Migrating from AIX 2.5 to XEN Red Hat Rhel. 5.5

[mark_altmann]

Hi forum,

we are migrating a SAP Bank Analyzer system landscape from running natively under AIX 2.5 with Oracle 10.2.0.2. to Linux Red Hat Rhel. 5.5 running virtually under XEN (DB-version stays the same). Bank Analyzer version is 5.0 with latest patch level, the SAP-system underneath is SAP BW 700.

Besides the changeover from native to virtual machines, this migration also is a change of OS. Can anyone here let me know if there are special considerations we have to pay attention to from a SAP basis point of view? The changeover is conducted by our service provider, however there might be additional requirements from the application point of view.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated; if you need more info to answer the question please let me know.

Thanks in advance & kind regards,

Mark

[markus_doehr2]

> we are migrating a SAP Bank Analyzer system landscape from running natively under AIX 2.5 with Oracle 10.2.0.2. to Linux Red Hat Rhel. 5.5 running virtually under XEN (DB-version stays the same). Bank Analyzer version is 5.0 with latest patch level, the SAP-system underneath is SAP BW 700.

A few additional points to consider:

- Oracle does not support its databases under Xen (see ote 1426182 - Support of Oracle Database for XEN and KVM) so you're out of luck using Xen as virtualization platform in a supported way

- AIX is a BigEndian platform, Linux x64 is LittleEndian, this may impact (binary) data transfers between the SAP system and external systems

Markus

[hannes_kuehnemund]

Hi Mark,

another topic to consider:

Red Hat dropped Xen in future releases, RHEL5 is the last one with productive Xen support. Taking the lifecycle dates from RHEL5 into account (according to SAP note 936887)

End of Production 1 phase: 31 Mar 2011

End of Production 2 phase: No earlier than Q1 of 2012

End of Production 3 phase: 31 Mar 2014

You might run on a (from Red Hat point of view) unsupported stack very soon.

Thanks,

Hannes

[mark_altmann]

Thanks Hannes,

that's a really good point. Unfortunately, we have no real influence on the decission which OS and release the service provider decides for, so for now I guess I have to live with it.....

Kind regards.

Mark