Looking back and further ahead

The Virtualization on SAN and NAS basis, which the Intel–Virtualization in the SAP Enterprise environment, was considered the innovation around the turn of the millennium.

The Intel–Server–Virtualization was still in its infancy at that time; blade serverInfrastructures were the highest of feelings - with a low hardware footprint at the time.

No real milestone of a real Server–Virtualization at that time.

The possibility of decoupling SAP services from the actual OS was the focus.

Especially storageVirtualization made this development possible. It formed a fixed point, so to speak, to keep all information centered.

In this way, SAP services were able to access on an equal footing the Server access.

Goal of the concept: keep local changes that were necessary to the OS centralized like LDAP or the mount logic.

Everything an SAP application needed was stored in a central point; was thus decoupled from the actual OS.

The effect: a shiftable workload on each Server, integrated in an SAPInfrastructure. And with the advantage of simplifying as well as reducing the effort of SAP system replacement, OS updates, hardware maintenance, system copy creation or system cloning.

Logical instead of physical units

Through the Intel–Virtualization was based on the physical Servers via VMware another degree of freedom is gained.

This gave the SAP Adaptive Computing approach - in some ways a kind of precursor to the SAP Cloud computing - added more capabilities like live migration.

In the past, hardware maintenance required SAP services to be shut down.

Clear therefore: Resource extraction followed from the added value of the Intel–VMware–Virtualization.

Because: The system is no longer dependent on physical units, but now on logical units.

In the present world, the de facto Virtualization with VMware intrinsically developed with into it.

SAP internal were Suse and VMware involved in order to optimize the hardwareVirtualization also against the backdrop of SAP Cloud Computing with its various Cloud Computing-principles such as SAP Private Cloud.

Why the integration of Linux in particular?

Thematically, one must see that it is immensely important to be able to use the decoupling of the SAP application logic from the OS or the operating system as standard functionality.

With Unix/Linux it is built in from the start.

Keeping up with the requirements was and is thus a relatively easy undertaking when using Linux.

This also applies to the implementation - especially with regard to the tasks: initial set-up, maintaining flexibility or patching minimization.

High-Availability-Cluster-Integration

One can say: The concept of LVM and Linux fit together in an ideal way; if you like: a perfect tandem.

Whereas the approach for Windows is rather: Resources are kept locally. Because Windows originally focused on the desktop.

In concrete terms, for example, the registry keeps applications local - with the consequence that massive expenditure is sometimes required in concept creation, implementation, operation and maintenance in order to get to the goodies that Linux already has in its belly, so to speak.

And to ensure corresponding high availability in the SAP private cloud, for example, the SAP Linux Lab has developed the Reference architecture of the Shared Lib developed.

The focus here: a HA-Cluster-integration in SAP LVM. Here too Suse significantly contributed with the HA Extension.

Customers can rely on a cluster solution that complies with the SAP-defined Reference architecture and which, in addition, will support SAP'sLVM-integration and is supported via SAP Solution Manager.

Conclusion: For more than ten years Suse Linux from ACC via LVM and thus the Cloud computing active today and tomorrow.

This means that existing SAP customers who rely on Linux will no longer have to use the SAP Cloud computing light.