IBM Sales and Distribution
Solution Brief
SAP infrastructure
management with PowerVC
IBM PowerVC is utilized with SAP Landscape
Virtualization Management software
Highlights
 Combined SAP® Landscape
Virtualization Management together with
IBM PowerVC™ provides
comprehensive end-to-end
management of SAP software
landscapes
 Embeds best practices for SAP software
landscape management from both IBM
and SAP
 Applies well established standard
technologies and processes
o PowerVC™ is the new advanced
virtualization management offering,
built on OpenStack, that delivers
advanced virtualization on IBM
Power® Systems
o IBM Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy®
Manager for no-impact business data
copies
o SAP Landscape Virtualization
Management for cross-platform SAP
instance administration
In the era of worldwide business relations and processes, the
flexible and non-disruptive maintenance of business applications
and their underlying middleware and hardware becomes an
essential factor for success. Even unforeseen fluctuations in
transaction volumes and changing business processes must be
reflected immediately by the supporting system capacities. On the
other hand, planned interventions such as hardware or application
maintenance and testing must not disrupt SAP Business Suite
availability to worldwide partners and consumers.
Today’s cloud strategies cover many of these requirements for
improved business agility. A Software Defined Environment
enables your organization to deliver IT services in the most
efficient way possible. It optimizes your compute, storage and
networking infrastructure so it can adapt to the type of work
required.
The integrated solution described in this paper, combining IBM
PowerVC (a key infrastructure component within a Software
Defined Environment) and SAP Landscape Virtualization
Management (SAP LVM), is an ideal starting point for customers
planning to deploy an on-premise cloud solution on top of their
existing IT infrastructure and its supporting processes. Both
PowerVC and the SAP Landscape Virtualization Management
can be implemented as an evolutionary step in transforming
established virtualized SAP landscapes into a standardized and
automated IT setup.
Beyond the well-established advantages of virtualized SAP
landscapes, the combination of IBM and SAP cloud technology
allows for more transparency across organizational structures and
integrated processes involving tasks on infrastructure and SAP
application level.
IBM Sales and Distribution
Solution Brief
In some more detail, this involves improvements in these
disciplines:
 Central monitoring of hardware, virtualization, and relevant
SAP basis key performance indicators (KPIs).
 Standardization and automation of repetitive administrator
tasks.
 Capacity management in a heterogeneous infrastructure,
optionally automated.
 Automation of SAP system provisioning, including system
refresh, system copy or system cloning, as well as postcopy automation processing.
These tasks are mostly related to the efficient administration
and operation of SAP landscapes. Thus, IT departments are
the obvious consumers of such cloud-enabled services. These
cloud services can be offered to consumers outside this area,
for example for line-of-business consumers or project
members, by adding an appropriate front-end. It would
include a catalog of available outside cloud services as well
as authorization and workflow elements to initiate the
underlying technical tasks described herein.
Bundling the forces – integrating IBM and SAP
cloud-enabling technologies
Today, the majority of SAP customers utilize virtualization
technology on multiple platforms. Recently, OpenStack has
evolved to an open and standardized management stack for
server, virtualization, storage, and network – supporting
many platforms and vendors. IBM – as Platinum member of
the OpenStack Foundation – has built its cloud strategy
around OpenStack. Furthermore, IBM provides additional
capabilities within and above the OpenStack technology.
Likewise, IBM PowerVC is the virtualization management
product built on OpenStack that delivers advanced
virtualization on IBM Power Systems and IBM storage.
In the case of SAP LVM integration PowerVC is invoked to
drive server and virtualization related tasks in an SAP on
AIX environment. A typical scenario would be to create a
new operating system from a predefined image. This is
realized on PowerVC as a single task that involves different
components like SAN, fibre channel switches, PowerVM etc.
In combination with SAP LVM this task includes additional
SAP related actions, like creating of a new SAP system as
copy from an existing one.
The SAP binaries and business data are consistently handled
by the SAP LVM storage adapter and the IBM Tivoli Storage
FlashCopy Manager. By exploiting storage snapshot
techniques, the latter enables no-impact, application-aware
online snapshots of active SAP instances. Depending on the
use case, these snapshots can be applied to populate a cloned
system with the relevant SAP system content.
On top of this IBM infrastructure services, the SAP LVM
takes the role of SAP administrator interface and governing
instance for typical SAP automation sequences. The SAP
LVM Standard Edition provides basic virtualization and SAP
instance management.
Advanced functions such as system cloning, system refresh,
post-copy automation and workload balancing can be
obtained with SAP LVM Enterprise Edition. SAP positions
LVM as its component for enabling on-premise private cloud
SAP scenarios. As such, it links SAP application
management services with system virtualization provided by
PowerVC and storage management services via IBM Tivoli
Storage FlashCopy Manager.
On a technical level, software management is implemented
through the use of standardized APIs and user exits. IBM
specific adapters in SAP LVM translate the SAP LVM calls
into platform-specific commands. For SAP owned tasks, such
as post-processing and starting or stopping instances, SAP
LVM communicates directly with the managed service
instances.
The IBM PowerVC adapter in SAP LVM currently supports
monitoring and management of SAP applications running on
AIX in PowerVM and located on storage managed by IBM
SAN Volume Controller.
The IBM SAN Volume Controller provides advanced storage
virtualization capabilities. It is the foundation of the IBM
Storwize® family. Moreover, it allows attachment of other
IBM storage (like FlashSystem, XIV, and DS8000) and of
non-IBM storage.
IBM Sales and Distribution
Solution Brief
IBM technology complemented by SAP
Landscape Virtualization Management as a
foundation for cloud environments
By combining IBM PowerVC and Tivoli Storage
FlashCopy Manager with SAP LVM, repetitive
administrative tasks on both infrastructure and
application level can be performed much more
quickly and with a reduced risk of error. Some
tasks simply make use of IBM components while
they are launched and monitored from within the
SAP LVM console. Other tasks, such as refresh,
copying, or cloning of an SAP system, benefit from
SAP LVM post-copy automation, which automates
hundreds of required steps.
Customers using the combined IBM PowerVC,
FlashCopy Manager and SAP LVM solution have
seen reductions in key processes from hours to
minutes. With this performance improvement,
when requests for change or new services arrive,
reaction time can be cut down significantly, and the
high degree of automation reduces the reliance on
personnel with detailed IT and SAP administration
expertise. Such increased response speed and the
high degree of automation for SAP deployments
are characteristics of the efficiency and flexibility
of cloud computing.
The rapid and constant nature of change in the
business environment makes it essential that system
variations are visible to all affected organizations.
The integration of IBM and SAP monitoring
enables transparent access to infrastructure and
application metrics across customer organizations.
The consistent end-to-end monitoring of the SAP
ecosystem provided by the integrated IBM and
SAP solution results in faster reaction times and
optimized resource usage.
The journey to a dynamic Software Defined
Environment begins here
With a Software Defined Environment, your
enterprise can respond to changing business
conditions faster and more effectively. As with
most IT initiatives, you can begin the journey at
one of several destinations, from virtualization to
automation of your infrastructure, to automation of
cloud delivery.
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack (formerly
offered as IBM SmartCloud Entry) provides
simple, intuitive methods for application image
creation and deployment.
IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator provides cloud
management for your IT services. It integrates
provisioning and deployment, metering, usage,
accounting, monitoring and capacity management
of your cloud services.
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack and
SmartCloud Orchestrator are key components
within a Software Defined Environment. They are
based on open standards and particularly supporting
PowerVC.
IBM Sales and Distribution
Solution Brief
For more information
For more information about IBM Software Defined
Environment, visit:
ibm.com/systems/infrastructure/us/en/software-defined-environment/
For SAP-specific IBM cloud information, visit:
ibm.com/solutions/sap/us/en/landing/cloud_solutions.html
For more information on the IBM SAP Alliance visit:
www.ibm-sap.com
For individual questions or to request a briefing, contact
the IBM SAP International Competence Center at:
isicc@de.ibm.com
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2014
IBM Deutschland GmbH
71137 Ehningen
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