Virtualization of SAP Applications with VMware vsphere on IBM System x3850 X5

Transcription

1 Virtualization of SAP Applications with VMware vsphere on IBM System x3850 X5 IBM SAP International Competence Center Walldorf, Germany Author: Paul Henter - IBM Version March 2010

2 Table of Content 1. Executive Overview Product Introduction IBM System x3850 X VMware Virtualization Solution on IBM System ex VMware vsphere SAP Virtualization on System x servers with ex5 Technology Setup of IBM system x3850 X5, x3950 M2 & x3650 M Management of vsphere environment Update Host to latest vsphere version and patches ex5 Technology Advantages with vsphere Enterprise License SAP landscape setup Virtual machine setup Operating Virtual SAP Machines Enhanced Monitoring Migration a SAP system to new hardware Performance Monitoring on x3850 X5 and x3950 M2 with same load... 21

3 Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Neither this documentation nor any part of it may be copied or reproduced in any form or by any means or translated into another language without the prior consent of IBM Corporation. IBM makes no warranties or representations with respect to the content here of and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. IBM assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. The information contained in this document is subject to change without any notice. IBM reserves the right to make any such changes without obligation to notify any person of such revision or changes. IBM makes no commitment to keep the information contained herein up to date. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Active Energy Manager, DB2, System Storage, System x, UpdateXpress, and X-Architecture are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol ( or ), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Intel, the Intel logo, Itanium, and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. SAP and the SAP logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP. More about SAP trademarks at: VMware, VMware vsphere, ESX, VMware vcenter, and VMotion are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. Unless otherwise stated, IBM makes no representations or warranties with respect to non-ibm products. Disclaimer This document is subject to change without notification and will not cover the issues encountered in every customer situation. It should be used only in conjunction with the official product literature. The information contained in this document has not been submitted to any formal IBM test and is distributed AS IS. All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only. Contact your local IBM office or IBM authorized reseller for the full text of the specific Statement of Direction. Some information addresses anticipated future capabilities. Such information is not intended as a definitive statement of a commitment to specific levels of performance, function or delivery schedules with respect to any future products. Such commitments are only made in IBM product announcements. The information is presented here to communicate IBM's current investment and development activities as a good faith effort to help with our customers' future planning. The "Solution Assurance/SSPD/Techdocs" information, tools and documentation ("Materials") are being provided to IBM Business Partners to assist them with customer installations. Such Materials are provided by IBM on an "as-is" basis. IBM makes no representations or warranties regarding these Materials and does not provide any guarantee or assurance that the use of such Materials will result in a successful customer installation. These Materials may only be used by authorized IBM Business Partners for installation of IBM products and otherwise in compliance with the IBM Business Partner Agreement. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 3 of 25

4 1. Executive Overview What is the motivation running SAP in virtualized environments? In the last decade SAP landscapes are growing and getting more and complex. When we compare a SAP landscape in 2001 with today s SAP landscapes we see a growing number of applications which run on a dedicated server. To manage this multiple system landscape is a tremendous administrative effort. Systems management is often the largest and fastest-growing IT cost component when landscapes and infrastructure become more complex. Virtualization is playing a major role in driving improvements in these SAP landscapes. Servers that integrate features that enhance virtualization capabilities offer customers significant benefit. While SAP landscapes are getting more complex, computing power, reliability, and management capabilities of IBM latest high end servers like the x3850 x5 are also improving. In addition to the rocksolid and flexible virtualization capabilities of the x86 hardware, IBM also provides: Virtualization skills and services. IBM has longest experience in virtualization technologies, going as far back as the 1960s and the origin of virtualization itself. Deep SAP understanding and many years experience with virtualization of SAP environments on many platforms The right tools to manage different virtualization solutions and support consolidation for all IBM platforms Virtualized SAP landscapes brings the benefit of: Higher server utilization Reduced maintenance costs Easier administration of the complete SAP landscape, Allows faster responsiveness to changing business demands. In addition, virtualization technology helps improve the reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features of a server. Use of Virtualization in SAP Landscapes Virtualization can offer significant benefits to customers with SAP landscapes where they are planning to: Consolidate multiple SAP instances or application server and DBMS of 3-tier landscapes in one server Enable higher levels of business continuity and disaster recovery o High availability (HA) o o Minimized downtime Hardware maintenance Establish a dynamic data center environment o Repurpose a server or Virtual Machine (VM) quickly and easily This paper explains why and how to virtualize SAP implementations on an IBM System x3850 X5 server. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 4 of 25

5 2. Product Introduction 2.1 IBM System x3850 X5 IBM System x enterprise servers are the ideal platform for business-critical and complex SAP applications such as database processing, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning and highly consolidated, virtual server environments. With multiple workloads running on the same server, performance remains important but reliability and availability become more critical than ever. Servers with IBM s ex5 Technology are a major component in a dynamic infrastructure and offer significant new capabilities and features which address key requirements for customers with SAP landscapes. The Data Center of the Future includes a Dynamic Infrastructure designed to address today s challenges and tomorrow s opportunities. It is designed to: Help Solve Customer Challenges Space Constrained Data Centers Maxed-out Data Center Power Rising Management Costs Underutilized Servers with Expensive Software Licenses Reduce Costs Greater business productivity with 3x the performance of today s servers and upwards of 3+ Million transactions per minute Consolidate up to 32 racks of equivalent 1U machines on to one virtualized ex5 system Equal performance at less cost for high performance configurations Manage Risks Mainframe Inspired Reliability with more predictive failure analysis, node failover, and Memory ProteXion for greater uptime Investment Protection with 4 socket servers that can scale as your business grows Improved Service Easier Administration with consolidated single points of management Greater Productivity out of fewer systems and software licenses The x3850 X5 is a leadership high end scalable system that offers: Up to 3x SAP application performance 3.3x greater database performance and 3.6x more virtual machines than industry leading 2- socket x86 (Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor) systems Scaling via QPI from 4-socket, 64 DIMMs to 8-socket, 128 thread, 128 DIMM performance (192 DIMMs with MAX5) In addition, MAX5 Memory Expansion offers: Memory scaling independently of processors, adding 32 DIMMs of extra memory capacity and 16 extra memory channels for no compromises 50% more virtual machines and leading database performance over competitor 4-socket systems Lower cost, high performance configurations reaching desired memory capacity using less expensive DIMMs The new FlashPack offers high IOPs database performance with 480k internal IOPs for up to 200x local database performance over traditional spinning disks and potential for up to $1.3M savings in equal IOPs external storage. Automatic Node Failover, Memory ProteXion, and Predictive Failure Analysis offer 6x the reliability per virtual machine over 2-socket clusters Greater system uptime during failures than monolithic design FlexNode Partitioning and Flexible Configurability provide the capability to: Purchase once, and configure as needed for project lifecycle Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 5 of 25

6 Reduce software license costs by expanding memory capacity with ex5 rather than purchasing more processors The IBM System x3850 X5 has the following features: 4x Xeon 7500 series CPUs (4C/6C/8C) 64 DDR3 DIMMs 6 PCIe slots Up to 8x 2.5 HDDs or 16x 1.8 SSDs RAID 0/1 Std, Opt RAID 5 2x 1GB Ethernet 2x 10GB Ethernet SFP+ internal USB for embedded hypervisor IMM & uefi With these features, the x3850 X5 high-end servers are the optimal platform for large-scale server consolidation projects and virtualization for SAP. They enable larger system resource pools to support more simultaneously peaking virtual machine applications, using the load-balancing features of virtualization solutions. Server Description SAP Benefit x3850 X5 Four Intel Xeon 7500 series processors 4C/6C/8C) Up to 64 DDR3 DIMMs (1/2/4/8/16GB DIMM support) 4U form factor with 4 HS HDD bays Up to 8x 2.5 HDDs or 16x 1.8 SSDs Optimized for balance to handle extreme workloads Virtualization, consolidation Database, applications server Virtualization Compute-intensive SAP Workloads Table 1. Server benefits New levels of innovation include superior energy management tools. IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager is designed to take advantage of new processor features, enabling balanced system performance according to the available energy input. With Active Energy Manager, one can plan, predict, and cap power consumption based on the hardware configuration, reducing infrastructure requirements for redundancy and potentially lowering the support costs of multiple application services as required by complex SAP solution landscapes. Features and Benefits Memory Protexion Predictive Failure Analysis Automatic Node Failover QPI Fail Down Embedded Hypervisor IBM delivers an x3850 X5 model with VMware ESXi 4 installed as an embedded hypervisor. ESXi is a thin hypervisor integrated into server hardware. The ESXi Server offers basic partitioning of server resources. However, it also acts as the foundation for virtual infrastructure software, enabling VMotion, DRS, etc. the keys to the dynamic, automated data center. The embedded hypervisor allows customers to easily deploy a virtualized environment as soon as they boot their system. It brings virtualization to customers that may not have all the resources or know-how to deploy a virtualized solution. The solution is based on a USB interface that comes with a protective interposer card that locks the mechanism into place, securing it in transport. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 6 of 25

7 Embedded Hypervisor 2.2 VMware Virtualization Solution on IBM System ex VMware vsphere ESX Server is the product name of a thin virtualization layer that runs directly on x86 hardware without any operating system being involved. ESX Server provides the environment for multiple virtual machines to run on a single x86 server. Its main task is to create the illusion for each virtual machine that it runs on its own set of hardware and maps those virtual hardware interactions to the physical hardware. VMware vcenter is the key management component. It groups several ESX servers together into a pool, called a cluster. vcenter provides a single management interface to all participating ESX servers and represents a uniform view of its resources (see resource pools). It is also instrumental in providing Virtual Infrastructure Services, such as VMotion, high availability (failover protection) See Figure 5 for further details of Virtual Infrastructure Services. VMware solution (source vmware.com) VMotion enables the administrator to move a running Virtual Machine from one ESX server to another without interruption to the end user. VMotion provides the basis for two more services, a load balancing service, called DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduling) and an energy-saving service called DPM (Distributed Power Manager). DRS uses VMotion as a mechanism to do load balancing across the available ESX servers. DRS dynamically knows about the load condition (not only for initial placement of a VM) and, depending on the configuration of DRS, it either lists recommendations or actually performs the relocation of VMs to other ESX servers, using VMotion. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 7 of 25

8 HA is a failover protection service for the entire virtual machine. In case a physical server (the ESX server) fails, all the VMs that had been running on this ESX server are restarted (rebooted) on the remaining ESX servers. VMware vsphere ESX Server Facts Host 64-bit VMkernel 1 TB host memory 64 logical CPUs App App App App App OS OS OS OS OS OS 256 VMs App App App App App OS OS OS OS OS OS 320 virtual machines per host Virtual Machines 8-Way Virtual SMP 255GB RAM Virtual Machine Hardware Version 7 Networking New virtual devices VMDirectPath I/O Distributed switch Simplify datacenter administration Enable networking statistics and policies to migrate with virtual machines (Network VMotion ) VMDirectPath I/O 64 Cores 512GB Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 8 of 25

9 3. SAP Virtualization on System x servers with ex5 Technology We use the scale up approach of virtualization with the high end servers which allows us to consolidate and optimize workload for environments with different Systems on one big server. The benefit comes from better hardware utilization and easier management of a centralized infrastructure. Instead of using many small servers we choose the high end System x3850 X5 for virtualized SAP landscapes. The system x servers with ex5 Technology provide a rock-solid and flexible virtualization infrastructure. We used the following hardware for this Proof of Concept IBM system x3850 X5 - (7145-AC1): 4 x 8-core Xeon 7560 series 2.27 GHz processors 160GB memory 1 HBA & 2 NICs 8 internal 146GB SAS HDDs IBM system x3950 M2 (7141-3SG) 2-Node: 8 x quad-core Xeon E GHz processors 148 GB memory 1 HBA & 4 NICs 4 internal 146.8GB SAS HDDs IBM system x3650 M2 2 x quad-core Xeon E GHz processors 48 GB memory 1 HBA & 2 NICs Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 9 of 25

10 Network Each node is connected to the Lab network using two Gigabit Ethernet adapters (Figure 10). The advanced systems management (ASM) card (Remote Supervisor Adapter II) is connected to the same network for management access. 3.1 Setup of IBM system x3850 X5, x3950 M2 & x3650 M2 The first step of the hardware setup is the update of the firmware to the latest level. We use the IBM UpdateXpress bootable CD to update all firmware in a single step. At this time this option is available for x3950 M2 and x3650 M Integrated Management Module The web-based interface to the Integrated Management Module (IMM) allows a complete remote management of the server and gives a comprehensive overview of the system status. It helps provide: Easy for system administrators to manage large group of diverse systems Lower IT Cost Dagnostics, virtual presence and remote control to manage, monitor, troubleshoot and repair from any corner of the world (LightPath) Manage servers remotely, in a secure environment independent Operating System state Single Administrator can configure and deploy server from bare metal to Operating System boot Secure alerts and status, ensuring maximum uptime when used with IBM Systems Director Standards based alerting enables upward integration into wide variety of enterprise management environments out of the box Dedicated 10/100Mb Ethernet We use the IMM with a unified code base on the following systems in this proof of concept (PoC): x3650m2 x3850 X5 With the remote control we were able to access the service console to insert the initial values for the ESXi Server after the first reboot. We used that interface to set up the two-node configuration. The event log shows whether there are any error conditions on the servers. All systems that are used in this PoC are equipped with an embedded hypervisor, so Installation on a local disk was not required. For this PoC we have tested the embedded hypervisor and the full ESX4 server on a RAID1 on two internal SAS disks. We inserted the hypervisor in the x3850 X5. We choose a x3650 M2 and x3950 M2 with the pre-installed hypervisor option. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 10 of 25

11 The embedded hypervisor can be selected as a permanent boot device in the BIOS Setup. Start the system and select the setup option when prompted. Select Embedded Hypervisor as the first boot device. Also, check the BIOS to ensure that Intel VT technology is enabled. The ESXi server needs a basic configuration to get a connection via the network. We inserted the IP address and root password in the ESX configuration panel at the server console (Figure 15). We used the remote console of the x3850 X5 integrated management module (IMM) for access to the server. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 11 of 25

12 Figure 1. ESXi basic configuration Then, we started the server and used it as standalone ESXi server. To install the virtual infrastructure client on an administrator workstation we connected the web interface of ESXi Server (Figure 16). 3.2 Management of vsphere environment We use a VMware vcenter Server for a centralized management of all host systems. To connect to that management server, we use the vsphere Client on an administration workstation with Windows. We then added all hosts to the vcenter server. After successful setup, we will see the system information on the summary screen of the ESXi Server. Figure 2. vsphere client summary screen With this initial setup the environment is ready for the Proof of Concept. Papers describing best practices and setup information for ESX Server can be found on the VMware Technical Resources page: and Performance-tuning Best Practices for ESX Server : Be sure to follow the VMware ESX Server configuration guidelines (SAP Note ). The IBM System x3850 M2 and System x3950 M2 Installation Guide can be found at: Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 12 of 25

13 3.3 Update Host to latest vsphere version and patches To have a consistent level of ESX we upgrade all host to the latest level. The host has to be in maintenance mode for the update process. The next step is the Patch Host process: The host reboots after successful patch process. 3.4 ex5 Technology Advantages with vsphere Enterprise License We use the vcenter licensing functionality to manage all licenses for the vcenter Server and the hosts. VMware products are licensed by physical CPU. We use a Enterprise Plus license which allows us to use 8 core CPUs. The number of Cores per physical CPU and hyper-threading does not have an effect on the number of licenses required. (see for more information). We use the x3950 M2 with 8 physical CPUs. The x3950 M2 is licensed for 8 physical CPUs and provides 32 logical CPUs. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 13 of 25

14 The x3850 X5 needs a license for 4 physical CPUs. This system provides 32 cores and 64 logical CPUs because the new CPUs with 8 cores support Hyperhreading. x3850 X5 x3950 M2 When we compare with the x3950 M2 with the x3850 X5 we get the same number cores and twice as many logical processors with half number of licenses Storage Configuration The VMware ESX Server File System (VMFS) is a file system designed specifically for the storage of virtual machines. It is a cluster-capable shared file system, designed to format very large disk drives (LUNs, maximum 2TB) and store the virtual machine.dsk files, which can also be very large. These volumes store the following key data: Virtual drives of virtual machines: the.vmdk files VM description file: *.vmx The memory images from virtual machines that have been suspended Delta files in case snapshots of entire virtual machines are used We use a IBM Storage System as common datastore for all hosts. All hosts are connected via the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) to an SAN Volume Controller (SVC). The SVC provides a 1.9TB Volume that holds all virtual machines vsphere Distributed Switch With a distributed switch (Figure 26) the administration is much easier. This feature is available in the version 4 of VMware ESX. This version is available with VMware s vsphere product family. Figure 3. Distributed switch and port group Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 14 of 25

15 The distributed switch makes it possible to connect different servers (uplink) to one logical switch. All network cards are connected to a virtual switch across multiple hosts. Virtual machines are connected to distributed virtual port groups on that switch. Figure 4, Virtual switch configuration In this configuration we have separated a Portal Server in a dedicated port group from the back-end ERP Servers in different port groups. These virtual machines can be hosted on different physical hosts. Two hosts are uplinked to this distributed virtual switch, making the configuration much easier to manage, centrally. The management of the virtual switches across a server farm for a consolidated environment is more efficient with distributed switches and it helps to avoid incorrect network configuration. 4. SAP landscape setup In this PoC we setup an environment with an SAP ERP ECC system. The first step is the creation of a virtual machine and the installation of an operating system. 4.1 Virtual machine setup The first step to run a SAP system in a virtual environment is the setup of a virtual machine that runs a supported operating system. VMware ESX Version 4 (vsphere) adds some new features especially for virtualizing SAP application servers,. We now can use up to 8 CPUs and up to 256GB of memory per virtual machine Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 15 of 25

16 Figure 5. Virtual Machine Properties With those values for virtual processors and memory, a virtual machine is now better positioned to host SAP workloads. A virtualized Windows server now has enough processing power and memory for most SAP workloads. We use different version of the Windows Server operating system. The installation process does not differ from the standard setup process and is not described in this document. Figure 6. Eight virtual CPUs After successful installation we can check the system configuration. The fastest way to check this and get an overview of the performance is the task manager. We can see 8 CPUs in this virtual machines. We then clone this virtual machine to a template for the next steps 4.2 SAP landscape setup We have enough resources available to host several SAP systems on the x3850 X5. We will start with a Solution Manger. The next step is the setup of an ERP system. We will then clone this system to a development system for testing SAP solution manager The starting point is the SAP Solution Manager. We use a virtual machine running a Windows 2003 server and run the SAPINST process of the solution manager 7.0. After successful installation we can login wit SAPGUI. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 16 of 25

17 In this PoC we did not have a connection to the SAP marketplace, so we cannot use the full functionality of the SAP Solution Manger in this environment. We can use the Solution Manager for creation of installation keys for the SAP ERP systems SAP ERP The installation process inside a VM differs slightly from an installation on a physical host (e.g. enhanced monitoring). You can follow the installation and tuning guidelines from SAP. To Install SAP ERP 6.0 central system we followed the instructions from the SAP Installation Guides: Java installation IBM DB2 database installation SAP Installation Master We selected DB2 for Windows and installed a Central System with Central Services, a database instance and a central instance (Figure 42): SAP installation Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 17 of 25

18 After the successful installation we tested the system processes (Figure 43): Check system processes Then we checked the installation with the SAP GUI logon. We logged on with SAP* at the SAP system: SAP GUI 4.3 Operating Virtual SAP Machines Enhanced Monitoring See SAP Notes SAP Note Virtualization on Windows: Enhanced monitoring when you plan to use the SAP system for productive use. Modify the ESX server with vsphere Client - Configuration - Advanced Settings - Misc and set value of Misc.GuestLibAllowHostInfo to 1. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 18 of 25

19 Add parameter tools.guestlib.enablehostinfo in the virtual machine setting Options - Advanced - General Configuration Parameters and set value TRUE Install VMware Tools inside the virtual machine. This step is mandatory to use the modified SAPOSCOL and the enhanced monitoring in the transactions os07n. Add the library directory C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\Guest SDK\lib\win64 to the PATH variable in this virtual machine. Install C-runtime 8.0 from Microsoft for the 64bit Windows platform in the virtual machine that runs the SAP server. Stop SAPOSCOL service, download and replace SAPOSCOL from SAP Service Marketplace: Support Packages and Patches - Entry by Application Group" Additional Components" - SAP Kernel" SAP KERNEL 64-BIT UNICODE" - SAP KERNEL BIT UNICODE - #Database independent Restart the SAPOSCOL service after replacement. The new SAPOSCOL can only retrieve data if the VMware Tools are installed in the virtual machine. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 19 of 25

20 See SAP Note for detailed description of the specific virtualization counters in this view Migration a SAP system to new hardware We tested the ability to move existing SAP system that runs on the x3950m2 to the new x3850 X5 system. One of the objectives is to reduce the downtime of the system when we run this migration. When moving a virtual machine source and target CPU, they should be from the same CPU family. In our environment we move a virtual machine from the x3950 M2 with X7330 to the x3850 X5 with Nehalam EX. With a standard configuration VMotion refuses to move a running virtual machine due CPU mismatch. We use a feature called Enhanced VMotion Compatibility that can be used with ESX 3.5i and higher versions. VMware definition: Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations. EVC automatically configures server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. After EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to present identical CPU features and ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. The features presented by each host are determined by selecting a predefined EVC baseline. VirtualCenter does not permit the addition of hosts that cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with the EVC baseline. (Source: vmware.com) To use Enhanced VMotion Compatibility we have to setup a cluster and enable EVC for Intel Hosts. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 20 of 25

21 When finished we can move virtual machines between the x3950m2 and the x3850 X5 without power down the systems. A migration of SAP system to the new more powerful platform of the x3850 X5 is possible with no downtime of SAP processes running in the environment Performance Monitoring on x3850 X5 and x3950 M2 with same load The test setup for the performance monitoring consists of the x3850 and the x3950 M2. We use the same type of HBA to the attached storage system and the data store for virtual machines of both hosts is on the same LUN. The x3950 M2 has a slightly higher CPU frequency (Xeon E GHz) when comparing with x3850 X5 (Xeon GHz). We consider this as equal for this test. We clone a new installed SAP ERP system without any modification or tuning for this test. We didn t move the SAP system after the first test to establish exactly the same start condition for both virtual machines. The infrastructure conditions for both tests runs are similar: we don t have other load on the host system or the storage system. So we don t have any side effects that influence the test results. (The next few steps are the same for both tests.) We start the virtual machines with an SAP ERP Server. With SAPGUI we launch the SAP Load Generator with /nsgen. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 21 of 25

22 We selected Generate All Objects of selected software components We select all Software components and server for generation and start the job directly. When we started this job we could see the load generator status With the Windows Server Task Manager we check the real time load of the virtual CPU inside the virtual machine and saw a ~ 60-70% load on that machine. We see nearly the same CPU utilization on all vcpus (~50-65%). Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 22 of 25

23 We check the values from inside the VM with the SAP Operating System Monitor. We check the CPU utilization with the VMware Monitoring Tools of the vsphere center server. The vsphere client shows the performance of the host server and of virtual machines. The following performance graphs are taken from the two virtual machines running on the system x3850 X5 and the x3950m2 while the SAP system regenerate all objects of all software components. SAP VM on x3850 X5 (all CPUs) SAP VM on x3950m2 (average view) On the left side we see the CPU utilization of all 8 virtual CPU cores in the first stage of the test. The second chart shows the CPU average utilization view of the x3950m2. View on Host system (physical CPU) Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 23 of 25

24 x3850 X5 (all CPUs) Disk Usage is below 2MBps (Write) and 6MBps (read) x3950m2 (average view) After the completed test we compare the results on the system x3850 X5 and the x3950m2 and calculate the time difference between job start and job end. The complete job on the system x3850 X5 takes 4h,21m,47s The Result on Clone of virtual machine wit SAP system on x3950 M2 with same conditions (storage adapters and connection, virtual machine parameters, condition of OS and SAP system, network etc) shows a duration for the test with the same parameters of 12h:24m.33. The same SAP load runs nearly 3 times faster on the new x3850 X5 with the same SAP workload. Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 24 of 25

25 Remark: This test is a very specific SAP load and did not show the general behavior of a productive SAP system. So any conclusions to a different environment or SAP load are not necessarily correct. We show with this PoC that a move of SAP system to the new system x3850m2 is possible even when the SAP services are online. The effects of this move are a tremendous performance boost. With the same virtual machine we can see a nearly 3 times faster completion of a specific SAP load. You can put more number of SAP systems that runs inside virtual machines on the new system. The effect of this performance boost is lower energy consumption and less cooling, savings in rack space and much better scalability of the new systems XSW03023-USEN-01 Copyright 2010 IBM Corporation. All rights reserved. Page 25 of 25