SAP workloads place demanding requirements on the infrastructure underneath them. Performance needs to be predictable, and compute, memory, storage, and networking need to be carefully configured.

For organizations evaluating alternatives to VMware, this raises an important question: can an open source enterprise cloud platform provide the level of infrastructure control and predictability required for SAP?

OpenNebula provides the flexibility to fine-tune the underlying virtualization environment for SAP workloads while keeping the resulting configuration manageable and replicable. Our new SAP-enabled Enterprise Cloud Cluster blueprint offers a practical starting point for configuring this environment and capturing the resulting setup in a reusable VM template. This work leverages the powerful Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) features in OpenNebula.

Why SAP Workloads Need a Different Approach

SAP applications are highly performance-sensitive, so the underlying virtual infrastructure needs to be configured appropriately. This goes beyond basic VM sizing and can involve decisions around CPU, memory, storage, networking, and how virtual resources are mapped to the physical hardware.

That can make the initial configuration more complex. The important point is that this configuration does not need to be recreated for every deployment.

With OpenNebula, host-level optimizations can be managed through cluster configuration, while workload-specific settings can be captured in reusable VM templates. Once a configuration has been validated, it can be consistently reused across deployments.

Building a Predictable SAP Environment

The blueprint brings together the infrastructure considerations needed to create a suitable virtualized environment for SAP workloads.

At the compute and memory layers, OpenNebula provides controls for CPU topology, CPU pinning, NUMA locality, reserved host CPUs, hugepages, and memory allocation policies. These capabilities give administrators greater flexibility over how resources are allocated for the workload.

Storage and networking can be adapted to the underlying infrastructure, with support for options including Virtio, Virtio-SCSI, LVM and raw block devices, as well as high-performance networking such as SR-IOV.

The blueprint brings these capabilities together into a configuration approach that can be adapted to the specific hardware and storage environment. The detailed settings and recommended values are covered in the technical guide.

From a Complex Configuration to a Reusable Template

Once the infrastructure and VM configuration have been validated, the relevant settings can be captured as an OpenNebula VM template. New SAP VMs can then be instantiated from the same template, providing a consistent starting point for subsequent deployments.

The blueprint provides recommended starting points for memory, CPU, storage, networking, CPU model, I/O configuration, and NUMA topology. These can then be tailored to the specific SAP workload, hardware, operating system, and storage environment.

Explore the SAP-Enabled Enterprise Cloud Cluster Blueprint

The SAP-enabled Enterprise Cloud Cluster blueprint provides a practical guide to configuring OpenNebula for SAP workloads, from host and VM configuration to storage, networking, CPU, and NUMA settings.

The blueprint focuses on preparing the OpenNebula infrastructure and a reusable VM template. Once the VM is deployed, the Operating System and SAP installation and configuration follow the requirements and guidance of the selected vendors.

If you’re evaluating OpenNebula for SAP workloads or considering alternatives to VMware, the guide provides a practical starting point for understanding and implementing this approach. And, if you need help with any of this, let us know.