SAP on consolidated server

[Wim Rombauts]

Is anyone of you running SAP on a consolidated server ?

By default, SAP requests a server dedicated for SAP and with it's own Oracle database.

Since we have invested in a ServiceGuard cluster that already runs a couple of softwares and some instances of OracleRAC, and that has plenty of CPU and memory available, our dream is to implement SAP on that system.

Of course, SAP is not happy with that dream, but maybe some of you have expirience in this area and can tell me on what configuration you are running.

[Volker Borowski · Accepted solution]

Hi Wim,

this request is well known :-)
Reason is in my opinion, that SAP support do not like to mess around with trouble-calls for performance/configuration that are related to some other application eating up your resources (Kernelparam-shortage, SWAP-requirements...).
So you have to be prepared in case of performance trouble to be on your own.
But there are OSS-Notes describing how to install several sap-systems onto one server or how to deal with additional Oracle-DBs (OSS-Notes 153835 (with a sample of 9 Systems installed on a single host), 21960 and dependant(quite recent), 98252, 28392) and there is even more.

It depends on to whom you talk at SAP. Some people there use "not supported" a bit too early, when official politics would be "not recommended".
There are configurations that are "not supported", because they do not work for technical reasons.
I.e. installing ANY additional SAP-Instances on a Windows-Cluster. This will not work (or only with unwanted restrictions), because of NETBIOS-NAME-uniquenes required for i.e. Network-shares.

Meanwhile there is an official support to install several SAP-Systems into a SINGLE database MCOD (multiple components one database) it the keyword you should put into OSS on this (of course restrictions apply :-)

If you already run Oracle RAC, it might be interesting for you, that SAP in RAC is available (OSS-Note 581320 and dependend notes).

Hope this gives you some amunition to talk to your local SAP-Support :-)
Volker

[Ian Dennison_1]

SAP (and also Apache for that matter) are massive resource hogs that "do not play well with others". I always keep SAP Systems physically separate from other systems because SAP likes to grab all the resource for itself and has a massive CPU and memory footprint for what it does.

Try to separate them, but if you can't then make management aware (on record!) that problems will probably occur with resourcing.

Share and Enjoy! Ian

[Wim Rombauts]

Additional information on the reply of Ian :

We have PRM active on our servers. I think we could use this to limit the resources available to SAP (and Apache).

I guess that would solve the problem of over-allocation of resources for those programs. But of course, since I have no expirience in that, I could be wrong.

[Hemanth Gurunath Basrur]

Hello Wim,

Refer to this link on SAP Consolidation for more information.

http://www.hp.com/hps/erp/ep_sap_consol.html

Also, go through the customer successes link to get an idea of how they have implemented the same.

HTH.

Regards,
Hemanth

[Geoff Wild]

Well....we run our Production in it's own cluster - with CI and the DB on the same node. We also have 3 App servers.

For QA, we run CI and DB in a cluster as well - as this is also the DR site for our Production system.

We run the DEV system for those 2 on a shared dev server...

We run Business Warehouse on a standalone server - and it's QA system on the same server as the DEV for our Production server.

Rgds...Geoff

[Wim Rombauts]

Hello Hermanth,

I hope you will read this thread again. I tried your link, but I cannot access the cutsomer successes on that page. The links to the PDF files seem to be invalid.

For the others : I will certainly assign points, but I am going to wait for (I hope) some additional usefull entries.

[Geoff Wild]

Here's the main page - looks like all the pdf ones are broken:

http://www.hp.com/hps/success/

The html ones work:

http://www.hp.com/hps/success/ss_citevision.html

Rgds...Geoff

[Hemanth Gurunath Basrur]

Hello Wim,

oops!!

I am sorry that none of the links are working. I have filed a request and hopefully it should be fixed soon.

Unfortunately, all the customer success stories w.r.t SAP Consolidation are captured in pdf files and none of them are showing up as the links are broken.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

I hope it is not urgent. Once it is up, I shall let you know.

Thanks,
Hemanth

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Check out SAPnote 21960

I found this referenced on

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/19056-0-0-225-121.aspx

"the SAP support organization has issued a series of SAPnotes that recommend the use of separate servers. However, HP solutions have prompted SAP to issue SAPnote 21960, underscoring SAP's full support of HP consolidation solutions."

This in turn I found on by a simple search on hp.com for "+sap +consolidation".

I often put lots of SAP instances and Databases, on a single server.
Now I only play with benchmark systems, not production, so I don't worry too much about being able to get support. (If it hurts too much, I just stop doing it :-).

In benchmarking we find it to be advantageous to run mutliple smaller instances as opposed to a single large on, evern for the same SAP system. This is mostly because of low level concerns like
- SAP Semaphore usage to sync extentded memory access
- Process placement and priority (CPU affinity/binding).

Groetjes,
Hein.

[Wim Rombauts]

Closing old thread.