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Innovation and InsightVirtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA: Reference Architecture

Joseph SantosGlobal Director, Technology Alliances SAP Labs, LLC

Michael HochSenior Vice President, Cloud Advisory Services Virtustream, Inc.

White paper

Innovation and Insight

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Table of contents

2 Executive summary

3 Introduction

3 SAP and Virtustream

3 Virtustream credentials

4 Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA

5 Cloud-based deployment for real-time business

6 A cloud computing partner like no other

6 Enterprise-grade public, virtual private and

hybrid cloud services

6 Virtustream: Ranked as a top cloud service provider

7 SAP HANA: reference architecture

7 High-performance analytic appliance on Cisco UCS

8 Scale-out offerings with Cisco UCS B-Series

Blade Servers

9 Cisco – NetApp 12TB Configuration for SAP HANA

10 NetApp FAS8040 Storage System

10 Infrastructure management

11 Macro-hypervisor

11 In summary

Executive summary

Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA®

provides fast, cost-effective access to SAP-certified

environments running the SAP HANA platform,

hosted in SAP-certified data centers, with all the

benefits of Virtustream’s Infrastructure-as-a Services

(IaaS) managed by its Cloud Management Platform

(CMP) software, xStream™. Existing and new

customers running the SAP® ERP application are

using Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA to

run full production environments, and experiencing

performance improvements better than 90%.

The Virtustream Enterprise-Class Cloud provides a

secure, highly available IaaS for full heterogeneous

environments, including SAP and non-SAP

application groups, SAP HANA, and other databases.

For the SAP HANA portions, customers have the

option of virtual SAP HANA, SAP-certified appliances,

or customized solutions using SAP HANA tailored

data center integration, depending on the deployment

requirements.

Virtustream and SAP have jointly developed a

reference architecture for SAP HANA that includes

the Virtustream Cloud Management Platform software,

xStream, the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS),

and NetApp FAS System Storage. It is a model for

deploying complex heterogeneous IT environments,

either from a cloud service provider like Virtustream or

on premise in a customer’s data center.

Innovation and Insight Accelerate your journey to the cloudInnovation and Insight

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Introduction

Today’s businesses require continuous innovation for survival.

Yet in many instances, IT is overwhelmed with managing

the complexity of their current IT landscapes. Because of

this, businesses often perceive IT as a bottleneck to growth

and start looking to other avenues to meet their constantly

changing needs. In today’s dynamic market, a revenue

opportunity today may not be there tomorrow. Often these

opportunities are lost, as IT is unable to quickly respond to

the urgent need. The delay might be due to focus shifts from

enabling strategic business processes to technology support

and maintenance, or the time taken and budget needed to

acquire and develop on-premise IT solutions.

It is no surprise, then, that industry analysts report that up

to 75% of new IT expenditures will be for cloud or hybrid

systems by 2016. In today’s reality, in a world of accelerated

change, business needs will drive the cloud agenda.

But deploying mission-critical apps in the cloud requires

specialized skills, knowledge, and experience. A lack of these

competencies creates unacceptable risk in a mission-critical

environment.

For deploying SAP HANA in the cloud, Virtustream Cloud

Services for SAP HANA is the answer: to accelerate the

deployment, reduce the risk, and optimize the investment

and resources.

SAP and Virtustream

SAP and Virtustream have a long-standing relationship and

a long history of innovation for SAP applications in the cloud

and SAP HANA in the cloud. Virtustream deployed the first

production SAP customer in a multi-tenant cloud and the first

production SAP ERP running on SAP HANA in the cloud.

Virtustream was among the first cloud service providers

to become a member of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

partner program for select certified SAP partners. Recently,

the enterprise-class cloud software and services provider

announced an extension of its Cloud Service for SAP HANA

to offer customers fully virtualized SAP HANA for production

landscapes on its IaaS platform

Virtustream credentials

• More than 120 SAP customers running production SAP

software in Virtustream Enterprise-Class Cloud

• First production SAP customer in a multi-tenant cloud

• First production SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC)

running on SAP HANA in the cloud

• Member of SAP Cloud Technology Advisory Board

• Member of SAP Cloud Benchmarking Group

• SAP-certified cloud services provider

• SAP-certified provider of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

services

• SAP-certified provider of hosting services

• SAP-certified provider of the SAP Business One® Cloud

solution

Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA allows customers

to deploy SAP HANA faster, at lower cost, and with less risk

than a traditional on-premise deployment. Customers can

now use the agility of the cloud for SAP HANA to deliver

innovation back to the business faster than ever before.


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Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA

Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA provides fast, cost-

effective access to SAP HANA environments, both virtual SAP

HANA and physical SAP-certified appliances, in SAP-certified

data centers, managed by the Cloud Management Platform

(CMP) software, xStream™. (See Figures 1 and 2.) Existing

and new customers on SAP ERP are using Virtustream Cloud

Service for SAP HANA to run full production environments

and experiencing performance improvements better

than 90%. For the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW)

application powered by SAP HANA, customers with both

migration and greenfield uses have seen 600x improvements

in performance. Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA

includes an option for subscription-based services, including

the software and infrastructure services, at a low monthly fee,

with the long-proven benefits of a true, consumption-based

cloud. The benefits include:

• SAP-certified landscapes hosted within Virtustream’s SAP-

certified data centers

• Virtual environments running SAP HANA for fast,

consumption-based deployments under 1TB in size

• Configured and available multi-TB environments deployed

on Virtustream Infrastructure-as-a Service

• Management by Virtustream Cloud Management Platform

(CMP) software, xStream

• Support by Virtustream’s broad portfolio of professional

services aimed at ensuring a successful deployment,

adoption, and exploitation of cloud computing

• Cloud strategy services to minimize costs and reduce risk

– Migration and optimization services for the SAP HANA

database

– Cloud monitoring, management, and optimization

services to reduce operating and support costs

– A complete suite of cloud-staging, hosting, network,

and colocation services

– Certified consultants experienced with SAP HANA in

production

Figure 1: Virtustream – Bringing Cloud Value to SAP Customers


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Cloud-based deployment for real-time business

Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA can be rapidly

provisioned, with initial deployments designed, configured,

and ready in days or weeks, and additional landscapes

provisioned in hours or days.

This offering allows SAP customers to run their mission-

critical SAP HANA database and SAP applications in a

private managed cloud environment by bringing their existing

SAP on-premise licenses to Virtustream’s data center and

converting the SAP perpetual licenses to cloud services

licenses.

Capitalizing on the shift to the cloud, customers are changing

the way they consume world-class SAP solutions. With

SAP solutions in the cloud, customers reduce their capital

expenditure; lower the total cost of ownership with a flexible,

scalable infrastructure; and experience the power of SAP

software in weeks, not months.

Virtustream Cloud Services for SAP HANA is where a

trusted partner like Virtustream offers exponential value over

traditional models for delivering IT services. Customers can

leverage the proven industry-leading SAP enterprise software

portfolio combined with the improved economics of the

Virtustream Cloud Platform. The result is faster time to value,

lower cost, and full elasticity, while remaining secure and

resilient, to realize the benefits of unparalleled expertise and

hosting in a private multi-tenant cloud.

Most enterprises and government agencies today use a

broad mix of applications: SAP and non-SAP. Virtustream

enables both legacy applications and modern applications to

gain the benefits of cloud computing by providing granular

application-level service-level agreeements (SLAs) for

applications in these mixed environments.

Figure 2: Virtustream Cloud Service for SAP HANA – Architectural View


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A cloud computing partner like no other

Virtustream is a cloud computing partner like no other

for enterprises running SAP software in the cloud, with a

rare breadth and depth of experience, knowledge, and

credentials. SAP itself is an investor in Virtustream, as well as

a customer, supplier, and partner. Its extensive professional

services offerings are available to help ensure the successful

migration of your SAP instance: SAP ERP, the SAP Customer

Relationship Management application, analytics solutions,

SAP Landscape Virtualization Management software, virtual

appliance factory, SAP HANA, and SAP Business One Cloud.

Enterprise-grade public, virtual private, and

hybrid cloud services

The Virtustream Enterprise-Class Cloud is an IaaS cloud

computing solution offering the reliability, security,

compliance, and performance of a dedicated private cloud,

combined with the flexibility, scalability, and economic

benefits of a public multi-tenant cloud. Virtustream’s

Enterprise-Class Cloud enables users to run complex,

mission-critical SAP applications and database as well

as legacy applications, including Oracle, Microsoft, and

hundreds more with full cloud benefits, and without rewriting

applications. Within the Virtustream Enterprise-Class Cloud,

SLAs are delivered for both application performance and

availability, in addition to providing a foundation for meeting

national and industry-level security, compliance, and auditing

requirements.

Virtustream: Ranked as top cloud services provider

Cloud Spectator and the Cloud Advisory Council published

the results of a study on “IaaS Performance and Value

Analysis” comparing the top 14 public cloud infrastructure

providers on October 15, 2013.

The study reports the performance information of 14 of the

largest IaaS providers in the United States. While many of the

providers serve clients globally with data centers worldwide,

Cloud Spectator and the Cloud Advisory Council conducted

this study exclusively in each provider’s U.S. data center.

Running across a period of 10 consecutive days, this report

details performance results on each provider’s system,

including component-level tests measuring CPU, disk, RAM,

and internal network.

Figure 3: IaaS Performance and Value Analysis, Source: Cloud Spectator, LLC 2013


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Performance data is related with cost of servers to acquire

a price–performance value index, which is used to compare

value among providers based on the results. This index is

called the CloudSpecs Score.

Figure 3 lists an overview of the top providers from each

comparison. Only the top three within each category are

listed. The “Performance Leaders” category exclusively ranks

IaaS providers from best to worst performance results. The

CloudSpecs Leaders category ranks providers based on

their CloudSpecs price–performance index, with a relational

integer from 1 to 100 (100 is the highest score) used to

compare each provider’s value.

For general system performance, Virtustream received the

highest value score in the CloudSpecs Leaders segment. With

performance exclusively, Tier 3 ranks first. The IaaS offerings

of HP Cloud, SoftLayer, Tier 3, and Virtustream consistently

rank as both Performance Leaders and CloudSpecs Leaders

throughout the study. A combination of effective pricing and

strong performance places those providers within the top tier

of these categories.

SAP HANA: reference architecture

Virtustream and SAP have jointly developed a reference

architecture for SAP HANA that includes Virtustream xStream

Cloud Management Platform software. It is a model for

deploying complex heterogeneous IT environments, either

hosted by Virtustream as a cloud service provider or on

premise in a customer’s data center.

The infrastructure specified in the reference architecture is

based on:

• Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) utilizing B460 M4

High-Performance Blade Servers and Cisco Nexus 5000

Multiprotocol Switches

• NetApp FAS 8040 Storage System

High-performance analytic appliance on Cisco UCS

Cisco has developed a full portfolio of solutions for SAP HANA

based on the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®).

The portfolio ranges from small-scale solutions supporting

128GB of memory to large-scale solutions supporting up to

16TB of usable memory with 16 nodes. Depending on the

compression factors, validated Cisco® appliance solutions can

support databases of up to 112TB.

Cisco UCS is a single unified system entirely programmable

through unified, model-based management that dramatically

simplifies and accelerates the deployment of enterprise-class

applications and services. All Cisco UCS appliances are

intelligent infrastructure that can be managed through an

embedded, single management plane across multiple Cisco

UCS rack and blade servers, radically simplifying operations

and reducing costs.


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Scale-out offerings with Cisco UCS B-Series Blade

Servers

The scale-out appliance is uniquely scalable. It allows

customers to easily adapt to the growing demands of their

individual environments by incrementally adding Cisco

B460 M4 High-Performance Blade Servers with four Intel®

Xeon® processors E7-4890 v2 (2.8 GHz) and up to 1TB

usable memory each, as needed. For every four Cisco UCS

blade servers, the persistency layer is provided by NetApp

FAS8040HA storage system.

The basic configuration of the Cisco scale-out offering

consists of redundant Cisco Fabric Interconnects with

embedded infrastructure management, a Cisco UCS C220

M3 High-Density Rack Server to handle management

functions and to host SAP HANA studio, a Cisco 2911

Integrated Services Router (ISR) for secure remote

management, and one enclosure with support for up to four

Cisco UCS B460 M4 blade servers. The basic configuration

can easily be scaled through the addition of extension

bundles, each providing another blade enclosure for up to

four more Cisco UCS B460 M4 blade servers each and the

corresponding storage from NetApp.

All Cisco UCS servers are interconnected with a low-latency,

10Gbps Ethernet fabric, which supports both IP and

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connections through

redundant Cisco Fabric Interconnects. The Cisco Fabric

Interconnect,

with embedded management, is the core of Cisco UCS and

reduces both the number of network hops and network

latency – critical to SAP HANA performance.

Cisco UCS and the storage devices are connected to a

pair of Cisco Nexus® 5500 platform multiprotocol switches.

The Cisco Nexus 5548UP Switch offers 48 unified ports

that can function as 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports with FCoE

capabilities, Gigabit Ethernet ports, or native 48Gbps Fibre

Channel (depending on the inserted optics) ports. The Cisco

Nexus 5548UP Switch has a low-latency cut-through design

that provides predictable, consistent traffic performance

regardless of packet size, traffic pattern, or enabled features

on 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces with latency of less than 2

microseconds for switched traffic and 4.8 microseconds for

routed traffic.

Additional scalability, with the same features, can be

accomplished with the Cisco Nexus 5596UP Switch, which

can provide a density of 96 unified ports in two rack units

(2RUs). The Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders

work in conjunction with a Cisco Nexus 5500 platform

parent switch to deliver cost-effective and highly scalable

100/1000-Megabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The

fabric extender is essentially an extension of the parent Cisco

Nexus switch fabric. Logically, it behaves like a remote line

card, with the fabric extender and the parent Cisco Nexus

switch together forming a distributed modular system with a

single point of management.

Accelerate your journey to the cloudInnovation and Insight

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Figure 4: Cisco – NetApp 12TB Configuration

Component Details

Cisco Unified Computing System Components

Cisco UCS 6296UP Fabric Interconnect 2

Cisco UCS B460 M4 Blade Server 12

Number of CPUs 48 Intel Xeon E7-4890 v2 processors 2.8-GHz

Total CPU cores 720

Total RAM 12TB

Ethernet uplink bandwidth 8 x 10-Gigabit Ethernet

Number of blade chassis 6 Cisco UCS 5108

Fabric (Two Cisco Nexus 5548UP Switches)–Port counts in use

10-Gigabit Ethernet ports 8 x 10-Gigabit Ethernet

NetApp FAS 8040 Storage Array

RAM 64GB

NVRAM 16GB

Number of SAS drives 120: 5 x 24 600GB each

Number of disk shelves 5

Total storage 60TB+

10-Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth 8 x 10-Gigabit Ethernet

Cisco – NetApp 12TB Configuration for SAP HANA

Innovation and InsightInnovation and Insight

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NetApp FAS8040 Storage System

Powered by NetApp® Data ONTAP® and optimized for scale-

out, the FAS8000 series unifies SAN and NAS storage

infrastructure. With proven data management capabilities, the

FAS8000 has the flexibility to keep up with changing business

needs while delivering on core IT requirements.

The FAS8000 features a multiprocessor Intel® chip set and

leverages high-performance memory modules, NVRAM to

accelerate and optimize writes, and an I/O-tuned PCIe gen3

architecture that maximizes application throughput.

The FAS8000 Series benefits customers by allowing them to:

• Run SAN and NAS workloads simultaneously with unified

scale-out storage

• Scale to nearly 70PB and include existing storage with

FlexArray

• Reduce latency and speed operations using hybrid

storage with up to almost half a PB of flash or all-flash

configurations

• Experience >99.999% availability, plus nondisruptive

operations that eliminate planned downtime

• Deliver up to 2x the price–performance of the previous

generation

• Future-proof storage with innovative hardware, full cloud

integration, and the number-one storage OS

Cisco Unified Computing System with NetApp Storage for

SAP HANA (Figure 4) is a defined set of hardware and

software that serves as an integrated infrastructure stack. The

solution supports only the SAP HANA application stack based

on NetApp FAS storage system, the Cisco Nexus switch

platform, and the Cisco UCS in a single package.

Infrastructure management

Virtustream delivers infrastructure management and more

through xStream™, the Virtustream Cloud Management Platform

software for private, public, and hybrid clouds, which enables

customers to move existing mission-critical and production

applications to the cloud. Powered by Virtustream µVM™

(Micro VM) technology, xStream™ delivers enterprise-grade

security and compliance, performance SLAs, multi-tenant

efficiency, and consumption-based charging for both legacy and

Web-scale applications.

The core cloud innovation that differentiates Virtustream

is the µVM. Today virtualized data centers and clouds are

provisioned using virtual machines. Customers select a virtual

machine size that matches the maximum possible demands

of their application (whether compute, storage, or network). As

enterprise applications consume varying levels of resources over

the course of their operation and over time, this means that the

virtual machines (VMs) include significant wasted headroom

that is unused most of the time.

Figure 5: Virtustream xStream Cloud Management Platform software


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Macro-hypervisor

Virtustream has a patent protected technology, the µVM – a

cloud element much smaller than a VM. A set of µVMs are

combined together as a dynamic container enabling the

applications to be spread across multiple µVMs. As the

applications breathe, more or less µVMs are dynamically

allocated by the xStream management system. This dynamic

allocation allows the VM headroom to be saved, often

bringing up to 30% reductions in both virtual and physical

assets required. In addition, the set of µVMs are all managed

as a single set with a common set of security policies,

network policies, and virtualization policies – greatly reducing

the work to operate the system. xStream also provides

comprehensive enterprise-class SLAs at application level

through Virtustream patented technology.

The xStream management platform with µVM technology

is run as a “macro-hypervisor” over existing hypervisors:

VMware ESXi, Red Hat KVM, open source KVM, PowerVM,

Virtustream KVM, and others. The µVM technology enables

up to 30% economic savings over existing virtualization

and also enables customers to mix and match hypervisors,

selecting the optimal approach for their mix of applications

– whether VMware, Red Hat–supported KVM, or even open

source hypervisors.

Both xStream™ cloud software and the Virtustream Enterprise-

Class IaaS Cloud deliver secure, highly efficient cloud

solutions, backed by performance SLAs, for mission-critical

applications (SAP and non-SAP) to run in public, private, and

hybrid clouds today.

In summary

Virtustream is the enterprise-class cloud software and service

provider trusted by enterprises worldwide to migrate and run

their mission-critical applications in the cloud.

For enterprises, service providers, and government

agencies, Virtustream xStream™ Cloud Management Platform

(CMP) software and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

meet the security, compliance, performance, efficiency,

and consumption-based billing requirements of complex

production applications in the cloud – whether private, public,

or hybrid.

For more information:

www.sap.com/hana

www.virtustream.com/solutions

http://www.sap.com/hana

http://www.virtustream.com/solutions

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Virtustream logo and xStream™ logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Virtustream or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All rights reserved.

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