SAP OS/DB Migration from HP-UX Platform to Vblock Systems - VCE

Introduction
This document describes best practices for the operating system and database migration of SAP from
HP Integrity Superdome servers running PA-RISC/HP-UX to Vblock Systems running x86 Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. This paper demonstrates how customers can lower the migration risk of moving
from a physical environment running HP-UX to Vblock Systems running Red Hat Linux in a virtualized
environment.
Traditional infrastructure practices recommend sizing for the worst case, which is an inefficient
approach that adds to business risk. With Vblock Systems, customers can plan for the optimum size
and take advantage of the dynamic scalability for SAP to support the worst-case scenarios.
This paper provides guidance and testing results from a proof of concept (POC) performed for a large
semiconductor equipment manufacturing company. The company’s SAP landscape includes the
following modules: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Supplier
Relationship Management (SRM), Business Intelligence (BI), Process Integration (PI), and Enterprise
Portal (EP). The tests involved migration and performance of two core SAP modules, ERP SCM and
liveCache. Vblock System 700 was used as the target environment for this migration.
Business case
Virtualization has rapidly gained momentum in enterprise IT environments, because organizations are
looking for ways to control escalating hardware costs and to optimize their use of energy and
resources while improving business continuity. Virtualization of complex SAP applications can reduce
costs and increase speed and resilience. Virtualization also permits faster data analysis and expands
data analysis capabilities.
Key results
Key results demonstrate that when deployed on the Vblock System 700, SAP showed performance
improvement well over the incumbent hardware. The key findings are:
§ Performance improvement of 50% or more when running SAP on the Vblock System 700
compared with a semiconductor equipment manufacturer’s environment
§ 50% less hardware used compared to the customer’s environment
§ Low migration risk moving from an HP-UX based physical environment to a Vblock System 700
virtualized environment
§ Fast recovery of failed application and database server blades with EMC Ionix Unified
Infrastructure Manager (UIM) and Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) service profiles
§ Increased scalability to dynamically add resources
§ High availability and live migration achieved through VMware vMotion
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