SAP 4.7 ext 110 on vmware

[Former Member]

Hello,

Presently, we have R/3 4.7 ext 110 running on windows 2000 (32-bit) with MSSQL 2000 database.

R/3 landscape is currently installed on the hardware model - Dell PowerEdge 2950.

In the future we are planning to buy a new hardware (Dell PowerEdge R710 - 64 bit) and we wanted to use virtualization (vmware VSPHERE 4) for our existing R/3 4.7 systems by migrating them onto the new 64-bit hardware.

(We are aware that the extended support for R/3 4.7 is ending on 2013, however because of some issues we don't want to upgrade to ECC 6.0 at this time)

We have following questions on the SAP support for virtualization.

1. As per "SAP Note 1409608 - Virtualization on Windows" SAP does not support R/3 4.7 ext 110 on the virtualized environment.

Does it mean that SAP wonu2019t support application at all or they wonu2019t provide support for issues related only to virtualization?

2. As per your experience, are there any known issues or what are the typical issues faced by other customers using R/3 4.7 with vmware?

3. Is migration of existing R/3 4.7 system (running on 32-bit) to the new virtualized 64-bit environment is technically possible? (Will R/3 4.7 system run on virtualized 64-bit platform?)

4. Say if we migrate R/3 4.7 onto the virtualized 64-bit platform, and after that if we want to perform R/3 4.7 to ECC 6.0 upgrade, will SAP provide support this upgrade process? Will virtualization leads to longer downtime? (As per Note 1409608: upgrade takes longer time in the virtual environment)

5. What would you suggest in our case, should we go for virtualization for R/3 4.7 or we should consider virtualization option after upgrading to ECC 6.0?

Thanks & regards,

Tushar

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Markus,

Thanks for your valuable inputs. Please comment on the below questions also.

> Technically you can run a 64bit kernel (640_EX2) against a 64bit SQL Server 2005 with 4.71 but that is not released. I'd also open an OSS call for that; I see no reason, why it shouldn't be supported.

As per PAM, R/3 4.7 with MSSQL 2005 (64-bit) is not released.

So in future, what if we want to upgrade to ECC 6.0, the prerequisite for ECC upgrade is DB upgrade (i.e. SQL 2000  SQL 2005).Suppose we perform the DB upgrade, then we would need to run our R/3 4.7 system on SQL 2005 (64-bit) for some time and as per PAM this combination is not supported by SAP.

What is your opinion on this? Does SAP provide support during this upgrade process.

In addition to this I have one more question.

Can we run R/3 4.7 with windows 2000(32-bit)/MSSQL 2000 on the virtualized environment? As per u201CNote 1409608 - Virtualization on Windowsu201D

==================================================================

SAP does not support SAP systems that are installed on Windows

32-bit in a virtualized environment.

=================================================================

Does it mean, technically itu2018s possible to run 32-bit systems on the virtualized environment but as you mentioned in the previous reply, SAP wonu2019t provide support if there are any issues related to virtualization.

Please confirm if my understanding is correct.

Thanks again,

Tushar

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

> As per PAM, R/3 4.7 with MSSQL 2005 (64-bit) is not released.

Note 905634 - Release planning for Microsoft SQL Server 2005

and also

Note 899111 - Installing R3 4.7SR1 (47X110) on x64 Windows Platform

So you can install (and also system copy) your current system on that platform.

> Does it mean, technically itu2018s possible to run 32-bit systems on the virtualized environment but as you mentioned in the previous reply, SAP wonu2019t provide support if there are any issues related to virtualization.

Yes.

If you use a 64bit kernel 640_EX2 for your system, you can run database and application on 64bit on VMWare. Whether this is supported or not I would ask. Technically your system is a WebAS 6.20 but running with kernel 6.40 because kernel 6.20 is out of maintenance. Conclusively you can run a 640_EX2 kernel and since this kernel is available as 64bit for Windows x64 you can run it.

Markus

[Former Member]

Thank you Markus.Provided notes are useful.

[markus_doehr2]

> 1. As per "SAP Note 1409608 - Virtualization on Windows" SAP does not support R/3 4.7 ext 110 on the virtualized environment.

> Does it mean that SAP wonu2019t support application at all or they wonu2019t provide support for issues related only to virtualization?

Technically you can run Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 plus a SAP database on VMWare. However, if you open OSS calls concerning performance problems SAP may ask you to reproduce the problem on bare metal in order to help. Production instances with lower releases than mentioned in this note are generally not supported. Before you do the migration I'd open an OSS call and ask whether they would provide support in case there are issues. I would also not go with Windows 2000 but use Windows 2003.

> 2. As per your experience, are there any known issues or what are the typical issues faced by other customers using R/3 4.7 with vmware?

I have none, that version is long gone here (since 2004) but I would not expect any problem aside from the above mentioned ones - in case you run into them.

> 3. Is migration of existing R/3 4.7 system (running on 32-bit) to the new virtualized 64-bit environment is technically possible? (Will R/3 4.7 system run on virtualized 64-bit platform?)

Technically you can run a 64bit kernel (640_EX2) against a 64bit SQL Server 2005 with 4.71 but that is not released. I'd also open an OSS call for that; I see no reason, why it shouldn't be supported.

> 4. Say if we migrate R/3 4.7 onto the virtualized 64-bit platform, and after that if we want to perform R/3 4.7 to ECC 6.0 upgrade, will SAP provide support this upgrade process? Will virtualization leads to longer downtime? (As per Note 1409608: upgrade takes longer time in the virtual environment)

Virtualization layers use additional resources. This is especially true for systems, that do high I/O (such as database servers). We run all our database servers on bare metal and all application servers on VMWare (and/or Xen). The question would be how significant this difference would be in your case. I would run a test upgrade a few times and tune parameters until you're satisfied.

> 5. What would you suggest in our case, should we go for virtualization for R/3 4.7 or we should consider virtualization option after upgrading to ECC 6.0?

I would open an OSS call and ask whether you're allowed to run the production on VMWare and go from there. If SAP denies all support I would reconsider.

Markus