Storage Thin Provisioning

Most of the software and storage are supporting think provisioning today. As most of us know that this features provide the users to fully utilize the available storage for the business. Previously, we may consume extra storage space which is idle or unused due to the risk of storage grow rapidly always. In order to re size the partition of the production system, it always require a down time of production to minimize the risk of data corruption.

Today, with thin provisioning, we will able to forecast the storage allocation as usual which include the buffer require for storage grow, which even allow the administrator to increase the percentage of buffer for every volume it created. Without putting extra money on the storage system, we will able to achieve by using thin provisioning. Example I may have a LUN with 1TB usable storage, but I will able to assign total of 5TB to five different servers which contain 1TB each. As long as the initial data consume is within 1TB, it will be fine. Beside that, the thin provisioning will have the intelligent to increase the actual allocation automatically on the fly, which is no down time. From OS perspective, it will always recognize as 1TB no matter on Windows or Linux, this has provide a down time saving for our business today. Of course, the storage will provide monitoring features to ensure the capacity warning is alert before it full, therefore, the storage administrator will able to add the storage to the environment on actual consume basis.

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

More PC are moving to Linux than Windows

There are more and more development currently been done by the major IT vendor example HP, DELL, Asus, ACER and etc which try to move away from Microsoft Windows to Linux due to the slow boot. The next version of notebook or PC are targeting for fast boot with minimum functionaties such as web browsers, email client and etc. In stead of booting like a windows machine today, you will not able to start the entire machine with less than 30 seconds. These group of ppl are targeting to get the entire machine ready with less than 30 seconds and they also trying to switch to the lower cost computer chips which is outsite of Intel and AMD both.

The software to allow this happen is Splashtop which develop by Silicon Valley company DeviceVM. The software would run on a separate ARM processor, instead of the main CPU from Intel and AMD. Thie provide more optional choices for the vendor world instead of a fix and limited choices they could make. With these approach, we should able to see more linux devices from time to time on the netbook, laptops, mobile devices and etc. Stay tune and cheer for Linux