SAP on x86 x64 platform

Most of the SAP users today may still rely their system to be hosted on the expensive IBM AIX, HPUX or SUN system which provide the High availabilities to support the non stop business operation for 24 x7 . It is make sense to do this for the past 5 years when the x86 processing power were not as powerful as today. Imagine that the amount of money that require to be pump in for the expensive solution today to keep the SAP running versus the cheaper x86 platform, you will significant see the amount of money you can save for the business from time to time.

I am here more focus to talk about the small and medium size environment for SAP which may be fit to most of the cases. With the technology today, it is sufficient to split the environment with multiple choices include blade, 2way or 4 way x86 servers or even the powerful Virtualization today. HA clustering of course will be the important thing that require to keep the Database with no interruption. My personal experience, we had run the entire DR for SAP on the virtualization today, which will not be utilize most of the time and the only job is to keep the data in sync from time to time. With this, we save the significant amount of money which allow us to further improve the environment for my company. Beside that, the applicaiton server on SAP should perfectly perform on the VM as proven on most of the huge SAP hosting company today. At the same time, Linux or Windows will be sufficient to handle the environment by reducing the complexity for future production support. Easily compare the support cost for linux/windows VS AIX or Unix, that will show another significant saving in the entire project.

SAP is certify itself to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise 64 bits at any x86 & x64 platform servers today. Our environment had been running with this model with more than 2 years and had not see there is any performance or production issue yet. Economy crisis had hit IT badly recently, should we still spending the money as we did previously? My thought is NO, I will rather to keep the money to expand the storages, DC, Virtualization, Dedupe and etc, which will allow the IT to be survived with the minimal capex and enhance the environment. CAPEX cut is not new thing today, a project which required USD 500k could be deploy with USD 300k on Linux and x86 platform VS Unix, will be more attracted to the investor, CIO or the CEO