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Oscar_Wahlberg
Level 3
Written by: Oscar Wahlberg and David Noy,  Symantec Storage and Server Management Group

Introduction

SAP NetWeaver suite is a suite of business products that is designed to support complete business management tasks of a corporation, company or institution. SAP NetWeaver is used in business systems to handle invoice payment, production resource management and financial account control. These specific tasks are accomplished by employing application modules, often described with acronyms such as MM (materials management) and SD (sales and distribution).

Many organizations rely on SAP applications to support vital business processes. Any disruption of these services translates directly into bottom-line losses. As an organization’s information systems become increasingly integrated and interdependent, the potential impact of failures and outages grows to enormous proportions.

The challenge for IT organizations is maintaining continuous SAP application availability in a complex, interconnected and heterogeneous application environment. The difficulties are significant:
  • There are many potential points of failure or disruption
  • Interdependencies between components complicate administration
  • The infrastructure itself undergoes constant change
To gain additional competitive advantage, enterprises must now work more closely together and integrate their current IT solutions with those of other organizations, such as partners, customers, or suppliers for SAP. The availability of these solutions is therefore essential. The number of areas that are critical to enterprises is increasing. SAP provides open, scalable, and available solutions to meet these requirements effectively.

This paper describes how Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System can be used to implement high availability of SAP deployments on UNIX. This paper focuses on both the business benefits of building SAP on top of Veritas Cluster File System as well as high level coverage on how to configure SAP services and the underlying database with Veritas Cluster File System.

For a more in-depth view on how to ensure availability of a complete SAP environment, it is recommended that the reader reference:
Symantec High Availability and Disaster Recovery Solution for SAP by Symantec Corporation
Veritas Cluster Server for SAP Solutions by Symantec Corporation
Veritas High Availability Agent for SAP NetWeaver Installation and Configuration Guide by Symantec Corporation
Technical Infrastructure Guide – SAP NetWeaver by SAP
Architecting a high availability SAP NetWeaver Infrastructure by SAP

Business requirements for high availability with SAP NetWeaver

Business Problem

There are many concerns that customers face when trying to deploy SAP NetWeaver in a highly available configuration that can directly be addressed by the Veritas Cluster File System. These include:

High Service Level Requirements SAP applications are business critical. SAP NetWeaver deployments require that a clustering solution be in place that can detect application failovers and react accordingly to restore operation. SAP NetWeaver application availability can also be impacted by underlying array or path failures.

When application failures do occur, they need to be detected and handled promptly to ensure high service levels and minimum disruption. If a failure occurs and redundancy of software and hardware is lost, it is important that redundancy be restored once the failed hardware has been replaced or the failed application has been restarted. Furthermore, customers increasingly seek a cluster solution which proactively detects storage array and path failures and adjusts accordingly to prevent service disruptions.

Reduce deployment costs Customers seek to reduce the costs typically incurred as part of solutions around maintaining the high service levels discussed above. Customers typically deploy active/passive clusters which are expensive because 50% of the compute power is then sitting idle as a result. Furthermore, with most clustering tools, customers are locked into specific vendors which limit their ability to leverage existing hardware.

Solutions have to account for the database also SAP NetWeaver applications are built around enterprise grade databases. Customers seek a storage solution which provides maximum performance, high availability, integrated backup and specific database interoperability.

NFS is an insufficient solution NFS is typically deployed in conjunction with SAP to reduce the total cost of the solution but this has several important drawbacks. Firstly, NFS performance cannot compare with the performance of fiber connected storage. Veritas Cluster File system will show better performance than NFS both for throughput and with regards to failover times. Secondly, NFS has poor reliability relative to Veritas Cluster File System. This is due to the fact that NFS is only as reliable as the network it runs on and because NFS has no knowledge of underlying storage path health.

To read the complete article, please download the PDF.
Contents
Introduction
Business requirements for high availability with SAP NetWeaver
  Business Problem
  Elements of the solution
  Benefits of using Veritas Cluster File System for high availability of SAP NetWeaver
SAP NetWeaver architecture
  SAP system architecture
  Typical hardware configurations for SAP NetWeaver
How to implement a SAP NetWeaver in high availability solution with Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System
  Hardware considerations
  Software considerations
  Setting up the cluster
Cluster Volume Manager and Cluster File System Infrastructure resources
Summary
Where to get more information
Appendix
Veritas Cluster Server configuration file: main.cf


Version history
Last update:
‎05-25-2009 10:56 AM
Updated by: