a Virtualized SAP Environment
Figure 1: Example topology of a virtualized environment in vROps
The topology includes:
- EPP as the SAP System
- SAP APP1 as the SAP Host
- D00 as the ABAP Instance
- SAP APP1 as the VMware VM
- ESXI INF as the VMware ESXi Server
With vRealize Operations (vROps), you can also see additional relationships that include all SAP HANA and/or database instances.
Real World Scenario: Memory Contention
Using the Blue Medora Management Packs on vROps, trace the SAP application to the SAP Host. Through the power of relationships, trace which virtual machine this is running on to the VMware ESXi server. In doing so, you will see a contention for memory and CPU on the hypervisor to accommodate the workloads of all the VMs.
Figure 2: The Blue Medora SAP Management Pack for vROps provides insight into memory contention.
With detailed alerts and notifications, understand when your disks are running out of space before it impacts the performance of the database instances and SAP application residing on it. In turn, you can prevent service interruptions of your business-critical SAP application environment and take action before lights go out on application access.
Figure 3: Example of the SAP HANA High Disk Utilization Dashboard
How to Extend Visibility into Storage for SAP
Understanding whether storage and capacity issues are causing performance problems simplifies the troubleshooting process — giving you immediate insight into what part of the IT stack may be causing issues. The Blue Medora SAP Management Pack gives you extended visibility so you can clearly drill down to the root cause of issues, reducing mean-time-to-innocence and eliminating alert storms.
The management pack includes more than 3,000 key performance metrics, including active session counts and system utilization. Combined with a series of out-of-the-box dashboards and reports, gain real-time access to understand issues as they arise instead of when they derail your performance.
To learn more about the SAP Management Pack from Blue Medora or to download a free trial, please visit the True Visibility Suite for VMware vRealize Operations page on Blue Medora’s website.
