SAPNote 0001492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments

SAP Note 1492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments Note Language: English

Version: 25 Validity:

Valid Since 09.06.2011

Summary Symptom SAP customers use SAP systems of all sizes and on all operating system platforms, and currently make use of virtualization technologies and solutions. Customer demands for comprehensive support of virtualization are rapidly growing, since this is a major approach to drive down TCO by hardware consolidation and improved operational effectiveness.

Other terms Virtualization virtual cloud VMware vSphere Hyper-V XEN KVM Container Solaris Zones HP Integrity Virtual Machines HPVM

Reason and Prerequisites Whereas virtualization support is available for all applications based on SAP Netweaver Application Server ABAP or Java, the release and support of all other SAP products is in the responsibility of the relevant SAP application team. For that reason, the support of SAP applications in a virtual environment is not covered in a unique way across applications, and the customer has to check the limitations of each SAP application independently.

Solution The target of SAP is to simplify and generalize its support statement for running its applications in virtualized environments. For this purpose, SAP publishes the following support statement, which describes the conditions for support of an SAP application in virtual environments.

1. General Support Statement For SAP applications, the operating system is the abstraction layer between the application and the hardware. Therefore, SAP applications are released for specified operating systems and their versions. With the release of an SAP application on a specific operating system version, the SAP application and all SAP branded third-party components embedded in the SAP application are by default released on: o

This specific operating system version running on native hardware or on a native virtualization technology provided by the hardware vendor that is listed by SAP

o

Virtualization technologies that are part of the operating system and that are listed by SAP

o

Virtualization solutions listed by SAP

SAP supports third-party components that are embedded in the relevant SAP application also in a virtualized environment. Products identified on the SAP Pricelist as third-party products may also support virtualized environments, however, for these products SAP cannot make any statement with regard to support for virtualized environments. Contact the third-party software provider for more information about these third-party products.

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SAP Note 1492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments For the list of virtualization solutions and technologies supported by SAP, see section 2 of this note. For the list of SAP applications for which the General Support Statement applies, see section 4 of this note. SAP only supports virtualization solutions that behave in a fully transparent manner to the application. If the virtualization solution does not behave fully transparently, the relevant technology partner must provide support for the virtualization solution to become transparent. If a support issue cannot be solved by the technology partner, the SAP application might need to be migrated to a non-virtual environment. SAP releases its applications on operating system and database versions for native environments. With the use of virtualization technology, the date of availability of an operating system or database release might differ from the availability in native environments. This might lead to a different availability for an SAP application in a virtualized environment compared to a native environment.

1.1. Support for Functional Issues SAP analyzes functional issues of its applications running in virtual environments in the same way as it does for functional issues in non-virtual environments. As already stated, if the virtualization solution does not behave fully transparently, the relevant technology partner must provide support for the virtualization solution to become transparent.

1.2 Support for Performance-Related Issues The prerequisite for performance support is the setup of a central monitoring instance in the SAP Solution Manager or in a suitable SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP system. For performance issues that are unrelated to the virtualization software, SAP will support its software in the same way as it does in non-virtual environments. For all other performance issues, the responsible technology partner is in charge of support.

2. Virtualization Solutions and Technologies Supported by SAP For a list of virtualization solutions and technologies supported on a specific operating system, check the following SAP notes: o

o

AIX 1002461 1102760 1105456 1464605

-

HP-UX 901732

- SAP on HP Integrity Virtual Machines (HPVM)

Support of IBM Dynamic LPAR and Micropartitioning POWER6 Live Partition Mobility SAP Installations in AIX 6.1 WPARs POWER7 Active Memory Expansion (AME)

o

IBM i 1002461 - Support of IBM Dynamic LPAR and Micropartitioning

o

IBM SYSTEM Z z/OS: Virtualization Support included in OS certification

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SAP Note 1492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments Linux for System z: see section "Linux on IBM System z" below o

LINUX (all architectures) 1122387 - Linux: Supported virtualization technologies

o

LINUX on IBM Power 1002461 - Support of IBM Dynamic LPAR and Micropartitioning 1102760 - POWER6 Live Partition Mobility

o

LINUX on IBM System z Virtualization Support is included in OS certification; see also 1452070 - SAP on Linux for IBM System z and z/VM

o

SOLARIS 870652 - Installation of SAP in a Solaris Zone 1178190 - SAP on Sun LDOMs 1246022 - Support for SAP applications in Solaris Zones

o

WINDOWS 1409608 - Virtualization on Windows

3. Restrictions o

Operating system vendors or database manufacturers might restrict their support to certified virtualization stacks consisting of operating system or database, hypervisor and hardware. Check their release and support information provided in the OS-specific SAP notes, listed in section 2.

o

For products that are identified on the SAP Pricelist as third-party products, SAP cannot make any statement with regard to support for virtualized environments. Contact the third-party software provider for more information about support of these third-party products.

4. SAP Applications for which the General Support Statement Applies For some SAP applications, specific requirements for their configuration and use in a virtual environment might be necessary. Check the related SAP notes of this note for your SAP application. The General Support Statement applies to the following SAP applications: o

SAP Applications that are based on SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP or Java: see OS-specific SAP Notes listed in section 2

o

SAP BusinessObjects solutions (actively supported releases): -

SAP BusinessObjects Analytic Applications (BAA)

-

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Solutions (BI)

-

SAP BusinessObjects Edge Solutions

-

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Information Management Solutions (EIM)

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SAP Note 1492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments -

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Performance Management Solutions (EPM)

o

SAP Convergent Charging (SAP CC)

o

SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe (IFbA)

o

SAP Point-of-Sale (SAP POS) components: see SAP note 1538051.

o

Sybase Products, see: http://www.sybase.com/detail?id=1032794#q6

5. Technology Partners that Agree to the General Support Statement The following technology partners agree to the General Support Statement for virtualization and confirm their commitment to provide support: o

Citrix

o

HP

o

IBM

o

Microsoft

o

Novell

o

RedHat

o

SUN/Oracle

o

VMware

Header Data Release Status: Released on: Master Language: Priority: Category: Primary Component:

Released for Customer 10.06.2011 07:09:57 English Recommendations/additional info Release planning information BC-OP-NT Windows NT

Secondary Components: BC-OP-LNX Linux BC-OP-AIX IBM AIX BC-OP-AS4 IBM AS/400 BC-OP-HPX HP-UX BC-OP-SUN SUN Solaris BC-OP-S390 IBM OS/390, z/OS BC-OP-ZLNX Linux on IBM zSeries Hardware BC-OP-PLNX Linux on IBM PowerPC Hardware

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SAP Note 1492000 General Support Statement for Virtual Environments

The Note is release-independent

Related Notes Number 1538051 1464605 1452070 1409608 1246022 1178190 1137862 1122387 1105456 1102760 1098847 1002461 959826 901732 870652 171356

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Short Text SAP POS & Alignment with SAP Virtualization Statement POWER7 Active Memory Expansion (AME) DB2-z/OS: SAP on Linux for IBM System z and z/VM Virtualization on Windows Support for SAP applications in Solaris Zones SAP on Oracle VM Server for SPARC domains Using SAP systems with AIX 6.1 Linux: SAP Support in virtualized environments SAP Installations in AIX WPARs PowerVM Live Partition Mobility Virtual Machine Support for BPC Support of IBM Dynamic LPAR and Micropartitioning Oracle Solaris x64 supported hardware SAP on HP Integrity Virtual Machines (HPVM) Installation of SAP in an Oracle Solaris Zone SAP software on Linux: Essential information

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