Using SAP on VMware is no more a myth or risky but a reality. There are good number of customers who had not only virtualized their SAP test/Dev but also their production SAP on VMware’s reliable platform.
To understand all the aspects better, let me break this post into various parts.
This part 1 will talk about the typical challenges customers faces while if they use non-x86 or don’t virtualize their SAP.
Battle between x86 & non-x86
Customers have started looking at x86 servers v/s non-x86 (SUN SPARC / HP-UX / IBM-AIX) for the obvious benefits as below
Some of the driving factors are
- No Vendor Lock-in: When it comes to x86 world, there is no vendor lock-in as you can use any vendor and any make and model as per your requirements.
- Lower hardware & maintenance costs: x86 servers are far better than cheaper than non-x86 servers. This also includes the ongoing annual maintenance costs (AMC) as well.
- Better performance: Some of the models of x86 servers can actually out-perform the non-x86 servers in various forms.Please access the URL http://www.intel.it/content/dam/doc/white-paper/performance-xeon-7500-next-gen-x86-paper.pdf which will give insight about the same. http://www.eweek.com/servers/intel-changes-direction-on-next-generation-itanium-platform/ will put more light on how intel is changing the face of the server industry
- Choice of OS: You have choice of using any OS of your choice and not forced to choose a specific OS. See the operating system trend at http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23974913
- Disaster Recovery: You can use any type of hardware, make and model when it comes to disaster recovery (DR). You don’t need to maintain hardware from same vendor.
- Unprecedented scalability: You can now scale the x86 servers the way you want, TB’s of RAM’s , more than 64 cores etc is very much possible/available in x86 environment.
- Support from Implementation Vendor: If you check with your implementation vendor/partner, you will find they that almost all of them can certify/support implementation of SAP on x86 environment. The same is the case if you are thinking about migrating from non-x86 to x86 world.
Along with above mentioned reasons, other reasons also includes scope for further cost reduction using VMware virtualization.
Gartner has clearly indicated that RISC/Itanium Unix servers continued to decline at 4.5 percent … Please refer http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2632515 more details.
SAP, themselves has recommended x86 for their customers. They mentioned “if a workload requires 10 IBM Power 740 3.55GHz cores, it would require 26 BL460c G7 cores. This contrasts to the per core estimated SAPS based on the 2-tier benchmark which suggests just that the Power 740 would have been just 1.4 time the performance per core….” More details at http://saponpower.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/is-the-sap-2-tier-benchmark-a-good-predictor-of-database-performance/
In short, x86 delivers compelling total cost of ownership (TCO) while considering SAP on x86 environment.
SAVE $$$ if you want to 
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