Productive system as hardware or virtualized?

[Former Member]

Can a productive system be virtualized or must it be hardware.

If it can be what are the benefits of virtual productive systems?

[Former Member]

Hi Damian,

Your choice of Hardware vs Virtual in a PRD system, is purely dependent on the following:

- Supported by SAP.
- Supported by DB vendor.

- Strategic part of your business's IT roadmap.

For example, SAP support some of their products on VMware, no problem.  Some of them they don't support on VMware (like SAP MDM on Windows).

Oracle will still provide support for your DBs but they do not certifyon OSs on VMware.

You should familiarise yourself with the Oracle support agreement on this and ensure that your business buys into the proposed architecture and associated "risks".

The benefits of having virtual PRD systems could be:

- HA technology.

- Snapshot capability.

- Fault Tolerance (Vmware option, not sure on others).

- Better hardware utilisation (higher density of systems to CPU/memory).

- Maybe license savings (depending on use of DB/DBs on the server(s) and licensing agreements).

- Maybe reduction in licenses for storage/backup/anti-virus technologies.

Some handy SAP links I've accumulated:

Running SAP on VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/solutions/partners/alliances/sap.html),
TCO and ROI of running SAP on VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/sap/SAP_TCOROI_Customers_Final.pdf),
SAP Note: 1122387 – Linux: SAP Support in virtualized environments (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1122387),
SAP Note: 1122388 – Linux: VMware vSphere Configuration guidelines (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1122388),
SAP Note: 1492000 – General Support Statement for Virtual Environments (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1492000),
SAP Insider – 3 common misconceptions (http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/sap/sap-insider-virtualization-cloud.pdf)

Hope this helps.

Darryl