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

Microsoft Servers on VMware

Latest news from microsoft had announced to revise the licensing program for virtual machines which run the Windows servers. 1 of the critical comment do upset a lot of the potential customer to further increase the volume of the windows server in thier environment.

Microsoft said they will support the windows machine which run on virtual server, but they refuse to support the VM which run on VMware. As consumer point of view, that will really as a show stopper to a lot of the potential customer to host thier production environment with more windows server in the future.

Compare Microsoft with Novell SUSE Linux, Novell really do a great job providing full support to the customer who have subscript for support every year, and they will support any virtualization platform that you will host your SUSE Linux.

As Linux as strong growth from time to time, this announcement from Microsoft will not drive up the market percentage they have on the virtualization as well as servers products. It will just create another concern to all the users when they do want to implement a new project, and Microsoft will not be the 1st choice mostly.