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
Showing posts with label x64. Show all posts
Showing posts with label x64. Show all posts
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
New strategy for IT on Economy Crisis
Economy Crisis is already happened and impacted to every business around the world. The major impact are really hit to the banking and financial environment. At the same time, I believe that the financial sector are the highest IT spending every year and everywhere around the world to provide service availability to their customer, stock market, and treasury trading.
If we analyze what happen to the IT spending on the financial and banking environment, you will not surprise to see that the amount of storage, servers, solution and Unnecessary equipment been under utilized for every bank around the world. The IT department for financial sector had been comfort live for many years and is time now for them to review and revise their IT spending to ensure higher return from their investment.
Open source or reliable LINUX had not been really high utilize in financial sector are really due to the comfort living of their IT department. Personal point of view, why we have to run something else on the expensive IBM AIX, mainframe, HP UX, Microsoft, Oracle VS the reliable LINUX from x86 or x64 platform to perform the same result? The simple answer is really the Mindset from the person.
If we compare the super computing for research and development, you will find that the top 5 fastest computing in the world are build from the x86 or x64 platform whihc you can common found from the market. If you are telling me that the x86 platform is under power, I will say is depend how you manage and deploy it. Looking at SAP, which is the biggest ERP solution around the world, and they even suggest to run on SUSE Linux with the MaxDB and etc. My experience on that, it really perform as require and even outperform when we compare to the AIX machine that we previously have. We know the MAXDB are still far behind the oracle, but at least from the operating system point of view, the LINUX always provide more reliable compare to Windows or proprited UNIX platform from HP and IBM.
Beside these, you may consider the operation maintenance cost, the open standard will provide more flexible and cost effective. Intel and AMD competition have also promise to increase from 6 cores to 12 cores in 2 years time. The processing power are always increasing from time to time.
I will not believe the x86 will not able to handle the load that require to run for any system in the world today, is really depend how we plan it and manage it. Some of the bank I know, they even run their critical machine on LINUX today, and I do not see the reason of others bank can't.
Moving forward to the current economy environment, to survive and sustain for IT department is challenge. Instead of sticking with old and expensive solution, it may end up the CEO will just fire the entire IT department and look for outsource vendor. I believe the IT department have to be more open and follow up with the open technology which are much more cost effective compare with those expensive solution. The more dollars for IT to save, that increase the percentage for the job security as well as business effective. Do not forget, IT is to assist the business to generate revenue higher and faster, you may not want to make IT as a cost and is not profitable when it show up in the entire financial summary to the boards. If that does happen, human will stop using IT and prefer to work on paper and pen again as traditional.
If we analyze what happen to the IT spending on the financial and banking environment, you will not surprise to see that the amount of storage, servers, solution and Unnecessary equipment been under utilized for every bank around the world. The IT department for financial sector had been comfort live for many years and is time now for them to review and revise their IT spending to ensure higher return from their investment.
Open source or reliable LINUX had not been really high utilize in financial sector are really due to the comfort living of their IT department. Personal point of view, why we have to run something else on the expensive IBM AIX, mainframe, HP UX, Microsoft, Oracle VS the reliable LINUX from x86 or x64 platform to perform the same result? The simple answer is really the Mindset from the person.
If we compare the super computing for research and development, you will find that the top 5 fastest computing in the world are build from the x86 or x64 platform whihc you can common found from the market. If you are telling me that the x86 platform is under power, I will say is depend how you manage and deploy it. Looking at SAP, which is the biggest ERP solution around the world, and they even suggest to run on SUSE Linux with the MaxDB and etc. My experience on that, it really perform as require and even outperform when we compare to the AIX machine that we previously have. We know the MAXDB are still far behind the oracle, but at least from the operating system point of view, the LINUX always provide more reliable compare to Windows or proprited UNIX platform from HP and IBM.
Beside these, you may consider the operation maintenance cost, the open standard will provide more flexible and cost effective. Intel and AMD competition have also promise to increase from 6 cores to 12 cores in 2 years time. The processing power are always increasing from time to time.
I will not believe the x86 will not able to handle the load that require to run for any system in the world today, is really depend how we plan it and manage it. Some of the bank I know, they even run their critical machine on LINUX today, and I do not see the reason of others bank can't.
Moving forward to the current economy environment, to survive and sustain for IT department is challenge. Instead of sticking with old and expensive solution, it may end up the CEO will just fire the entire IT department and look for outsource vendor. I believe the IT department have to be more open and follow up with the open technology which are much more cost effective compare with those expensive solution. The more dollars for IT to save, that increase the percentage for the job security as well as business effective. Do not forget, IT is to assist the business to generate revenue higher and faster, you may not want to make IT as a cost and is not profitable when it show up in the entire financial summary to the boards. If that does happen, human will stop using IT and prefer to work on paper and pen again as traditional.
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