Implementation Guide
EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED SAP
BUSINESS SUITE APPLICATIONS
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
EMC VSPEX
Abstract
This Implementation Guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy an SAP
system on an EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructure with VMware vSphere enabled by
EMC VNX®. The guide provides information on SAP systems running on Windows/SQL
Server and SLES/Oracle combinations.
December 2014
Copyright © 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published December 2014
EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date.
The information is subject to change without notice.
The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no
representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this
publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software
described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
EMC2, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC
Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used
herein are the property of their respective owners.
For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation
Trademarks on EMC.com.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
Part Number H13679
2
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Contents
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction
7
Purpose of this guide.................................................................................................. 8
Business value ........................................................................................................... 8
Scope ......................................................................................................................... 9
Audience .................................................................................................................... 9
Terminology.............................................................................................................. 10
Chapter 2
Before You Start
13
Overview .................................................................................................................. 14
Predeployment tasks ................................................................................................ 14
Deployment workflow ............................................................................................... 15
Deployment prerequisites ........................................................................................ 16
Planning and sizing SAP NetWeaver 7.40 ................................................................. 19
Overview.............................................................................................................. 19
Storage Pools ...................................................................................................... 19
Example............................................................................................................... 19
Essential reading ...................................................................................................... 21
VSPEX Design Guide ............................................................................................ 21
VSPEX Solution Overviews ................................................................................... 21
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides ..................................................................... 21
Chapter 3
Solution Overview
23
Overview .................................................................................................................. 24
EMC VSPEX proven infrastructure ............................................................................. 24
Solution architecture ................................................................................................ 25
Summary of key components.................................................................................... 26
Chapter 4
Solution Implementation
29
Overview .................................................................................................................. 30
Physical setup .......................................................................................................... 30
Network implementation .......................................................................................... 30
Storage implementation ........................................................................................... 31
Overview.............................................................................................................. 31
Setting up the VNX configuration ......................................................................... 32
Provisioning storage for VMFS datastore .............................................................. 32
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
3
Contents
EMC Confidential
Provisioning storage for the application pool disks .............................................. 33
ESXi and vCenter infrastructure implementation ....................................................... 35
Multipathing implementation ................................................................................... 37
SAP virtual machine implementation ........................................................................ 38
Overview.............................................................................................................. 38
Creating SAP virtual machines ............................................................................. 39
SAP System implementation..................................................................................... 40
Overview.............................................................................................................. 40
Planning .............................................................................................................. 41
Preparation .......................................................................................................... 41
Installing a distributed SAP system ...................................................................... 42
Post-installation .................................................................................................. 43
Chapter 5
Solution Validation
45
Baseline hardware validation ................................................................................... 46
Overview.............................................................................................................. 46
Verifying ESXi functionality .................................................................................. 46
Verifying solution components redundancy ......................................................... 46
Monitoring the solution’s health .......................................................................... 47
SAP application performance validation ................................................................... 47
Overview.............................................................................................................. 47
Test environment ................................................................................................. 47
Workload profile .................................................................................................. 48
Validation procedure ........................................................................................... 49
Success criteria ................................................................................................... 50
Testing results ..................................................................................................... 50
Chapter 6
Reference Documentation
51
EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 52
Product documentation ............................................................................................ 52
SAP documentation .................................................................................................. 52
VMware documentation............................................................................................ 52
Links ........................................................................................................................ 53
VMware website .................................................................................................. 53
Appendix A Qualification Worksheet
55
Configuration worksheet for SAP NetWeaver 7.4 ....................................................... 56
4
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Contents
Figures
Figure 1.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................................ 25
Figure 2.
Solution architecture ........................................................................... 26
Figure 3.
SAP system storage elements on a VMware vSphere 5.5 platform ....... 32
Figure 4.
Create Storage Pool wizard—FAST VP enabled ..................................... 34
Figure 5.
Storage Pool Properties—FAST Cache enabled ..................................... 35
Figure 6.
SAP system architecture ...................................................................... 48
Figure 7.
Test result: SAP system performance ................................................... 50
Tables
Table 1.
Terminology......................................................................................... 10
Table 2.
Predeployment tasks ........................................................................... 14
Table 3.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for SAP Business Suite applications
deployment process ............................................................................ 15
Table 4.
Deployment prerequisites checklist ..................................................... 16
Table 5.
Storage pools ...................................................................................... 19
Table 6.
Example of customer evaluation: large-sized SAP production system .. 19
Table 7.
Example of required resources: Large-sized SAP system ...................... 20
Table 8.
Example of storage recommendations: Large-sized SAP system .......... 20
Table 9.
Solution components .......................................................................... 26
Table 10.
Tasks for physical setup ...................................................................... 30
Table 11.
Tasks for switch and network configuration ......................................... 30
Table 12.
Tasks for VNX storage array configuration ............................................ 31
Table 13.
Example of additional storage layout for virtual machine OS on VNX ... 33
Table 14.
Storage layout example on VNX ........................................................... 33
Table 15.
Tasks for ESXi and vCenter installation and configuration .................... 36
Table 16.
SAP host virtual machine installation and configuration ...................... 38
Table 17.
Example of the required resources: Large-sized SAP system ................ 39
Table 18.
Example of a storage recommendation: Large-sized SAP system ......... 40
Table 19.
SAP host virtual machine installation and configuration ..................... 40
Table 20.
Required verification tasks .................................................................. 46
Table 21.
Tools to monitor the VSPEX for virtualized SAP Business Suite
application solution ............................................................................ 47
Table 22.
Characteristics of applied workload ..................................................... 48
Table 23.
Test procedure .................................................................................... 49
Table 24.
Common server information ................................................................ 56
Table 25.
ESXi server information ....................................................................... 56
Table 26.
Array information................................................................................. 57
Table 27.
Network infrastructure information ...................................................... 57
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
5
Contents
6
EMC Confidential
Table 28.
VLAN information ................................................................................ 57
Table 29.
Service accounts ................................................................................. 58
Table 30.
SAP system parameters ....................................................................... 58
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter presents the following topics:
Purpose of this guide ................................................................................................. 8
Business value ........................................................................................................... 8
Scope ......................................................................................................................... 9
Audience .................................................................................................................... 9
Terminology .............................................................................................................10
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
7
Chapter 1: Introduction
EMC Confidential
Purpose of this guide
EMC® VSPEX® Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing business-critical
applications. VSPEX provides partners with the ability to plan and design the assets
required to support SAP Business Suite applications in a virtualized environment on
VSPEX Private Cloud.
The EMC VSPEX for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications architecture provides
a validated system, capable of hosting virtualized SAP systems at a consistent
performance level. This solution is designed to be layered on a VSPEX Private Cloud
solution using a VMware vSphere virtualization layer, and uses the highly available
EMC VNX® family for the storage.
The compute and network components, while vendor-definable, are designed to be
redundant and are sufficiently powerful to handle the processing and data needs of
the virtual machine environment.
This Implementation Guide describes how to implement an SAP environment on any
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure that uses a VNX storage array. This guide applies to
online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads and does not cover data warehousing
workloads.
Business value
Never before has access to mission-critical data been more important to businesses
competing in a rapidly changing global economy. Today, IT departments are
challenged with an explosion of corporate data along with stagnant or shrinking
budgets.
As the foundation of the cloud-ready information platform, SAP applications provide
great availability, breakthrough insight, credible and consistent data, and productive
development experience to customers. SAP applications can also quickly build
solutions and extend data across on-premises cloud and public cloud backed by
mission-critical confidence.
The VNX family is designed to offer a hybrid, unified storage system for VSPEX
customers who need to centralize and simplify storage when transforming their IT.
Customers who want to virtualize SAP systems on a VSPEX Private Cloud will see the
benefits that the Multicore optimization (MCx) VNX family brings, as this architecture
distributes all data services more evenly across all the system’s cores. This means
that cache management and back-end RAID management processes scale linearly
and benefit greatly from the latest Intel multicore CPUs. I/O operations in VSPEX run
faster and more efficiently than ever before with the new VNX family arrays.
EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST™) is an optional feature of the VNX family
that is available to VSPEX customers. EMC FAST Cache dynamically extends the
storage system’s existing read/write caching capacity with flash drives to increase
system-wide performance and lower total cost per IOPS. FAST Cache does this by
using high-performing flash drives that are positioned between the primary cache
(DRAM-based) and the hard disk drives (HDDs). This feature boosts performance of
8
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 1: Introduction
highly transactional applications such as SAP by keeping “hot” data in cache so it is
available when you need it.
VSPEX enables customers to accelerate their IT transformation with faster
deployments, and simplified management, and storage provisioning. Customers can
realize greater efficiency with higher application availability, increased storage
utilization, and faster, leaner backups. In addition, VSPEX provides customers with
flexibility of choices when selecting server and network components to address the
requirements of their SAP environments.
Scope
This Implementation Guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy SAP
Business Suite application environments on a VSPEX Private Cloud for VMware
vSphere with an EMC VNX storage system. This guide assumes that a VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure already exists in the customer environment.
The guide focuses on virtual machine layouts and infrastructure configuration
pertinent to SAP system landscapes and is not intended to replace existing
Installation Guides found in the SAP Marketplace.
Audience
This guide is intended for internal EMC personnel and qualified EMC VSPEX Partners,
and assumes that VSPEX Partners who intend to deploy this VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications are:

Qualified by SAP to sell and implement SAP, Oracle and/or SQL Server
solutions

Certified in SAP NetWeaver Technology Platform, with at least

C_TADM51_* SAP Certified Technology Associate – System Administration
(Oracle)

C_TADM53_* SAP Certified Technology Associate – System Administration
(SQL Server)

Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the VNX family of storage
systems

Certified to sell VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Qualified to sell, install, and configure the network and server products
required for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures
Readers must also have the necessary technical training and background to install
and configure:

EMC VNX

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 and/or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

Oracle 11g and/or Microsoft SQL Server 2012
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
9
Chapter 1: Introduction
EMC Confidential

SAP NetWeaver technology
This guide provides external references where applicable. EMC recommends that
partners implementing this solution are familiar with these documents. For details,
see Essential reading on page 21 and Chapter 6: Reference Documentation on page
51.
Terminology
Table 1 lists the terminology used in this guide
Table 1.
10
Term
Definition
AAS
SAP Additional Application Server, previously known as a Dialog instance
ASCS
ABAP SAP Central Services instance, an ABAP instance of the SAP system
containing the Enqueue server and message server
CIFS
Common Internet File System
DRS
Distributed Resource Scheduler
FAST VP
Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools, enabling multiple storage
service levels to support ViPR-driven storage-as-a-service offerings in the
hybrid cloud environment
IOPS
Input/output operations per second
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer System Interface
LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
MCOD
Multiple components in one database
NFS
Network File System
NIC
Network interface card
OLTP
Online transaction processing, including typical applications such as data
entry and retrieval transaction processing
PAS
SAP Primary Application Server, the Central instance without the message
and Enqueue servers (which were split off to become the ASCS in new
installations)
RDBMS
Relational Database Management System
SP
Service Pack; (for example SP1 = Service Pack 1)
SWPM
SAP Software provisioning manager
tempdb
A system database used by Microsoft SQL Server as a temporary working
area during processing
VMDK
Virtual Machine Disk
VMFS
Virtual Machine File System
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
Terminology
EMC Confidential
Chapter 1: Introduction
Term
Definition
SAP
Application
Server
The virtual or physical machine that contains at least one SAP Application
Instance
SAP Instance
An SAP installation; an Application Instance contains SAP work processes,
while a Central Services Instance contains the SAP message server and other
SAP services
SAP
NetWeaver
The technology platform which the SAP Business Suite is based on; refers to
all ABAP-based and Java-based SAP technologies or products
SAP System
A combination of ASCS, PAS, DB instances, and any AAS that work together
under a single SID; an SAP system may exist in one application server
(Central System) or multiple (distributed) application servers
SAP System
Landscape
A layout/architecture of SAP systems interconnected via transport routes.
Typical implementations involve a three-system landscape
(DEVQASPRD)
SAP
Solutions
Landscape
A layout of several SAP systems serving different functions (business
modules such as CRM, FI-CO, and so on) connected through business
processes and functioning as one system
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
11
Chapter 1: Introduction
12
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
EMC Confidential
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Chapter 2
Before You Start
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview .................................................................................................................. 14
Predeployment tasks ............................................................................................... 14
Deployment workflow .............................................................................................. 15
Deployment prerequisites ........................................................................................ 16
Planning and sizing SAP NetWeaver 7.40 ................................................................ 19
Essential reading .....................................................................................................21
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
13
Chapter 2: Before You Start
EMC Confidential
Overview
This chapter provides an overview of important information you need to be aware of,
documents you need to be familiar with, and tasks you need to perform before you
start implementing your VSPEX for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications
solution.
The EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP business Suite applications Design Guide for this
solution describes how to size and design your solution and how to select the right
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure on which to layer SAP systems. The deployment
examples in this Implementation Guide are based on the recommendations and
examples in the Design Guide.
Before you deploy an SAP system on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, EMC
recommends that you complete the predeployment tasks described in Table 2.
Predeployment tasks
Predeployment tasks include procedures that do not directly relate to environment
installation and configuration, but whose results are needed during installation.
Examples of predeployment tasks include the collection of hostnames, IP addresses,
VLAN IDs, license keys, installation media, and so on. Perform these tasks before a
customer visit to decrease the time required on site.
Table 2 describes the predeployment tasks for this solution.
Table 2.
Predeployment tasks
Task
Description
Reference
Gathering
documents
Gather the related documents
listed in Essential reading on
page 21.
Essential reading on page 21
These are referred to
throughout this document to
provide details on set-up
procedures and deployment
best practices for the various
components of the solution.
Gathering tools
14
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
Gather the required and
optional tools for the
deployment. Use Table 4 to
confirm that all equipment,
software, and appropriate
licenses are available before
the deployment process.
Deployment prerequisites on
page 16
EMC Confidential
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Task
Description
Reference
Gathering data
Collect the customer-specific
configuration data for
networking, arrays, accounts,
and so on. Enter this
information into the
Configuration worksheet for
SAP Systems for reference
during the deployment
process.
Configuration worksheet for
SAP NetWeaver 7.4 on
page 56.
Deployment workflow
EMC recommends that you refer to the process flow in Table 3 to design and
implement your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for SAP Business Suite applications.
Table 3.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for SAP Business Suite applications deployment
process
Step
Action
1
Use the VSPEX for SAP Business Suite applications qualification worksheet to
collect user requirements. The qualification worksheet is in the Design Guide.
2
Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to determine the recommended VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications, based on the
user requirements collected in Step 1. Refer to the Design Guide for guidance.
For more information about the VSPEX Sizing Tool, refer to the EMC VSPEX
Sizing Tool portal.
Note: If the VSPEX Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually size SAP
Business Suite applications using the sizing guidelines in Chapter 4 of the
Design Guide.
3
Determine the final design for your VSPEX solution. Refer to the Design Guide
for guidance.
Note: Ensure that all application requirements, not just the requirements for
virtualized SAP Business Suite applications, are considered.
4
Select and order the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. Refer to the
appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading on page
21 for guidance.
5
Deploy and test your VSPEX solution. Refer to this Implementation Guide.
Note: This guide describes how to implement the solution. If you already have
a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip the sections for the
implementation steps already completed.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
15
Chapter 2: Before You Start
EMC Confidential
Deployment prerequisites
This guide applies to VSPEX Proven Infrastructures for virtualized SAP Business Suite
applications solutions with VMware and the EMC VNX family of storage systems. The
example provided and carried through this guide is for a deployment on a VNX5800.
The same principles and guidance applies to all other models that VSPEX Proven
Infrastructures support.
Table 4 itemizes the hardware, software, and licenses required to configure the
solution. For additional information, refer to the hardware and software tables in the
appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide listed in Essential reading on page 21.
Note: If you already have a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip this
section.
Table 4.
Deployment prerequisites checklist
Requirement
Description
Hardware
Physical servers: Sufficient physical
server capacity to host the required
number of virtual machines as
recommended by the Design Guide
and VSPEX Sizing Tool.
Version
Reference notes
EMC VSPEX Private Cloud:
VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to
1,000 Virtual Machines
VMware vSphere 5.5 servers to host
virtual infrastructure servers.
Note: This requirement may be
covered in the existing infrastructure.
Networking: Switch port capacity and
capabilities as required by the virtual
server infrastructure.
EMC VNX: Multiprotocol storage array
with the required disk layout.
Note: The storage should be
sufficient to support the additional
storage layout for applications.
Software for
VSPEX
16
VNX OE for block
5.33.000.5.034
EMC Unisphere® for VNX
1.3.1.1.0034
EMC vStorage APIs for Array
Integration Plug-In
Release for
vSphere 5.5
EMC PowerPath®/VE (optional)
5.9
VMware ESXi
5.5
VMware website
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Online Support
EMC Confidential
Requirement
OS Software
Database
software
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Description
Version
VMware vCenter Server
5.5
EMC FAST™ Cache enabler (optional)
N/A
EMC FAST enabler
N/A
EMC Thin provisioning enabler
N/A
Microsoft Windows Server
2008 or 2012
R2 Standard (or
higher) with
latest update
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 SP3
SAP RDBMS - Microsoft Windows
Server
2012 Standard
or Enterprise
edition SP1 with
latest update
SAP RDBMS - Oracle Database
11.2.0.3 or
higher
Reference notes
SAP Installation Guides
SAP Software Download
Center
Oracle and/or SQL Server as
appropriate
Same versions
as the database
software
Database
client software
SAP Download Manager
2.1.140 or
higher
SAP
Application
software
SAP Software Provisioning Manager
(SWPM)
1.0 or higher
SAP Download Manager
SAP UC Kernel
740
SAP Installation Guides
SAP Installation Export ECC 6
SR1 EhP7 or
higher
SAP license
ERP Permanent
SAP Software Download
Center
SAP Note 1680045
Note: You need an S-user account to
log in to these SAP websites. Contact
your SAP account manager for more
information.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
17
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Requirement
Description
Version
Reference notes
Licenses
Microsoft Windows Server license
keys
2008 or 2012
Standard (or
higher)
SAP Support Portal License
Keys
Note: This requirement may be
covered by an existing Software
Assurance agreement and may be
found on an existing customer
Microsoft Key Management Server
(KMS) (if applicable).
Microsoft SQL Server license key
Note: This requirement may be
covered by existing infrastructure.
2012 Standard
or Enterprise
Edition
VMware vSphere license keys
5.5
Note: This may be covered in the
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
18
EMC Confidential
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Planning and sizing SAP NetWeaver 7.40
Overview
To plan and size your SAP Business Suite applications, follow the recommendations
and VSPEX Sizing Tool proposals introduced in the Design Guide.
Storage Pools
In this VSPEX for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications solution, we1 used the
storage pool configuration as detailed in Table 5.
Table 5.
Example
Storage pools
Pool name
Purpose
VSPEX private cloud
pool
This is the pool where all the virtual machine OS volumes reside.
SAP file system pool
The SAP file system pool stores SAP kernel, profiles, transport
objects, instance related objects, and so on.
DB general pool
The db general pool stores database specific objects, such as
database home, binaries, archive log (oracle) and etc.
data file pool
The data file pool stores the data files for the database.
Log pool
The log pool stores the log files and tempdb (SQL Server) for the
database.
This example is based on the large-sized SAP production system example described
in the Design Guide. Complete the evaluation as shown in Table 6.
Table 6.
Example of customer evaluation: large-sized SAP production system
Question
Example answer
What is the workload type of this application?
OLTP (default)
What is the annual growth rate (%)?
30
What is the production system SID?
RP1
What is the total SAPS for the production system?
10,000
What is the size of the production system database (GB)?
1,000
Do you intend to use FAST VP for your production system?
Yes
After you have received a completed qualification worksheet from the customer, and
entered the answers into the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you will see results similar to those
shown below:

1
Required resources that provide resources to calculate the number of virtual
machines and their characteristics.
In this guide, “we” refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
19
Chapter 2: Before You Start
EMC Confidential

A Storage recommendations table that lists the additional storage hardware
that is required to run the OLTP workload; this is in addition to the VSPEX
Private Cloud pool.
Table 7 and Table 8 are examples based on the customer information provided in
Table 6. In this guide, we use the resources shown in these tables. The suggested
storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool.
In this sizing example, we make the following assumptions:

The virtual SAPS rating supplied by the hardware vendor SAP practice is 1250
SAPS per vCPU at 65% CPU utilization. This is a hypothetical value.

DB SAPS is 4000. Customers can obtain the actual DB SAPS from SAP Quick
Sizer result.

8 cores per socket. Customers can obtain the actual CPU architecture from the
server vendor.
We used the assumed values in the list above with the reference documents and
resources listed in the Design Guide to calculate the resources we used in this guide
shown in Table 7 for the large-sized SAP system.
Table 7.
Example of required resources: Large-sized SAP system
Instance Role
vCPU
Memory
OS volume
capacity
OS volume IOPS
Number of virtual
machines
Database
4
32 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
1
4
32 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
2
2
16 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
1
Instance
Application
Instance
ASCS Instance
Table 8.
Example of storage recommendations: Large-sized SAP system
Recommended additional storage pools for SAP system
20
VSPEX private cloud pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
No. of
disks
RP1 data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
RAID 1
FAST VP solid state
drives
100 GB
6
RP1 log pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
RP1 SAP file system
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
RP1 db general pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Essential reading
EMC recommends that you read the following documents available from the VSPEX
space in the EMC Community Network or from the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure pages
on EMC.com.
The SAP Installation Guides are found in SAP Service Marketplace Installation and
Upgrade Documentation and SAP Installation Guides. SAP notes are found in the SAP
Support Portal. These websites all require SAP Service Marketplace (SMP) login.
If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC representative.
VSPEX Design
Guide
Refer to the following VSPEX Design Guide:
VSPEX Solution
Overviews
Refer to the following VSPEX Solution Overviews:
VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure
Guides
Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guides:



EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP Business Suite applications
EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Accelerate Your Journey to Your Cloud with VMware
vSphere Operations Management
EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual
Machines
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
21
Chapter 2: Before You Start
22
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
EMC Confidential
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Chapter 3
Solution Overview
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview .................................................................................................................. 24
EMC VSPEX proven infrastructure .............................................................................24
Solution architecture ............................................................................................... 25
Summary of key components ................................................................................... 26
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
23
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
EMC Confidential
Overview
This chapter provides an overview of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized
SAP Business Suite applications and the key technologies used in this solution. This
guide uses the EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for up to 1,000 virtual machines as
the working example.
This VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications
solution was validated using VSPEX Private Cloud running VMware virtualized SUSE
Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows Server on EMC VNX family storage arrays to
provide storage and server hardware consolidation.
The solution is layered on a VSPEX Private Cloud, which uses servers, storage,
network, and SAP Business Suite application components that focus on small and
midrange environments. The solution enables customers to quickly and consistently
deploy a small or medium virtualized SAP Business Suite application environment in
a VSPEX Private Cloud.
This solution requires the presence of SAP Solution Manager, SAP Router, Active
Directory and Domain Name System. The implementation of these services is beyond
the scope of this guide, but the services are prerequisites for a successful
deployment.
EMC VSPEX proven infrastructure
EMC has joined forces with IT infrastructure providers to create a complete
virtualization solution that accelerates the deployment of the private cloud. VSPEX
enables faster deployment, greater simplicity and choice, higher efficiency, and lower
risk. Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and enables customers to
select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while eliminating planning,
sizing, and configuration burdens. VSPEX provides a virtual infrastructure for
customers looking to gain the simplicity that is characteristic of truly converged
infrastructures, at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack
components.
VSPEX solutions are proven by EMC and packaged and sold exclusively by EMC
channel partners. VSPEX provides channel partners with more opportunity, a faster
sales cycle, and end-to-end enablement. By working closely together, EMC and its
channel partners can now deliver infrastructure that accelerates the journey to the
cloud for even more customers.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Figure 1, is a modular, virtualized
infrastructure validated by EMC and delivered by EMC’s VSPEX partners. VSPEX
includes a virtualization layer, server, network, and EMC storage and data protection,
designed by EMC to deliver reliable and predictable performance.
24
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Figure 1.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
VSPEX provides the flexibility to choose network, server, and virtualization
technologies that fit a customer’s environment to create a complete virtualization
solution. VSPEX delivers faster deployment for EMC partner customers, with greater
simplicity and efficiency, more choice, and lower risk to a customer’s business.
For more information about VSPEX Proven Infrastructures, refer to the EMC VSPEX
Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines document.
Solution architecture
Figure 2 shows an example of the architecture that characterizes the validated
infrastructure for the support of a virtualized SAP system on a VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
In this solution, all SAP instances are deployed as virtual machines on vSphere
clusters. VMware vCenter Server manages configuration and monitoring details. VNX
provides the back-end storage functionality. You can use any model that has been
validated as part of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. SAP Router is required for SAP
Support connections.
Note: This solution applies to all VSPEX offerings on VMware.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
25
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
EMC Confidential
SAP PAS,AAS
SAP ASCS
SAP DB Instance
Windows Server 2012/SLES 11 SP3 virtual machines
VMware vSphere 5.5 Cluster
Hypervisor
management server
…
Compute
components
Network
DNS server
Storage
network
Network components
SAP Router
Storage and
backup
components
Active Directory
Server
Supporting infrastructure
EMC VNX series
Network
connections
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Figure 2.
Solution architecture
For more details, refer to the appropriate document in Essential reading on page 21.
Summary of key components
Table 9 summarizes the key components used in this solution. The Design Guide
provides overviews of the individual components.
Table 9.
Solution components
VSPEX layer
Components
Application
 SAP Netweaver 7.4-based system
 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012
 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 and Oracle 11g R2
Virtualization
 VMware vSphere 5.5
 EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)
26
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
VSPEX layer
Components
Compute
VSPEX defines the minimum amount of compute layer resources
required but enables the customer to implement the requirements
using any server hardware that meets these requirements.
Network
VSPEX defines the minimum number of network ports required for the
solution and provides general guidance on network architecture, but
enables the customer to implement the requirements using any
network hardware that meets these requirements.
Storage
 EMC VNX
 EMC PowerPath/VE
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
27
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
28
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Chapter 4
Solution Implementation
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview .................................................................................................................. 30
Physical setup..........................................................................................................30
Network implementation .......................................................................................... 30
Storage implementation .......................................................................................... 31
ESXi and vCenter infrastructure implementation ...................................................... 35
Multipathing implementation .................................................................................. 37
SAP virtual machine implementation .......................................................................38
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
29
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
EMC Confidential
Overview
This chapter describes the steps required to deploy an SAP environment on a VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure enabled by VMware vSphere 5.5 and VNX.
Note: If you already have a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure environment, you can skip the
sections for the implementation steps that you already completed.
Physical setup
This section includes information about the preparation of the solution’s physical
components. After you complete the steps listed in Table 10, the new hardware
components are racked, cabled, powered, and ready for network connection.
Table 10.
Tasks for physical setup
Task
Description
Reference
Preparing network
switches
Install switches in the rack
and connect them to power.
Vendor installation guide
Preparing servers
Install the servers in the rack
and connect them to power.
Vendor installation guide
Preparing VNX
Install the VNX in the rack and
connect it to power.
VNX Unified Installation Guide
For details of the physical setup, refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Guide in Essential reading on page 21
Network implementation
This section describes the network infrastructure requirements that you need to
support the solution architecture. Table 11 provides a summary of the tasks for
switch and network configuration and references for further information.
Table 11.
Tasks for switch and network configuration
Task
Description
Reference
Configuring the
infrastructure
network
Configure the storage array and
host infrastructure networking as
specified in the relevant VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure Guide.
Refer to the relevant VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure Guide
in Essential reading on
page 21
Completing the
network cabling
Connect:
 Switch interconnect ports
 VNX ports
 ESXi server ports
Configuring the
VLANs
30
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
Configure private and public VLANs
as required.
Vendor switch configuration
guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Task
Description
Reference
Use VMXNET3
NIC
Use VMXNET3 NICs on every guest
VM
VMware Knowledge Base
For details of network implementation, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading on page 21.
Storage implementation
Overview
This section describes how to configure the VNX storage array.
Table 12 provides a summary of the tasks for storage configuration and references for
further information.
Table 12.
Tasks for VNX storage array configuration
Task
Description
Setting up the initial
VNX configuration
Configure the IP address
information and other key
parameters, such as DNS and
Network Time Protocol (NTP), on
the VNX.
Provisioning storage
for VMFS datastores
on VNX
Create the VMFS datastores that
host the virtual machines.
Create and provision LUNs for
SAP file system, database
general, data and log files.
Reference
 Getting Started with VNX
Installation Assistant for
File/Unified
 VNX Installation
Assistant for File/Unified
Worksheet
Figure 3 shows the high-level architecture of the SAP NetWeaver ABAP-based ERP
system components and storage elements validated in the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SAP Business Suite applications on a vSphere
virtualization platform. All the storage volumes are consumed in Virtual Machine Disk
(VMDK) format in a VMware virtualized environment.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
31
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Figure 3.
EMC Confidential
SAP system storage elements on a VMware vSphere 5.5 platform
Setting up the VNX Ensure that network interfaces, IP address information, and other key parameters
such as DNS and Network Time Protocol (NTP) are configured on the VNX before
configuration
storage provisioning.
For more information on how to configure the VNX platform, refer to the relevant
document listed in Table 12.
Provisioning
storage for VMFS
datastore
Before you provision the storage for the VMFS datastore, follow the recommendations
and VSPEX Sizing Tool proposals introduced in the Design Guide.
Before you start, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide in
Essential reading on page 21 to provision VMFS storage for virtual machine operating
system on VNX.
Table 13 shows an example of additional storage layout for an SAP system on VNX,
and the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more information about storage layout
recommendations and design, refer to the Design Guide.
32
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Table 13.
Example of additional storage layout for virtual machine OS on VNX
Storage pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk
capacity
Number of
disks
VSPEX private cloud
pool
RAID 5 (4+1)
SAS 15,000 rpm
600 GB
5
RAID 1/0 (1+1)
FAST VP SSD
100 GB
2
Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide:

Provisioning
storage for the
application pool
disks
EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual
Machines
Before you provision the storage, follow the recommendations and VSPEX Sizing Tool
proposals introduced in the Design Guide.
Table 14 shows an example of storage pools for a SAP system on VNX. See the
storage layout for this example in Table 7 and Table 8. The FAST VP configuration
steps are outlined in the Configuring FAST VP on VNX section on page 33. For more
information about the storage layout recommendations and design, refer to the
Design Guide.
Table 14.
Storage layout example on VNX
VSPEX private cloud pool
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
No. of
disks
RP1 data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
RAID 1
FAST VP solid state
drives
100 GB
6
RP1 log pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
RP1 SAP file system
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
RP1 db general pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
Configuring FAST VP on VNX
FAST VP can increase the efficiency of all disk drive resources and get better
performance for a lower cost. By adding FAST VP SSDs as an extreme performance tier
into the data pool, FAST VP can automatically adapt to changes with business cycles.
In the VNX, FAST VP enables moving data automatically between FAST VP SSDs and
SAS tiers with a slice granularity of 256 MB, which can help to dramatically reduce
the response time and boost SAP application performance.
Enabling FAST VP is a transparent operation to SAP systems. No reconfiguration or
downtime is necessary. To make the best use of either FAST VP or FAST Cache, EMC
recommends that you first enable FAST VP on the user database storage pool. For
more details, refer to the Design Guide.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
33
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
EMC Confidential
For detailed steps about how to create FAST VP, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading on page 21. Figure 4 shows an example of
the Create Storage Pool wizard.
Create and configure FAST VP in the following way:
1.
In the Create Storage Pool wizard, select the number of disks for each tier you
want to add to the storage pool, as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4.
2.
Create Storage Pool wizard—FAST VP enabled
Click OK to complete the configuration.
EMC recommends that all the LUNs in the pool have the same tiering policy and use
the Start High and then Auto-Tier tiering policy for the data pool. For detailed steps
about how to configure FAST VP at the LUN level, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading on page 21.
Configuring FAST Cache on VNX
By using SSDs in the array as an extended read-and-write cache, FAST Cache
increases IOPS and dramatically decreases database response times compared to a
high-cost, all-SAS configuration. FAST Cache copies data from SAS or NL-SAS tiers to
FAST Cache SSDs at a granularity of 64 KB.
Enabling FAST Cache is a transparent operation to SAP systems and no
reconfiguration or downtime is necessary. For more details, refer to the Design Guide.
For detailed steps about how to enable FAST Cache, refer to the relevant VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure Guide in Essential reading on page 21.
To create and configure FAST Cache on VNX, use these steps:
34
1.
In Unisphere, after FAST Cache is created, click Storage and select Storage
Pool. Select Data Pool, and then click Properties.
2.
In Storage Pool Properties, click Advanced. To enable FAST Cache, select
Enabled, as shown in Figure 5.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Enable FAST Cache
Figure 5.
3.
Storage Pool Properties—FAST Cache enabled
To complete the configuration, click OK.
Note: The FAST Cache feature on a VNX series array does not cause an instant performance
improvement. The system must collect data about access patterns and promote frequently
used information into the cache. This process can take a few hours, during which the
performance of the array steadily improves.
ESXi and vCenter infrastructure implementation
This section provides the requirements for the installation and configuration of the
ESXi hosts, vCenter, and infrastructure servers required to support the architecture.
Table 15 describes the tasks that must be completed.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
35
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Table 15.
36
Tasks for ESXi and vCenter installation and configuration
Task
Description
Reference
Installing ESXi
Install the ESXi 5.5 hypervisor on the
physical servers that are being deployed
for the solution.
vSphere Installation and Setup
Configuring ESXi
networking
Configure ESXi networking including
network interface card (NIC) trunking,
VMkernel port, virtual machine port
groups, and Jumbo Frames.
vSphere Networking
Installing
PowerPath/VE
Install PowerPath/VE multipathing
software on the ESXi hosts.
Multipathing implementation
Connecting VMware
datastores
Connect the VMware datastores to the
ESXi hosts deployed for the solution.
vSphere Storage
Creating a virtual
machine for
Microsoft SQL
Server 2012
Create a virtual machine to host SQL
Server 2012 that will be used for the
vCenter Server database. Verify that the
virtual server meets the hardware and
software requirements.
Microsoft TechNet
Installing Microsoft
Windows on the
virtual machine
Install Microsoft Windows Server 2008
R2 Standard Edition on the virtual
machine that is created to host SQL
Server 2012.
Microsoft TechNet
Installing SQL
Server 2012
Install SQL Server 2012 on the virtual
machine designated for that purpose.
Microsoft TechNet
Creating the vCenter
host virtual machine
Create a virtual machine to be used for
the VMware vCenter Server.
vSphere Virtual Machine
Administration
Installing the
vCenter guest OS
Install Windows Server 2008 R2
Standard Edition on the vCenter host
virtual machine.
N/A
Updating the virtual
machine
Install VMware Tools, enable hardware
acceleration, and enable remote
console access.
vSphere Virtual Machine
Administration
Creating vCenter
ODBC connections
Create the 64-bit vCenter and 32-bit
vCenter Update Manager ODBC
connections.
vSphere Installation and Setup
Installing vCenter
Server
Install vCenter Server software.
vSphere Installation and Setup
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Installing and Administering
VMware vSphere Update
Manager
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Task
Description
Reference
Installing vCenter
Update Manager
Install vCenter Update Manager
software.
Installing and Administering
VMware vSphere Update
Manager
Creating a virtual
datacenter
Create a virtual datacenter.
vCenter Server and Host
Management
Applying vSphere
license keys
Type the vSphere license keys in the
vCenter licensing menu.
vSphere Installation and Setup
Adding ESXi hosts
Connect vCenter to ESXi hosts.
vCenter Server and Host
Management
Configuring vSphere
clustering
Create a vSphere cluster and move the
ESXi hosts into it.
vSphere Resource Management
Performing array
ESXi host discovery
Perform ESXi host discovery in the
Unisphere console.
Using EMC VNX Storage with
VMware vSphere TechBook
Enabling VMware
High Availability
(HA), Distributed
Resource Scheduler
(DRS), and vMotion
functionality
After you enable DRS, EMC recommends
you use VMware vSphere DRS affinity
and anti-affinity rules for specific groups
of virtual machines; for example, groups
of multiple SAP instances, which should
never reside on the same host.
vSphere Availability
Installing the
vCenter Update
Manager plug-in
Install the vCenter Update Manager
plug-in on the administration console.
Installing and Administering
VMware vSphere Update
Manager
Installing the EMC
VNX UEM (Unified
Element Manager)
CLI
Install the VNX UEM command line
interface (CLI) on the administration
console.
EMC VSI for VMware vSphere:
Unified Storage Management
Product Guide
Installing the EMC
VSI plug-in
Install the EMC VSI plug-in on the
administration console.
EMC VSI for VMware vSphere:
Unified Storage Management
Product Guide
For details of ESXi and vCenter, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Guide in Essential reading on page 21.
Multipathing implementation
Overview
EMC PowerPath/VE software optimizes multipathing through load-balancing
algorithms. Port load balancing equalizes the I/O workload across all available
channels.
EMC recommends installing PowerPath/VE on VMware ESXi hosts for load balancing,
path management, and I/O path failure detection.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
37
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
EMC Confidential
Configuring
PowerPath/VE installation
PowerPath/VE for You can install PowerPath/VE by using the VMware remote vCLI, VMware vSphere
FC storage
Update Manager, or VMware vSphere Auto Deploy.
When you have downloaded the PowerPath/VE software complete the following steps
to install it using remote vCLI:
1.
Make the offline package available for use on the local vSphere host.
2.
Use the scp (secure copy) command to copy the PowerPath/VE ZIP offline
package to the vSphere host. Alternatively, copy the PowerPath/VE ZIP offline
package to the local vCenter data store using vSphere client.
3.
On the remote host running vCLI, type the following commands to install the
PowerPath/VE package:
# esxcli -s <vSphere server IP address or hostname> software
vib install -d <absolute path to PowerPath package>
4.
Bring the vSphere host into Maintenance mode.
5.
Reboot the vSphere host onto which you are installing.
6.
Bring the vSphere host out of Maintenance mode.
For PowerPath/VE installation and configuration for vSphere, refer to EMC
PowerPath/VE installation and Administration Guide. For iSCSI or FC multipathing
configuration, refer to vSphere Storage ESXi 5.5, vCenter Server 5.5.
SAP virtual machine implementation
Overview
This section describes the requirements for the installation and configuration of the
SAP Server virtual machines. Table 16 describes the tasks that must be completed.
Table 16.
SAP host virtual machine installation and configuration
Task
Description
Creating the SAP
virtual machines
Create virtual machines to be used for the
database and SAP instances
Installing the guest
OS
Install Windows Server 2012 R2
Datacenter Edition or SLES 11 SP3 on the
SAP host virtual machines.
Updating the virtual
machine
Install VMware Tools
Assigning IP
addresses
Assign IP addresses for all the networks in
all virtual machines.
Join all virtual machines to the domain.
38
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Creating SAP
virtual machines
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Task
Description
Creating virtual
disks for database
and application
instance
Create virtual disks to hold the database
and SAP instance files.
Create a virtual machine on the ESXi server with the customer’s guest OS
configuration. You can calculate the memory and processor requirements for the SAP
virtual machines using the reference documents and resources listed in the Design
Guide.
CPU and RAM
Table 17 describes the virtual machine configuration we used in the sizing example in
this guide.
Table 17.
Example of the required resources: Large-sized SAP system
Instance Role
vCPU
Memory
OS volume
capacity
OS volume IOPS
Number of virtual
machines
Database
4
32 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
1
4
32 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
2
2
16 GB
100 GB
Less than 25
1
Instance
Application
Instance
ASCS Instance
SCSI Controllers and virtual disks
Table 18 describes the storage configuration. Storage resource sizing is based
on the workload IOPS requirement.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
39
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
Table 18.
EMC Confidential
Example of a storage recommendation: Large-sized SAP system
Recommended additional storage pools for SAP system
VSPEX private cloud pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
No. of
disks
RP1 data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
RAID 1
FAST VP solid state
drives
100 GB
6
RP1 log pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
RP1 SAP file system
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
RP1 db general pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
SAP System implementation
Overview
This section provides information about how to implement an SAP ECC 6.0 ABAP
distributed system on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. After completing the tasks in
Table 19 the new system is ready to be verified and tested.
This section is an excerpt from the installation guide provided by SAP. This section
only covers installation of a distributed system2.
Before implementing SAP, plan for and size the database accordingly. Refer to the
Design Guide for guidance.
Table 19.
SAP host virtual machine installation and configuration
Task
Description
Reference
Planning
Planning steps that must be completed
for the Standard, distributed or high
availability systems, and any
additional application server instance
SAP Service Market Place
Planning Information for
SAP ERP 6.0
Preparation
Ensure that the necessary installers are
available and installation parameters
are identified
SAP Installation Guides
Installing a distributed
SAP system
Install the SAP ABAP and database
instances
SAP Installation Guides
Post-installation
A high level list of post-installation
processes and SAP initialization to be
done by an SAP Basis consultant
SAP Installation Guides
2
Consult the SAP installation guide for more information about installing Standard, Highavailability or MCOD systems.
40
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Planning
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
This section includes the planning steps that you have to complete before installing
SAP systems.
Prerequisites
1.
Plan your SAP system landscape according to the Master Guide available at
the appropriate download location under service.sap.com/instguides.
2.
Decide on the installation option.
Distributed System Installation
1.
Check the hardware and software requirements on every installation host.
2.
Identify basic SAP system installation parameters.
3.
For the database installation:
a.
Oracle – EMC recommends that you check the information available in
the SAP Knowledge Center.
b.
SQL Server – decide on how to distribute your database components to
disk as per installation guide.
4.
Decide the transport host to use.
5.
Decide whether to integrate LDAP Directory Services in your SAP system.
6.
Read the Diagnostics Agent – Specific Planning Steps, to install the
Diagnostics Agent with your SAP system.
7.
Optional: Decide if you want to install multiple components in one database
(MCOD).
Additional Application Server instance
Preparation
1.
Check the hardware and software requirements for every installation host on
which you want to install one or more additional application server instances.
2.
Identify the basic SAP system installation parameters.
This section includes the preparation steps that you have to complete prior to
installing SAP systems.
1.
Check that the required operating system users and groups are created.
2.
Set up file systems and make sure that the required disk space is available
for the directories to be created during the installation.
3.
If required, set up virtual host names.
4.
To share the transport directory trans from another system, export this
directory to your installation hosts.
5.
Install the SAP frontend software on the desktop of the user.
6.
Check that the required installation media are available on each host. For an
ERP system, ensure that you have the following ready:
a.
SWPM 1.0
b.
Kernel DVD
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
41
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
7.
EMC Confidential
c.
Installation Export DVD
d.
RDBMS DVD (Oracle/SQL Server)
e.
DB Client DVD
Optional: Create a user for LDAP directory access to use a generic LDAP
directory.
Additional Application Server instance
Perform the following preparations on the host to install the additional application
server instances:
Installing a
distributed SAP
system
1.
Check that the required operating system users and groups are created.
2.
Set up file systems and make sure that the required disk space is available
for the directories to be created during the installation.
3.
To use virtual host names, set the environment variable
SAPINST_USE_HOSTNAME. Alternatively, specify the virtual host name in the
command to start the installer.
4.
To share the transport directory trans from another system, export this
directory to your installation hosts.
5.
Check that the required installation media are available.
To install a distributed SAP system, take the following steps:
1.
To share the transport directory trans from another system, mount it from this
other system. Otherwise, we recommend sharing the trans directory that is
created during the installation of the primary application server instance.
2.
On the ASCS instance host, perform the following actions:
3.
a.
Run the installer to install the ABAP central services (ASCS) instance.
b.
Export global directories in <sapmnt>/<SAPSID> to the database and
primary application server instance host.
On the database instance host, perform the following actions:
a.
b.
4.
42
i.
Mount the global directories in <sapmnt>/<SAPSID> that you exported
from the SAP global host and optionally the trans directory that you
exported from the SAP transport host.
ii.
Run the installer to install the database instance.
For SQL Server, run the installer to install the database instance.
On the primary application server instance host, perform the following
actions:
a.
For SLES, mount the global directories in <sapmnt>/<SAPSID> that you
exported from the SAP global host.
b.
Run the installer to install the primary application server instance.
c.
To use the shared transport directory trans from another system, mount
this directory also.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
For Oracle
EMC Confidential
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
d.
5.
Continue with the installation of one or more additional application
server instances and then proceed directly to post-installation.
Additional Application Server instance
Oracle:
To share the transport directory trans from another system, you have to mount
it from this system. Otherwise, we recommend that you share the trans
directory that is created during the installation of the primary application
server instance.
On the SAP global host, export global directories in <sapmnt>/<SAPSID> to the
database and primary application server instance host.
On every additional application server instance host, complete the following:
1.
Mount the global directories in <sapmnt>/<SAPSID> exported from the
SAP global host.
2.
Run the installer to install the additional application server instance.
3.
To use the shared transport directory trans from another system,
mount this directory also.
SQL server:
Post-installation
1.
Install the MS SQL Server Native Access Client (SNAC) software
2.
Run the installer to install the additional application server instances.
3.
Continue with the post-installation steps.
This section includes the planning steps that you need to complete when installing
SAP systems.
1.
For SLES, perform the post-installation steps for the operating system.
2.
Check if you can log on to the application server.
3.
Perform the consistency check.
4.
Install the SAP license.
5.
Configure the remote connection to SAP Support.
6.
Apply the latest kernel and Support Packages.
7.
Install the SAP Online Documentation.
8.
Configure the Transport Management System.
9.
SAP Kernel Release 7.40 and higher: Perform IP Multicast configuration.
10. Ensure user security.
11. For SAP systems based on SAP NetWeaver 7.40 and higher: If required,
change the keys for the secure storage.
12. On the database instance host, perform Oracle-specific post-installation
steps.
13. Perform a full installation backup.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
43
Chapter 4: Solution Implementation
EMC Confidential
14. Check the Master Guide for the SAP NetWeaver application for further
implementation and configuration steps.
44
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
Chapter 5
Solution Validation
This chapter presents the following topics:
Baseline hardware validation ................................................................................... 46
SAP application performance validation ..................................................................47
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
45
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
EMC Confidential
Baseline hardware validation
Overview
This section provides a list of items that you need to review after you configure the
VSPEX solution. The goal of this section is to verify the configuration and functionality
of specific aspects of the solution, and to ensure that the configuration supports core
availability requirements. Table 20 describes the required verification tasks that you
must complete.
Table 20.
Required verification tasks
Task
Description
Reference
Verifying ESXi
functionality
Verify the basic ESXi functionality of
the solution with a post-installation
checklist.
Using EMC VNX storage with
VMware vSphere
Verifying solution
components
redundancy
Verify the redundancy of the solution
components:
Vendor documentation
Monitoring the health
of solution
Verifying ESXi
functionality

Storage

ESXi host

Network switch
Use tools to monitor the health of
solution, as shown in Table 21.
EMC recommends that you verify the ESXi configurations before deployment to
production on each ESXi server.
For more detailed information, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide
in Essential reading on page 21.
Verifying solution
components
redundancy
To ensure that the various components of the solution maintain availability
requirements, it is important that you test specific scenarios related to maintenance
or hardware failure. EMC recommends that you verify the redundancy of the solution
components including storage, ESXi hosts, and network switches.
For details, refer to the relevant VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Guide in Essential
reading on page 21.
46
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Monitoring the
solution’s health
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
Health monitoring is a simplified measurement that reflects the reliability, stability,
and performance of the entire VSPEX solution. Table 21 lists some tools you can use
to monitor and troubleshoot your VSPEX solution.
Table 21.
Tools to monitor the VSPEX for virtualized SAP Business Suite application
solution
Tools
Description
esxtop
The esxtop tool provides a real-time view (updated every five
seconds, by default) of ESXi hypervisor performance metrics, such
as CPU. It is important that you understand the performance of the
hypervisor in order to measure or troubleshoot the SAP system
performance-related issues.
Unisphere Analyzer
Unisphere Analyzer software is preloaded on all VNX storage
systems with the FLARE or block bundles (or later). It is easy to
monitor, collect, and analyze all aspects of its storage-related data.
perfmon
The performance monitor tool in the Windows operating system
commonly referred to as perfmon. It is beneficial to collect data
from deployed applications at regular intervals to analyze trends
and to have baseline measurements, which can be useful in
investigating problems that are related to I/O performance.
Event Viewer
Event Viewer is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in. It
lets you browse and manage event logs. It is a handy tool for
troubleshooting problems. You can filter for specific events across
multiple logs, and reuse useful event filters as custom views.
EMC recommends that you use the test tools to verify the performance of the entire
virtualized SAP Business Suite applications environment. For details about
performance verification and test methodology, refer to the Design Guide.
SAP application performance validation
Overview
We stressed an SAP system in a VSPEX solution on a VNX storage system. We used a
mixed workload of SAP online transactions and resource-intensive background jobs
to validate the performance improvements delivered by FAST Suite.
The purpose is to measure the performance of the SAP system under intense
workload to ensure that the VSPEX solution meets your business requirements.
Test environment
The testing landscape consists of two SAP systems, AB1 and AQ1. The database size
for both systems is 1.6 TB. Figure 6 shows the system architecture.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
47
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
Figure 6.
Workload profile
EMC Confidential
SAP system architecture
SAP system AB1 represents a dialog-intensive production SAP system. The simulated
mixed workload consists of a high number of concurrent dialog transactions and
heavy background jobs. System AQ1, on the other hand, represents a report-intensive
SAP system. Heavy background jobs are executed in this system to compete with
AB1. The I/O pattern of this solution test is small random I/O and the read/write ratio
is 85/15.
Table 22 describes the characteristics of the applied workload.
Table 22.
Characteristics of applied workload
Number of
concurrent
users/jobs
Target
system
Duration
Order to Cash
(OTC)
2,000
AB1
10 hours
Background job
VA05—order
query
50
AB1
10 hours
Background job
VA05—order
query
50
AQ1
10 hours
Workload type
Workload
Dialog
transaction
Note: Benchmark results are highly dependent upon workload, specific application
requirements, and system design and implementation. Relative system performance will
vary as a result of these and other factors. Therefore, this workload should not be used as a
substitute for a specific customer application benchmark when critical capacity planning
and/or product evaluation decisions are contemplated.
48
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Validation
procedure
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
We used four scenarios to assess the performance of the VSPEX solution. Table 23
presents the actual workload used for the scenarios.
Table 23.
Test procedure
Test case
SAP workload
Storage Configuration
Calibration
AB1: 2,000 OTC users
Baseline (no FAST VP)
AQ1: idle
Baseline
AB1: 2,000 OTC users + 50 jobs
Baseline (no FAST VP)
AQ1: 50 jobs
FAST VP
AB1: 2,000 OTC users + 50 jobs
FAST VP
AQ1: 50 jobs
FAST VP plus FAST
Cache
AB1: 2,000 OTC users + 50 jobs
FAST VP + FAST Cache
AQ1: 50 jobs
The tests were executed as follows:

Calibration testing: We calibrated AB1 performance in the baseline storage
configuration. We determined that AB1 can maintain an average dialog
response time of 1,000 ms under a workload of 2,000 OTC users. This tells us
that increasing the workload beyond this point will degrade the performance to
an unacceptable level.

Baseline testing: Several load-intensive background jobs were added to AB1
while the current OTC users were active; another set of background jobs were
run against AQ1 to induce contention. Average dialog response time in AB1 was
taken across several 60-minute intervals, and recorded the highest response
times observed for a conservative measurement. The observed results were
taken during the period of maximum workload.

FAST VP testing: AB1 and AQ1 were migrated from the baseline storage
configuration to the FAST VP storage configuration. The same test was executed
again to observe how FAST VP behaves in response to the increased workload
against the baseline testing.

FAST VP plus FAST Cache testing: FAST Cache was enabled on the storage pools
that host AB1 and AQ1 systems. The same test was run one more time to
observe how FAST Cache further improves the application performance.
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
49
Chapter 5: Solution Validation
Success criteria
The performance was based on the following criteria:

Testing results
EMC Confidential
SAP average response time met an arbitrary SLA (Service Level Agreement)of
1,200 ms
Figure 7 compares the system performance measured with dialog transaction average
response time of the baseline, FAST VP, and FAST VP + FAST Cache tests.
Figure 7.
Test result: SAP system performance
The baseline system performance showed an increase in the average response time
due to additional workload. After migrating from the baseline storage configuration to
the FAST VP storage configuration, the system performance improved by 33.50
percent and the average response time was in compliance with the SLA. The FAST VP
+ FAST Cache storage configuration further improved the performance by 57.23
percent, compared to the baseline test.
Summary
The VSPEX solution on VNX helps to improve disk performance and storage efficiency.
FAST Cache dynamically absorbs unpredicted spikes in system workloads and
improves the application performance.
FAST VP, on the other hand, optimizes long-term TCO by flexibly exploiting the storage
resources based on how frequently data is accessed over time. Together, these
features complement each other and can a play crucial role in reducing latency and
maximizing SAP performance, as validated in this testing.
Note: EMC Corporation does not warrant or represent that a user can or will achieve similar
performance expressed in transactions per minute.
50
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 6: Reference Documentation
Chapter 6
Reference Documentation
This chapter presents the following topics:
EMC documentation .................................................................................................52
Product documentation ............................................................................................ 52
SAP documentation ..................................................................................................52
VMware documentation ........................................................................................... 52
Links ........................................................................................................................ 53
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
51
Chapter 6: Reference Documentation
EMC Confidential
EMC documentation
The following documents, available from the EMC Online Support or EMC.com
websites, provide additional and relevant information. If you do not have access to a
document, contact your EMC representative.

EMC PowerPath and PowerPath/VE for Windows Installation and Administration
Guide

EMC Unisphere Remote: Next-Generation Storage Monitoring

EMC Unisphere: Unified Storage Management Solution

EMC VNX5600 Unified Installation Guide

EMC VNX FAST VP: VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600, and
VNX8000

EMC VNX Installation Assistant for File/Unified Worksheet

EMC VNX Multicore FAST Cache: VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800,
VNX7600, and VNX8000

Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vSphere TechBook
Product documentation
For additional information, see the product documentation listed below.

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer Product Guide

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management Product Guide

EMC VNX Host Connectivity Guide for VMware ESX Server

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual
Machines
SAP documentation
Refer to the following references below.

Installing SAP Systems Based on SAP NetWeaver 7.1 and Higher – Using
Software Provisioning Manager 1.0 – Central index of generic installation
guides sorted by database

SAP ERP Central SAP Notes
VMware documentation
Refer to the following topics on the VMware website:
52

vSphere Installation and Setup

vSphere Networking
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Chapter 6: Reference Documentation

vCenter Server and Host Management

vSphere Storage

vSphere Resource Management

vSphere Virtual Machine Administration

Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager
Links
VMware website
Refer to the following topics on the VMware website:

vSphere Installation and Setup

vSphere Networking

vCenter Server and Host Management

vSphere Storage

vSphere Resource Management

vSphere Virtual Machine Administration

Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
53
Chapter 6: Reference Documentation
54
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
EMC Confidential
Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet
Appendix A
Qualification Worksheet
This appendix presents the following topic-:
Configuration worksheet for SAP NetWeaver 7.4 ...................................................... 56
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
55
Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet
Configuration worksheet for SAP NetWeaver 7.4
Before configuring the SAP system for this solution, you need to gather some
customer-specific configuration information such as IP addresses, hostnames, and so
on.
The following tables provide a worksheet that you can use to record the information.
You can also print and use the worksheet as a customer “leave behind” document for
future reference.
To confirm the customer information, cross-reference with the relevant array
configuration worksheet: VNX Installation Assistant for File/Unified Worksheet.
Table 24.
Common server information
Server name
Purpose
Primary IP address
Domain Controller
DNS Primary
DNS Secondary
DHCP
NTP
SMTP
SNMP
SQL Server (for vCenter
Server)
Table 25.
Server name
ESXi server information
Purpose
ESXi Host 1
ESXi Host 2
ESXi Host 3
ESXi Host 4
…
56
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
Primary IP address
Private net (storage) addresses
Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet
Table 26.
Array information
Object
Description
Array name
Array type
Admin account
Management IP
iSCSI Server IP
SPA IP address
SPB IP address
VSPEX private cloud pool
name
Infrastructure datastore
name
SAP data pool name
SAP data datastore name
SAP log pool name
SAP log datastore name
SAP file system pool name
SAP file system datastore
name
SAP DB general pool name
SAP DB general datastore
name
Table 27.
Name
Network infrastructure information
Purpose
IP address
Subnet mask
Default gateway
Ethernet Switch 1
Ethernet Switch 2
…
Table 28.
Name
VLAN information
Network purpose
VLAN ID
Allowed subnets
Virtual machine networking
management
iSCSI storage network
vMotion
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
57
Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet
Table 29.
Service accounts
Account
Purpose
Windows Server
administrator
Array administrator
Table 30.
SAP system parameters
Parameter
Value
General
SAP System
Description/Purpose
SAP SID
SAP Master Password
Number of AAS
SAP S-user for licensing
SAP ASCS
Virtual machine name
OS Hostname
FQDN
IP address
SAP DB
Virtual machine name
OS Hostname
FQDN
IP address
SAP PAS
Virtual machine name
OS Hostname
FQDN
IP address
Total number of work
processes
58
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SAP
Business Suite Application
Implementation Guide
Password (optional, secure
appropriately)
Appendix A: Qualification Worksheet
Parameter
Value
WP distribution
DIA –
BGD –
SPO –
V1 –
V2 –
SAP AAS
Hostname(s)
FQDN
IP address(es)
Total number of Work
Processes
WP distribution
DIA –
BGD –
SPO –
V1 –
V2 –
EMC VSPEX For Virtualized SAP Business Suite Applications
Enabled by EMC VNX Family
Implementation Guide
59