SAP Solutions on VMware Virtual Infrastructure
VMware has worked very closely with SAP for a number of years to ensure that even the most resource-intensive SAP deployments run well on the VMware platform. We also do regular testing of SAP components on VMware vSphere and have created Best Practices documentation, called SAP Notes, to support our joint customers. The SAP notes published for Linux and Windows are:
1122388 for Linux
1056052 for Windows
In addition, we have additional SAP deployment information published in a Best Practices Guide available at:
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10086
VMware also works closely with its hardware vendor partners to publish benchmarks and create sizing guidelines for solution deployments of different sizes. Recently we published a 3-tier benchmark with Fujitsu that demonstrated a fully virtualized environment with performance of more than 87000 SAPS. Details of this benchmark are available in the following document:
http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd3tier.epx (certification 2010016)
Disclosure (SAP ERP 6.0 EHP 4, 1 sec. Resp. time, Unicode, Intel Processor X5570, 3GHZ,Linux SLES 10, ESX 4.0)
But Benchmarks do not always reflect “realistic" customer workloads. A couple of month ago, we decided to carry out a joint project with the IBM SAP International Competence Center (ISICC) and the SAP Center of Excellence / Value to prototype and create a test-environment that would reflect typical "Customer workloads" more closely. Together, we designed a proof-of -concept configuration that reflected our experience and incorporated recommendations for running a so-called “Blue Stack” of IBM hardware and software components to provide a dynamic infrastructure for a typical SAP Business Suite landscape. This proof-of -concept design showed that the IBM Blue Stack offers a uniquely integrated, easy to manage, and cost-effective way to deliver mission-critical SAP applications, matched closely to business needs. A white paper providing details of this joint project is available at:
http://www.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP101749
Note that the project targeted "average, mainstream" SAP customer environments, not particularly small or large.
To summarize, VMware works closely with key ISVs, like SAP and other partners, to ensure that our joint customers can deploy demanding business solutions like SAP on the VMware platform, with excellent performance, reliability and scalability. To find more information about work that VMware has done with different business application vendors, check out our Technical Papers at http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/
