T h e D e f i n i t i v e G u i d e to

SAP on the
Enterprise Cloud

3
Table of Contents
What This Book Covers 7
Chapter 1/Introduction
Driving More Value from Your SAP Landscape 8
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Satisfies SAP Requirements 11
Chapter 2
An Introduction to Nutanix Enterprise Cloud 14
Nutanix Acropolis 16
Nutanix AHV 19
Nutanix Prism 19
Chapter 3
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Performance 22
Optimized I/O Performance 22
Superior Performance Density for SAP Workloads 23
Chapter 4
Availability, Data Protection, and Disaster Recovery 26
Protecting Your SAP Environment 27
Chapter 5
Accelerate Application Development and Test for Your SAP Landscape 30
Provisioning Development and Test Environments 30
Application Lifecycle Management and Cloud Orchestration 31
Embracing DevOps 33
Chapter 6
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Security 36
Security Development Lifecycle 36
Security Automation 37
Advanced Microsegmentation with Nutanix Flow 37
Extensive Network of Security Partners 38
One-click Upgrades 38
Chapter 7
Partnerships, Support, and Services 40
SAP and SAP Solution Partners 40
Support and Services 40
Chapter 8
Superior Infrastructure for SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA 42
Architecting SAP NetWeaver Environments 42
Architecting SAP HANA Database Environments 43
Chapter 9
Getting Started with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud and SAP 46
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Reduces TCO for SAP Landscapes 47
When It Is Time to Change 48

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 What This Book Covers
It has become imperative for IT and Basis teams to
operate SAP® landscapes more efficiently, minimizing
management overhead without sacrificing performance
or availability and enabling faster deployments,
upgrades and expansions. However, many SAP
landscapes today are siloed on complicated, aging
infrastructure that adds expense and complexity while
failing to deliver the capabilities and speed needed for
today’s digital businesses.

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS software leverages the

industry’s most popular and powerful hyperconverged
technology to deliver SAP-certified NetWeaver and
HANA-based landscapes with predictable and
consistent performance, one-click operational simplicity,
and easy deployment and scaling for faster time to
value. More than 120 enterprises worldwide rely on
Nutanix for the powerful and robust infrastructure that
their Classic and SAP HANA® landscapes demand.

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud adapts easily to changing

business needs while continuing to reduce risk, cut
costs, and provide high availability. Delivered as
software, software-based appliances, and cloud-based
services, Nutanix provides multi-cloud architecture
flexible and reliable enough to run both SAP and your
other enterprise applications and use cases.

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 C h apt e r 1 / I n t r o d u cti o n
Your company may be considering upgrades to the

Driving More Value from

infrastructure supporting SAP for a variety of reasons:

Your SAP Landscape • The need to upgrade to a newer version of SAP software.
• Addition of a new data warehouse or a new SAP module.
• Re-platforming current infrastructure due to obsolescence,
More than 388,000 companies around the world rely on SAP
or to take advantage of newer and more cost-effective
to support crucial business functions including ERP, CRM, SCM,
technology options such as hyperconverged infrastructure
HR, and many others. SAP has been the leading ERP software
(HCI) instead of SAN, or x86 instead of Unix.
provider for over three decades, and around 75 percent of
• Accommodate mergers and acquisitions.
transactions supporting global GDP are processed through
• Rollout of a new business unit or subsidiary.
an SAP system.
• Move to S/4HANA from SAP NetWeaver.
• Move to SAP HANA database from anyDB (Oracle, SQL
Given the critical importance of SAP software, performance
Server, DB2, Sybase, and more).
and availability are essential. Infrastructure supporting SAP is
crucial, not just for IT teams and Basis administrators, but for
Planned upgrades, whatever the reason, create the perfect
the many business units that depend on the software. Digital
opportunity to rethink your infrastructure approach.
transformation and the rise of the intelligent enterprise are
generating unprecedented demands on IT. In response,
organizations are seeking more efficient and scalable
infrastructure solutions that can satisfy growing needs while
reducing the time spent on routine management tasks across Understanding SAP
an entire SAP landscape, from production to QA to
development and test. This book tacitly assumes that you are already familiar with SAP, but
Fractional IT for those new to SAP or in need of a refresher, here’s a brief
Rapid Time to Market Consumption
introduction. Traditionally, SAP has run on databases from SAP,
Need to deploy and scale Elastically expand and Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and others. These deployments are often
production and non- contract to address
production environments changes in workload referred to as SAP Classic, traditional, or NetWeaver landscapes.
quickly demand
The terms anyDB and RDBMS are often used to describe the
Accurately measure SAP
resource usage databases in these environments.
SAP created the in-memory SAP HANA database and S/4HANA
application suite to address the many new sources and volume of
data in today’s new digitally transformed business climate. SAP has
mandated that all systems run on HANA databases by 2025. To
date, HANA landscapes have been delivered in traditional IT
One-click Simplicity Continuous Innovation architectures, including appliances, often on bare metal. Cloud
Managing SAP landscape Non-disruptive upgrades deployment options are available as well. Like classic NetWeaver-
sprawl can be a painful are desired
challenge
based landscapes, HANA landscapes require a production instance
Retiring and reallocating New versions of SAP plus two or more similar environments to address development,
infrastructure resources applications and HANA
require next-generation, testing, qualification, and other needs.
takes a lot of effort
cloud-ready infrastructure
Figure 1. Digital transformation is creating a variety of challenges for your SAP landscape.

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For many organizations, the arrival of SAP HANA and flexibility and operational simplicity to deliver different-sized
S/4HANA present both opportunities and challenges. SAP HANA landscapes cost-effectively while enabling you to easily
HANA presents an opportunity to modernize both software adjust resource allocations over time.
and infrastructure to better support digital transformation and
position your company for the future. However, you may find

Nutanix Enterprise
yourself supporting both NetWeaver and HANA environments
in parallel for an extended period of time. Reducing risk for
new HANA deployments is a top priority due to their business
importance. It is essential to deploy HANA on reliable,
Cloud Satisfies SAP
predictable, and highly performant infrastructure. Simplifying
the infrastructure that supports HANA is another top concern,
Requirements
as complexity creates risk as well as inefficiency and expense. Over the last few years, hyperconverged, web-scale
infrastructure has emerged as a better alternative to traditional
You may also be looking for a more cloud-like way to operate
enterprise infrastructure that is increasingly ill-suited to meet
HANA on-premises so that you can take advantage of the
the growing demands of SAP software. Hyperconverged
increased resource utilization, availability, and flexibility that
infrastructure combines compute and storage resources—
virtualization provides. It can quickly become inefficient to buy
including flash—with intelligent operating software to create
stand-alone appliances and run every deployment on bare
flexible building blocks that eliminate many of the pain points
metal. This is a capital cost challenge since these server and
of deploying and managing IT infrastructure.
storage configurations are performance- and memory-intensive
and an operational cost challenge as the number of HANA The first hyperconverged solution to be certified for SAP,
databases proliferates. Advanced virtualization provides the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud combines the benefits of
hyperconvergence and public cloud, making infrastructure
invisible and elevating IT and business teams to focus on the
Should You Virtualize Your SAP Landscape? SAP landscape. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud drives faster time-to-
market for important SAP initiatives, delivering benefits that
If you haven’t already virtualized your SAP environment, there are a variety
were once only possible with public cloud. Nutanix bridges the
of reasons to consider doing so.
efficiency, availability, and performance gaps between
• Improved availability: Updates and infrastructure refreshes should not enterprise datacenters and public cloud, delivering a single
have any impact on application availability. software fabric that unifies your SAP environment, eliminates
• Improved recoverability: Application recovery should be easily and server sprawl, simplifies infrastructure management, and
predictably tested, without disruption to production, and be repeatable significantly reduces infrastructure footprint.
and automated.
• Rapid, automated provisioning from templates: On-demand deployment Nutanix Enterprise Cloud leverages web-scale engineering and
of complete application environments in minutes ensure consistency and consumer-grade design to natively converge compute,
scalability across SAP environments. virtualization, and storage into a resilient, software-defined
• Simplified driver stack: Reduces complexity and risk for applications solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable
and eliminates the need to manage storage multi-pathing and performance, exceptional availability, cloud-like infrastructure
network teaming. consumption, robust security, and seamless application
— Adapted from Simplified Sizing for Virtualizing SAP Environments by Michael Webster. mobility to support your business-critical SAP environment.

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Fractional IT
Rapid Time to Market Consumption
“I can deploy my “I use and pay for just
application in five what I need, only when
minutes.” I need it.”
Rapid Time to Market Continuous Innovation
“I don’t spend time on “My infrastructure gets
low-level infrastructure better on a regular basis.”
management.”
Figure 2. Our customers describe how the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solves SAP infrastructure challenges.
SAP and Nutanix share an ongoing commitment to
simplification. SAP has been shrinking its data footprint while
accelerating throughput. Nutanix has been integrating and
simplifying the infrastructure and management stacks,
enabling you to achieve cloud-like agility on-premises. If
you’re facing SAP performance, availability, scalability,
time-to-value, or management challenges, Nutanix Enterprise
Cloud offers immediate benefits with:
Simplified architecture: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud converges
storage, virtualization, networking, and security, streamlining
infrastructure management and scaling while:
• Reducing infrastructure costs up to 60 percent.
• Delivering much faster time to value.
• Reducing power space and cooling requirements up to
90 percent.
Data locality for superior performance: A flash-accelerated
architecture with a unique approach to data locality delivers
superior database and application performance while
eliminating the need for continual performance tuning.
Exceptional availability: Nutanix exceeds the capabilities of
traditional infrastructure with a self-healing architecture that
restores full resiliency without operator intervention. One-
click non-disruptive upgrades eliminate planned downtime.
Integrated management and automation: Manage the entire
infrastructure stack through a single interface, Nutanix Prism,
with built-in automation for many common tasks. Nutanix
Calm facilitates application automation and orchestration.
Full virtualization: Server virtualization means that your SAP
environment immediately benefits from all the operational
advantages of virtualization, including significant reductions
in operating costs.
12
Secure by design: Nutanix software utilizes a security-first
design, resulting in a smaller attack surface and less chance
that sensitive customer data can be compromised. Security
specifications and testing are built into every step of product
development. Nutanix Flow adds integrated
microsegmentation for additional network security.
Multi-cloud integration: For IT teams that need to integrate
on-premises and cloud operations, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
OS software converges private, public, and distributed
clouds, bringing one-click simplicity to hybrid cloud
environments and enabling you to deploy and manage
applications in nearly any cloud.
Greater choice: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS runs on multiple
hardware platforms, including those from Dell EMC, Lenovo,
Cisco, and HPE—as well as Nutanix-branded NX appliances.
Nutanix supports all popular virtualization solutions, in
addition to our native hypervisor, AHV.
World-class support and services: Nutanix delivers award-
winning support and comprehensive professional services
worldwide.
Other applications can share the same infrastructure as your
SAP environment with no negative effects, enabling greater
consolidation for superior cost reduction.
Simplify Multi-Cloud Management with Nutanix Beam
You may be running SAP in multiple datacenters and cloud locations.
Nutanix Beam is a multi-cloud optimization and cloud compliance
service delivered as part of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS. Beam
provides deep visibility and rich analytics of cloud consumption
patterns, along with one-click cost optimization and advanced cloud
security across your cloud environments.
• Beam identifies underutilized and unused cloud services and
provides convenient single-click remediation suggestions.
• Visualize and control consumption of cloud resources across departments
and groups, and enforce policies based on allocated budgets.
• Different consumption models across multiple clouds make effective
decision-making challenging. Beam utilizes machine-intelligence to
evaluate alternatives and provides recommendations based on your
usage and growth patterns.
• Beam automates cloud health checks so you can easily monitor and
ensure security compliance.
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 C h apt e r 2
With a compact footprint and simplified remote management,

An Introduction to Nutanix
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud is also perfect for secondary
datacenters, disaster recovery (DR) sites, and edge locations,

Enterprise Cloud including production facilities, distribution centers, and remote

and branch offices. All infrastructure and applications across
your entire operation can be managed from a single interface—
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud builds on a foundation of
Nutanix Prism.
hyperconvergence to create a flexible platform uniquely
capable of solving your SAP challenges. The architecture
converges servers, storage, data protection, virtualization, and
Prism
networking with one-click operations, full application
automation, and multi-cloud management, creating a solution
One-click Infrastructure
that is ideally suited for deployment in primary datacenters. Calm Management

App Lifecycle Management

One-click Operational
APP APP Self Service and Governance
Insigths

Hybrid Cloud Management One-click Planning

Multi-cloud Management
Figure 4. Nutanix Prism provides all management functions for your Nutanix clusters.

Application Automation
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud eliminates the guesswork and
removes the constraints of conventional infrastructure, so you
can be up and running quickly and scale without disruption.
One-click Operations
Nutanix helps you eliminate silos of infrastructure, increase
utilization, and dramatically improve scaling and availability—all
while reducing costs. As management tasks are reduced or
Virtualization eliminated, your team spends more time enhancing SAP
applications and delivering new services, resulting in faster
time to value for the business.

Simple 1U and 2U appliances that scale out one node at a time

replace complex and expensive legacy components. Each node
Server Data Protection Storage
includes Intel-powered x86 hardware equipped with flash SSDs
to accelerate application and database performance. You can
create hybrid clusters with enterprise-grade HDDs for bulk
Networking storage, all-flash SSD clusters for performance-intensive
workloads, or mix hybrid and all-flash nodes to meet your
Figure 3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud incorporates all common infrastructure functions. specific SAP needs. Nutanix software runs on each node and
distributes all operating functions across a cluster for

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performance, making the system resilient and self-healing.
When you scale out the cluster, performance grows linearly
and resiliency increases. All nodes in the cluster share storage
capacity, and intelligent tiering and data locality ensure
optimum storage performance for every workload.
Server
Nutanix Acropolis
Converged
Network
compute,
storage and
Shared virtualization
Storage
(SAN/NAS)
Figure 5. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud dramatically simplifies IT infrastructure versus traditional approaches.
A single Nutanix cluster can have an unlimited number of
nodes, with different node configurations to address varying
needs for compute and storage. Nutanix software is hardware
agnostic, running on Nutanix-supplied hardware as well as
hardware from other leading providers.
Because you can add new nodes and transparently migrate
workloads and data off older nodes to retire them, a Nutanix
cluster can run forever. You can forget about the pain,
extended planning, overprovisioning, and risks of the forklift
upgrades that traditional systems require every few years.
16
Nutanix Acropolis is the software foundation that delivers
enterprise-class storage, compute, and virtualization services
for database instances and SAP applications. Make your
infrastructure decisions based on your specific performance,
economics, scalability, and resiliency requirements.
More Options, More Freedom
Most IT solutions have significant limitations that constrain your IT
team. By focusing on software, Nutanix transcends the limitations
of other solutions. Only Nutanix offers:
• Extensive hardware choice: Including Dell EMC, Lenovo, Cisco,
and HPE—in addition to Nutanix-branded NX appliances.
• Support for popular hypervisors: Including VMware vSphere,
Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix’s built-in hypervisor, AHV, for
NetWeaver landscapes. AHV is integrated into the Enterprise
Cloud OS and included with purchase at no added cost,
simplifying management and eliminating licensing expenses
while delivering unsurpassed functionality, including
certification for running SAP HANA.
• Support for public cloud: Including AWS, Azure, GCP, or
Nutanix Xi Cloud Services.
Acropolis makes it possible to run applications at any scale with:
• Integrated management of physical and virtual
infrastructure.
• End-to-end operations, planning, and analysis.
• Unfettered application mobility.
• Up to 80 percent lower virtualization costs.
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Nutanix block and file services, in particular, have proven
Production and non-Production Nutanix Controller VM
SAP App Servers and DBs (One per node) extremely useful in the SAP landscape. Volumes lets you
(Distributed in VMs on multiple nodes) continue to support some of your existing server hardware while
retiring expensive SAN storage hardware. Files provides a
secure, shared file system accessible to all SAP systems.

Node 1 Node 2 Node N Additional DSF data management services include replication
for high availability and DR, VM snapshots, clones, and more.
CVM

CVM

CVM
CRM

CRM
DEV
DEV

S4H
S4H
ERP

ERP

ERP
BW

BW

BW
DSF also includes native support for deduplication, compression,
Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor and erasure coding to maximize storage efficiency.
X86 X86 X86

Nutanix Cluster NX, HX, XC or HP or Cisco

Nutanix AHV
• Snapshots • Tiering • Deduplication While Nutanix fully supports hypervisors such as VMware ESXi,
• Locality • Compression • Resilience Microsoft Hyper-V, Acropolis also includes AHV, a hypervisor
• Clones • Erasure Coding
built for VM-centric infrastructure that is provided at no
additional cost. With enterprise features like VM mobility,
Figure 6. Nutanix uses a web-scale architecture to create a VM-centric Distributed Storage Fabric that
unifies storage across a cluster into a single pool available to SAP and other applications. resource scheduling, VM and host high availability, and
enhanced security, plus simplified VM management, AHV not
only provides high performance, it delivers the best overall user
It delivers enterprise data storage as an on-demand service using
experience at the lowest TCO.
a shared-nothing distributed software architecture. Acropolis
pools local flash, including NVMe, and HDD storage and exports it
AHV is certified to run SAP NetWeaver and SAP HANA-based
to the virtualization and application layer, eliminating the need for
landscapes. It also supports a variety of databases from the
separate SAN and NAS arrays. Acropolis also supports a variety
AnyDB ecosystem, including Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server,
of software-defined data services:
Db2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, and others.

Nutanix Volumes provides direct block-level access via the iSCSI

protocol to support applications running on servers outside the
Nutanix cluster.
Nutanix Prism
Nutanix Files is a native file storage solution for unstructured
data. It provides a highly available and massively scalable data
repository.
Nutanix Buckets provides an AWS S3-compatible API to enable
application development teams to consume storage as a high
performance, on-demand service. It supports applications that
use large unstructured datasets such as big data analytics and
data warehouse applications.
Acropolis Container Services (ACS) provides persistent storage
for containers and the ability to easily deploy and manage
containerized applications.
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Nutanix Enterprise Cloud incorporates management as an
integral part of the solution stack, greatly simplifying
infrastructure and virtualization management for your SAP
landscapes. The Nutanix Prism management interface delivers
consumer-grade simplicity for infrastructure management,
making it easy to keep infrastructure up and running.
Powered by advanced data analytics and heuristics, Prism
streamlines common IT workflows, providing a single interface
for managing your entire IT environment, including servers,
storage, data protection, security, virtualization, and more.
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Prism makes configuring, monitoring, and managing Nutanix
solutions remarkably simple. One-click management reduces
the administrative burden and the potential for operator error Nutanix: One-click Operations
while eliminating the need for planned downtime. Prism
one-click planning includes sophisticated scenario-based
Nutanix provides a universal control plane spanning private and public
modeling, based on X-Fit™ machine intelligence, so that you
cloud, eliminating management complexity. An intuitive interface and
can foresee the impact that changes to the IT environment will
comprehensive REST APIs cover the entire stack: VM operations,
have on application performance and availability.
virtualization, compute, storage, backup, applications, and disaster
recovery (DR) across a single site, multiple sites, and cloud.
One-click Management Machine intelligence and self-learning capabilities drive end-to-end
automation, making the platform smarter over time. Management is
One-click software upgrades: A consistent pain point for any
built on the principle of consumer-grade design, minimizing time to
application environment, including SAP, is keeping system
productivity. Automatic infrastructure optimization and remediation
software and firmware up to date. IT administrators often
takes the place of many routine tasks, reducing operator involvement
sacrifice evening and weekend hours to upgrade tasks, not to
and freeing IT resources to focus on more high-value tasks.
mention the expensive professional services required with
some platforms. Prism takes the pain and disruption out of
upgrades, allowing them to be executed during normal
business hours. Intelligent software does all the heavy lifting,
eliminating the need for weeks of upfront planning across
multiple teams.

See a Nutanix cluster upgrade while production SAP

landscapes are running without impact.

Nutanix operating software and hypervisor software on each

node update via a rolling methodology that eliminates
disruption to running jobs with zero downtime.

One-click remediation: In the event of alerts or failures, Prism

suggests remediation actions that you can initiate to correct
problems quickly. This functionality greatly reduces the mean
time to repair and restore services, significantly improving
availability.

Full REST APIs

Any task that can be performed via Prism can also be
performed using REST APIs or a library of PowerShell cmdlets.
As a result, you can easily incorporate Nutanix data
management capabilities as cloud services.
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 C h apt e r 3
buffer. This functionality ensures that critical SAP applications

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

and databases receive excellent random read/write
performance. For data warehouses and other analytics

Performance applications requiring streaming performance, intelligent

tiering ensures excellent sequential read/write performance
using both flash and disk drives for very large datasets.
Naturally, one of the biggest concerns for any SAP
environment is the performance of SAP applications in
Data locality: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform keeps much
production. In the past, it was generally assumed that bare
of the data used by an SAP database or application on the
metal servers would always deliver better performance than
node where the VM containing the workload is running, which
virtualized servers. However, today virtual machines meet the
minimizes latency, optimizes performance, and reduces
same key performance indicators of a similarly configured
network congestion. When a database or application VM is
physical server. In some cases, virtualized environments have
moved from one node to another using vMotion or Live
even been shown to deliver better performance than physical
Migration (or during an HA event), the migrated VM’s data
servers. SAP has supported virtualization since 2011 for specific
automatically follows the VM in the background.
virtualization products and is supported on Nutanix AHV.

Nutanix algorithms trigger data movement between nodes as

Optimized I/O Performance
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud is designed to deliver excellent SAP
performance without the constant tuning required with
traditional infrastructure. The Acropolis Operating System
(AOS) includes multiple features that enhance I/O
performance. AOS delivers excellent random read/write
performance for transactional workloads and excellent
sequential read/write performance (bandwidth) for streaming
workloads such as data warehouses. A Nutanix cluster delivers
optimum performance for every workload and adapts
Superior Performance
automatically to workload changes, so you don’t have to waste
valuable time tuning performance.
Density for SAP Workloads
Intelligent tiering: In hybrid clusters combining SSDs and
HDDs, intelligent tiering provides automatic performance
optimization. AOS continually monitors data access patterns
and optimizes data placement on the most appropriate tier,
achieving the best performance without administrator
intervention. It automatically tiers SAP data between local
flash, and remote flash, and, if you choose to leverage hybrid
nodes, local disk drives and remote disk drives. It deduplicates
frequently read data, which is cached into RAM and local flash,
and always writes data to a distributed flash-based storage
needed. A local node’s SSD tier is always the highest priority for
I/O generated on that node, but all of the cluster’s storage
resources are available to all nodes within the cluster. The SSD tier,
including NVMe, provides maximum performance for hot data and
random I/O, while the HDD tier (if present) provides maximum
capacity and economy for cold data and sequential I/O.
SAP defines performance in SAP environments carefully.
According to SAP, “Performance refers to the total
effectiveness of a computer system, including throughput,
individual response time, and availability. Programming for
good performance means making reasonable use of critical
resources, keeping response time at a minimum, taking into
consideration aspects of network communication, and
producing software that is scalable.”
For the purpose of sizing SAP infrastructure, SAP measures
performance in standardized units:

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SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) is a hardware-
independent unit of measurement that describes system
configuration performance in the SAP environment. It is
derived from the Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark, which
defines 100 SAPS as 2,000 fully business processed order line
items per hour.

Because datacenter space is frequently at a premium, it is

often useful to measure the performance density of a given
hardware configuration in terms of the number of SAPS
delivered per rack unit of space.

A comparison of the performance of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

versus a popular converged infrastructure solution
demonstrates that Nutanix delivers almost 3.5 times the
performance density as shown in the figure below.

8 x Blades = 901,760 SAPS 8 x Nodes = 837,000 SAPS

10 x Nodes = 1,046,700 SAPS
(expandable)
16 x E5-2699v4 20 x E5-2699v4
96 x 3.84TB SSD 96 x 3.84TB SSD

VDX 6740
VDX 6740
2U

Cisco UCS (Switches only

5108 B-Series Blad Chassis for HA)
2207 XP Chassis FEX Modules
B200 M4 B-Series Blades
6248 UP Fabric Interconnect
6248UP Fabric Interconnect
Cisco Nexus 9396 Switch NX-3460-G5
NX-3460-G5
30U

Cisco Nexus 9396 Switch

8U

NX-8150-G5
NetApp FAS8040 (2
controllers in single enclosure)
VS NX-8150-G5
Cisco Nexus 5596
Cluster interconnect
NetApp DS224 3.84 TB SSD
NetApp DS224 3.84 TB SSD
NetApp DS224 3.84 TB SSD
NetApp DS224 3.84 TB SSD

Up to
30,058 SAPS / RU
104,670 SAPS / RU

Converged
Solutions Enterprise Cloud Platform
Figure 7. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud dramatically simplifies IT infrastructure versus traditional approaches.

In other words, Nutanix can deliver the same performance for

your SAP landscape while consuming a third of the space.
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 C h apt e r 4

Protecting Your SAP Environment

Availability, Data Protection, Another compelling advantage that Nutanix offers for SAP

and Disaster Recovery landscapes is a broad spectrum of data protection and disaster
recovery (DR) options. Critical services like snapshots, cloning,
asynchronous and synchronous replication are built into the
For critical production SAP environments, availability is just as
architecture, so you can solve many of your data protection and
important as performance. No matter how your SAP landscape is
DR challenges without the need for additional solutions.
architected for availability and data protection, you want the
However, Nutanix also often supports data replication options
underlying infrastructure to be as resilient as possible so that your
that are native to the application and partners with leading data
team can stay focused on application-specific tasks rather than
protection vendors, ensuring that any solution you currently rely
infrastructure management, maintenance, and repair. Nutanix
on will continue to work in the Nutanix environment.
Enterprise Cloud is fault resistant, with no single points of failure
and no bottlenecks. Nutanix exceeds the resiliency of traditional
datacenter infrastructure with tunable redundancy and self-healing. Cross-hypervisor Data Protection and DR

Resilience is built into Nutanix AOS, which is designed to

Another significant advantage of Nutanix Enterprise Cloud for data
• detect, isolate, and recover from failures;
protection and DR is the ability to utilize cross-hypervisor operations,
• survive system hardware, software, and hypervisor issues;
replicating across hypervisor boundaries. For example, you can run
• maintain 100 percent data availability.
VMware in your production environment and Nutanix AHV in your
DR or backup environment. Since Nutanix Enterprise Cloud includes
Each Nutanix data container is configured with a replication
AHV at no additional charge, this approach can significantly reduce
factor (RF) of two or three. RF 2 ensures that there are two
virtualization licensing costs. Nutanix frees you to choose the best
copies of data at all times, allowing the cluster to survive the
hypervisor for each environment.
failure of a single node or drive. RF 3 ensures that AOS
maintains three copies of data in a cluster, providing resilience
to two simultaneous failures. This flexibility allows you to
dynamically configure data redundancy based on SAP SLAs.
Nutanix’s patented erasure coding algorithm, EC-X, reduces RF
RPO RTO DR Backup
storage overhead. Using EC-X can increase usable space in a

Minor Incidents
cluster by up to 70 percent. 1 Hour Minutes
Snapshots Snapshots
Nutanix combines tunable redundancy with self-healing to
Hours Hours
ensure continuous data availability for SAP applications. When
a disk or node fails, full data redundancy is quickly and
automatically restored without administrator intervention. In

Major Incidents
Remote
1 Hour Minutes
the case of host failure, VMs are restarted on other nodes. A Replication
3rd Party
large Nutanix cluster can withstand the failure of an entire Backup
four-node enclosure (referred to as a block) with no disruption Metro
Near-zero Minutes
Availability
in service beyond the time needed to restart affected VMs on
surviving nodes.
Figure 8. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud supports the entire spectrum of data protection and DR needs.

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Simple, crash-consistent Nutanix snapshots provide a first line
of data protection with no storage or performance penalty.

For DR, software-defined, multi-site asynchronous replication

functionality is built on application-granular snapshots.
Administrators can set replication policies at the individual
protection domain level, rather than at the LUN or volume level.
Additional options exist for how often the replication occurs
and for leveraging a metro cluster for synchronous replication.

Location 1 Remote Location 2

Site

Protection

Domain 1

Protection
OS OS
Domain 2
Pr

n
tio
Do

ote

4
ec
ma

ain
cti

ot

m
in

on

Pr
Do
n
2

tio

3
ec
ain
ot
m
Pr
Do

Remote Remote
Site Site

OS

Location 3

Figure 9. Built-in asynchronous DR simplifies protection of SAP environments running at multiple locations.

28 29
 C h apt e r 5
Not only can you create new database instances for testing,

Accelerate Application
you can also clone production data sets so that everyone on
the team can use up-to-date data without using terabytes of

Development and Test for storage capacity.

Your SAP Landscape System Landscape

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud also offers substantial benefits for your
Temporary
SAP development and test teams. These benefits include: Landscape
• Rapid provisioning of new SAP non-production environments DEV QAS
and data refresh.

Maintenance
• Complete application lifecycle management and cloud

Dual
1. Copy
orchestration. 2. Upgrade
• Full support for DevOps.

DEV QAS PRD

Production Transfer
Provisioning Development and Test Landscape
Changes

Environments
Transport Route New Release Old Release
Your SAP landscape depends on the ability to set up and tear
down development and test environments rapidly using
Figure 10. VM clones can be used to quickly provision development, test, and QA environments—
automated processes. Provisioning in a traditional infrastructure including production data copies—without consuming excessive storage space.

environment is a complicated and onerous process that

consumes too much time and too much storage to scale
efficiently.
Application Lifecycle Management
Production data copies used in development and test processes
must be as up-to-date as possible to ensure code quality.
and Cloud Orchestration
Relying on test data sets that are months out of date is a recipe Nutanix Calm adds native application orchestration and lifecycle
for disaster. management to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS. Calm
decouples application management from the underlying
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud enables users to create new test infrastructure—enabling SAP applications to be easily deployed
environments—including space-efficient production data into both private and public cloud environments. Calm turns
copies—in minutes by cloning instances on demand. This common tasks into repeatable automations accessible to all IT
functionality dramatically reduces the amount of time wasted teams. A common framework for modeling both applications
during development, test, QA, and more. and infrastructure accelerates the overall time to production for
critical applications and services.
Nutanix clones are also extremely space efficient. A clone
accesses the same data blocks from storage as its parent. For example, suppose you need to spin up additional application
Additional storage is consumed only as changes are made. servers to meet end-of-month demands. Nutanix Calm makes it

30 31
 5
fast and easy to scale application servers by leveraging a owners, and developers the ability to request IT services
standard template and workflow-based approach. Calm makes and have them provisioned instantly.
the process repeatable, even at scale, and removes errors that • Role-based governance: User operations are limited based
can delay projects, lead to missed opportunities, cause on assigned permissions. All activities and changes are
operational issues, and require resources to fix. centrally logged for end-to-end traceability and debugging.
• Hybrid cloud management: Calm automates hybrid cloud
SAP_DB SAP_AS LoadBalancer architecture provisioning. Both multi-tiered and distributed
applications can be scaled across different cloud
environments. Policy-based reporting shows the overall
utilization and true cost of your public cloud consumption
at a glance.
Scale AS Scale AS Scale AS

CheckASAvailability ProvisionScale UpdateConfig

+ Task + Action Network Config + Task + Action Learn more about Nutanix Calm at www.nutanix.com/calm.

SAP Client Config

Set SAP Profile

Set Env Variable

Embracing DevOps
Bringup SAP
Figure 11. Calm blueprints
automate mundane tasks, such + Task + Action
as spinning up app servers.
Nutanix Calm also grants developers self-service access to the
resources they need at any time. They simply consume custom
blueprints from the Nutanix marketplace. For example, if you
create a blueprint for an SAP test environment and make it
available in the marketplace, any time a developer needs a test
environment, they can then request it and it is automatically
provisioned.
Unique capabilities of Calm include:
• Lifecycle management: Calm simplifies the setup and
management of custom SAP applications by incorporating
all elements of each app, including relevant VMs,
configurations, and related binaries, into an easy-to-use-
blueprint, making the deployment and lifecycle
management of common applications automated and
repeatable.
• Self-service provisioning: Blueprints can be published
directly for end user consumption through the Nutanix
Marketplace, giving Basis administrators, application
32
Digital transformation, Internet of Things (IoT), and the
proliferation of mobile services may be putting pressure on
your teams to deliver new applications and services more
quickly. To achieve this, many teams are transitioning to a
DevOps model—a combination of changes to IT culture and
technology that aims to close the gap between development
and operations, removing the friction between the two to
accelerate the delivery of new capabilities and services.
DevOps bridges organizational gaps, removes strict division of
responsibility, and enables collaboration and automation,
resulting in benefits such as:
• Rapid release: Automated testing and release of product
all the way from source code check-in to customer release
and use.
• Fail fast and fix fast: Automated deployment (and revert)
strategies reduce risk while increasing tempo.
• Closed-loop design and testing: Every change is an
opportunity to learn and experiment; every gap or mistake
is an opportunity to improve testing, instrumentation, and
automation. Automated operations allow monitoring
systems to trigger healing.
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Democratized access and self-service: Development and
test environments can be created ad hoc by developers,
testers, and operations.

You may be asking yourself whether the ideas of DevOps really

apply to ERP software and SAP. If so, the answer is yes. A
practical guide to DevOps for SAP explains why and describes
the differences and similarities of SAP DevOps versus DevOps
in other software environments.

In both cases, infrastructure agility is essential to the DevOps

process. The right infrastructure stack can make it much easier
to achieve your goals. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud simplifies your
DevOps journey, ensuring your infrastructure has the required
agility and flexibility at all layers. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud
gives your infrastructure the agility of the public cloud while
reducing costs and maintaining control of important processes
and data.

Nutanix Calm simplifies all aspects of DevOps, providing the

means to consistently deploy both non-production and
production application environments. Calm is designed to
integrate with tools you already use, working with existing
solutions to leverage them for the tasks they’re best suited to.

It’s a Multi-cloud World

A recent IDC study found that the majority of IT organizations over the next
five years expect to leverage multiple private and public cloud options to
meet the needs of their workloads and business as they seek to optimize
performance, cost, and security while looking to be more agile, innovative,
and efficient. The study estimated that 70-85 percent of workloads in the
typical enterprise will run on-premises or on hosted infrastructure, and this
will include critical applications and databases from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft,
and others, while dev/test, and dynamic, horizontally scaling applications will
often be deployed in the public cloud.

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 C h apt e r 6
• Integration: Security is incorporated into every step of

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud

product development and covers the entire
hyperconverged infrastructure stack, including storage,

Security •
virtualization, and management.
Automated testing: SecDL testing is fully automated and all
security-related code modifications occur during minor
Complex, legacy infrastructure solutions were not designed with
releases to minimize risk.
security as a primary consideration and are vulnerable to the
• Threat modeling: Potential risk associated with all code
ever-increasing risk of cyberthreats. The Nutanix architecture takes
changes is assessed and mitigated.
a security-first approach; a variety of built-in features deliver
defense-in-depth and greatly simplify the process of ensuring that
System-level security features include two-factor authentication,
your SAP landscape remains secure.
cluster lockdown, and software or hardware-based data-at-rest
encryption with robust key management.
Repeat Assess Measure

Security Automation
Nutanix developed its own Security Technical Implementation
Guide (STIG) to speed up accreditation process for the
Update Test Report
Department of Defense, enabling secure installation and
Full-Stack Security Automated Validation
maintenance of Nutanix systems and reducing accreditation
Development Lifecycle and Self-healing
time from months to minutes.
Security Certifications Ecosystem • Fast baseline checks and validation: Nutanix STIGs are
written in XCCDF format and support the SCAP standard
for compatibility with automated assessment tools.
Update Anti- Anti-Virus • Automatic configuration management: Security
Malware
configuration management automation (SCMA) efficiently
checks over 800 security entities in the Nutanix STIGs,
Encryption Key Micro-
Manage- Segmen-
including storage and built-in virtualization.
ment tation

Advanced Microsegmentation with

Figure 12. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud utilizes a security-first approach that simplifies the process of
establishing and maintaining infrastructure security.

Nutanix Flow
Security Development Lifecycle With increasingly strict regulatory requirements in many
Nutanix uses a unique Security Development Lifecycle (SecDL) industries, microsegmentation is quickly becoming a
that incorporates security into every aspect of its software requirement. Nutanix Flow simplifies network and policy
development process, from design and development to testing management, enabling SAP applications and environments to
and hardening. To ensure compliance, the Nutanix solution is be governed independently from the physical infrastructure.
certified under a broad set of evaluation programs for
government, financial services, and healthcare. The result is a
greatly reduced attack surface and safer data.

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Flow provides:
• Microsegmentation that protects against threats capable of
propagating from machine to machine by segmenting
virtual networks and applications to permit only necessary
communications between application tiers.
• Visualization that takes the mystery out of network policy
creation. Before policy can be created and enforced, the
behavior of an SAP application must be understood. Flow
gives policy owners deep and clear insight into application
behavior by visualizing discreet communications between
the VMs that make up the environment. Creating policies
for allowed traffic becomes a simple, repeatable process.
• Extensions and automation that enable easy extension of
network functionality via third-party software integration.
Nutanix partners are able to enhance the Enterprise Cloud
to integrate advanced networking features.

Extensive Network of Security Partners

The highly extensible Nutanix architecture exposes APIs that
allow integration with a broad ecosystem of security partners.
Verified joint solutions provide flexibility at every layer, including
network, data, and end-point security, and deliver a committed
support experience. With Nutanix, you can deploy SIEM, firewalls,
and other security applications on the same shared infrastructure.

One-click Upgrades
Many cyberattacks seek out known vulnerabilities on
infrastructure that has not yet been patched. Nutanix provides
one-click, non-disruptive upgrades that take the pain out of
patching infrastructure software, making it far easier to keep your
infrastructure up to date with no downtime.

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 C h apt e r 7
Partnerships, Support, and
Services
Your success depends on more than just great technology. Nutanix
has the experience and expertise to make your vision a reality. We
offer an extensive portfolio of services and the deep industry
partnerships that are critical to enterprises of all sizes. Our
expansive partner ecosystem includes relationships with the most
important industry leaders, as well as over a hundred partners
delivering validated solutions on Nutanix.
Nutanix Support and Nutanix Consulting Services
Win Awards for Customer Satisfaction
The Customer Relationship Management Institute first created the
NorthFace ScoreBoard Award program in 2000 to recognize
organizations that not only offer exemplary service to their customers,
but that also establish as their primary objective a deep commitment to
continuously exceeding customers’ expectations.
For the fifth year in a row, Nutanix has received the NorthFace
ScoreBoard Award for excellence in support service delivery. And now,
Nutanix Consulting Services is being recognized with a NorthFace
ScoreBoard Award for excellence in customer satisfaction.
Nutanix Consulting Services offers a full range of services tailored
to meet your needs with regard to SAP. At the core of the

SAP and SAP Solution Partners Nutanix consulting services operation model are three key tenets:
• Building and leveraging battle-tested best practices and IP.
Nutanix is an SAP Global Technology Partner and a Global • Hiring and enabling top-notch consultants.
member of the SAP Co-Innovation Lab (SAP COIL). This gives • Focusing on customer outcomes
us ready access to a complete proof-of-concept environment to
test solutions and better address unique customer requirements.
We also work with SAP COIL on joint marketing activities. In
addition, we’ve partnered with the important consultancies and
global systems integrators (GSIs) that leading enterprises rely
ASSESS Design Deploy OPTIMIZE
on for SAP assistance.
Pre-Sales Scoping Design Solution Operations
Discovery/Plan Deployment

Support and Services • Business • Migration Architect • Application • Resident

outcome and Design deployment Consultant
At Nutanix, commitment to our customers is one of the • Discovery Workshop • Application • Health
Workbook • Re-platform, migrations assessment
foundational pillars of our business. We have built a reputation • Questionnaire Architect and • Comprehensive • Performance
for customer trust and customer satisfaction, based on a Design Workshop Validation Tuning
sustained effort that goes back to the founding of the company. Figure 13. Nutanix offers consulting services covering all aspects of SAP planning, deployment, and operation.

For four years running we’ve earned a 90+ Net Promoter Score
(NPS) (a key measure of customer satisfaction), surpassing by
far the mid-30s industry average.
Nutanix and SAP have a collaborative technical support
agreement in place, enabling a seamless support experience
from setup to optimization to troubleshooting without the
finger pointing that can occur when vendors don’t coordinate
support efforts.
40
Our consulting team has created unique service offerings to fit
your experience and fill gaps in your organization’s skill set.
Specialized offerings include:
• Workshops that provide hands-on experience and access to
Nutanix infrastructure design expertise.
• Residency Services that put a Nutanix expert on site to
address operational challenges.
You can find out more about all Nutanix service offerings by
visiting Nutanix Consulting Services.
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 C h apt e r 8
Superior Infrastructure for
SAP NetWeaver and HANA
No matter whether your SAP landscapes are architected with
NetWeaver or HANA, the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud can
accommodate them. Nutanix, an SAP Global Technology Partner, is
certified not only for NetWeaver-based applications and
application servers for SAP Business Suite, Business Warehouse,
Solution Manager, and S/4HANA Application servers, but also SAP
HANA databases.
Compared with traditional 3-tier implementations, deploying
NetWeaver, HANA, and related applications on Nutanix
dramatically reduces complexity and risk, while increasing
flexibility, shortening time to market, and lowering total cost of
ownership. Non-production landscapes can account for as much
as half of a total SAP deployment, if not more, and thus present a
great opportunity for creating new efficiencies with virtualization.
Development, QA, sandbox, training, and other landscapes can be
rolled out, expanded, and refreshed quickly and easily, optimizing
physical server and storage resource consumption. For production
systems, the Nutanix management plane provides insights into the
entire infrastructure stack, removing manual, time-consuming
tasks, as well as interactions with separate IT teams, and thereby
enables Basis admins to quickly diagnose and respond to
application issues.
You also have the option to run your SAP environments on the
same infrastructure as your non-SAP workloads, or to architect
them separately as your requirements dictate.
Architecting SAP NetWeaver
Environments
Deploying and operating SAP Business Suite applications is an
important task. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud provides the
reliability, predictability, and performance that the SAP Business
Suite demands, all with an efficient and elegant management
42
interface. For detailed guidance on deploying these
environments, refer to the Nutanix solution note: SAP on
Nutanix (SN-2039) and the Nutanix best practices guide:
Running SAP on Nutanix (BP-2025).
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud can run the databases already certified
for the NetWeaver stack, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server,
Sybase ASE, Sybase IQ, and IBM Db2. For more information on
deploying databases on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud refer to:
• Virtualizing Oracle Databases: Nutanix Best Practices
(BP-2000)
• The Definitive Guide to SQL Server Deployment on Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud
• Nutanix Best Practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2016
• Nutanix Best Practices for IBM Db2
Architecting HANA Database
Environments
When it comes to SAP HANA landscapes, you can deploy both
S/4HANA applications and SAP HANA databases on the
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. Nutanix AHV is the first
hypervisor certified by SAP to run both non-production and
production SAP HANA environments on HCI, which is crucial
now that all roads lead to HANA. Using AHV radically simplifies
infrastructure management by effectively making the hypervisor
invisible, which frees you to reallocate resources towards
extracting value from the applications and improving business
processes and insights.
SAP HANA is revolutionizing the speed of data processing for
reporting, analytics and computational tasks. Nutanix has
proven the performance and scalability required for successful
SAP HANA enterprise deployments, along with simple Day-2
operations of SAP environments. This includes the ability to
deliver superior throughput rates with minimal latency, as well as
ensure high availability during periods of heavy database usage.
Nutanix software for SAP HANA runs on Nutanix AHV on
certified Intel SkyLake SP-based server platforms from Lenovo
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Business Suite

SAP NetWeaver Applications

and Dell. Initially these qualified hardware systems are scale-up, ERP CRM BW
Production
with two- or four-processors, and support HANA VM sizes up to Hypervisor

2.3 TB and 168 virtual CPUs. You can run application VMs on Nutanix Cluster on NX,
those processors that aren’t committed to the HANA databases. Business Suite Lenovo HX, Dell EMC

and anyDB
Non-Production ERP BW DEV DEV XC or HPE or Cisco
When you need more storage or compute, Nutanix HCI lets you Hypervisor
Other
scale on-demand, as little as one server node at a time, without
Application Flash NVMe
downtime or disruption. This combination of hardware and
Servers
software abstraction simplifies the SAP customer journey to an ERP CRM BW S4H S4H

enterprise cloud that reproduces the elasticity, simplified Hypervisor

S/4HANA
management, consolidated infrastructure visibility, and speed of App. Servers
the public cloud. At the same time, customers have full control
over data residency, security, world-class enterprise support,
and on-premises troubleshooting. HANA HANA HANA

AHV

Hana
While SAP HANA in production is one of the most business- Nutanix Cluster on
Production
critical applications that enterprises run, there are also SAP HCI Certified

SAP HANA
tremendous benefits of running non-production SAP HANA on HANA S4H Hardware List
Nutanix AHV. You can take advantage of the flexibility of a AHV

virtualized, common infrastructure resource pool and simplified

Flash NVMe

deployment, updates, and retirement of SAP HANA instances in

Hana
the one-click Nutanix environment. Learn more about Running Non-Production
HANA S4H

SAP HANA on Nutanix in the Best Practices Guide. AHV

If you have large HANA databases, you can run these instances
on a separate appliance while gaining the advantages of
Figure 14. Full SAP Coverage – HANA and Classic
virtualization for the rest of your SAP environment. For more
information on this approach, see the solution note, SAP HANA
the Nutanix Way (SN-2059).

Businesses that use SAP solutions will be able to leverage the

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS platform in production and
non-production environments to rapidly provision, simplify Virtualized HANA
Database
management, and easily scale their IT infrastructure for faster
time to value for SAP HANA and other SAP applications. Non-HANA DB VMs

To learn more about the journey to SAP HANA on Nutanix, read

this blog on non-production support and this blog on
production certification.

Figure 15. Production deployment option examples

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 C h apt e r 9
compression, deduplication, and much more. Move applications

Getting Started with Nutanix

seamlessly between nodes—and between hypervisors. Leverage
built-in virtualization with Nutanix AHV for SAP Classic and SAP

Enterprise Cloud and SAP HANA landscapes, as well as other hypervisors, including
VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V for NetWeaver
landscapes if needed.
Infrastructure modernization has become essential to the
success of IT organizations in the digital age. While this eBook
Nutanix Prism delivers a superior management experience with
only scratches the surface, it should be clear that Nutanix
consumer-grade design. Prism lets you manage your
Enterprise Cloud offers substantial benefits for your
infrastructure and virtualization across multiple locations, access
organization, including:
operational insights, leverage machine-intelligence, plan
• Faster time to market and easy scaling for non-production
capacity changes, and conduct maintenance and upgrade
and production environments without disruptive and costly
operations, all with a single click.
upgrades every few years.
• Predictable and consistent performance without the
Nutanix Calm adds full application orchestration to your
ongoing performance tuning needed on traditional servers
infrastructure stack to streamline the entire software lifecycle,
and storage.
including application development, production deployment,
• Reduced risk through superior integration of essential
and more.
infrastructure capabilities, application lifecycle
management, and an extensive ecosystem of partners.
• Flexible data protection and disaster recovery options. Take Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Reduces
advantage of Nutanix’s fast, space-efficient, and VM-aware
snapshot and replication capabilities standalone, or in
TCO for SAP Landscapes
conjunction with the tools you already use. For all the advantages that Nutanix Enterprise Cloud offers for
• Integrated management and advanced automation that SAP landscapes, total cost of ownership still matters to cost-
eliminates infrastructure management tasks. conscious businesses and IT teams with tight budgets. Nutanix
• Built-in security that ensures your infrastructure is secure Enterprise Cloud reduces TCO and delivers a rapid return on
and saves your team time. investment compared to traditional IT solutions. As reported by
IDC, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud:
Nutanix Enterprise Cloud replaces the complexity of separate
servers, storage, and storage networks with web-scale building • Lowers TCO by 60 percent
blocks that eliminate silos of infrastructure, increase resource • Delivers ROI of 534% within five years
utilization, and scale into the future without wholesale • Reduces management time by 60 percent
replacement while delivering the performance and availability • Decreases unplanned downtime events by 97 percent
business-critical SAP applications need.

Nutanix Acropolis brings together all the storage, compute, To find out more about Nutanix costs visit
networking, and virtualization services needed to support your www.nutanix.com/tco.
SAP environment. Acropolis delivers predictable, scalable
performance, a full suite of data protection services, including
asynchronous, near-synchronous, and synchronous replication,

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When It Is Time to Change
While every environment is different, here are some basic yet
fundamental things to consider when moving your SAP
environment to an enterprise cloud.
Understanding Your Current Environment:
The process starts with a full understanding of your current
environment including:
• Application-specific metrics: Gather the steady-state
statistics and trends for each application to be moved, as
well as working set size, execution times for any batch
processes, and average and peak transactions per second.
• Infrastructure-specific metrics: Gather appropriate
specifications, utilization, and capacity for server CPUs and
memory, networks, and storage. Also gather performance
metrics such as latency and throughput.
• Mapping everything to service owners: Accountability is a
key success factor.
Sizing the New Environment:
Once you’ve gathered the information above, you can work with
your partner and Nutanix to accurately size your new
environment. Although every environment is different, here are a
few things to think about when getting started:
• The working set requiring low latency access should fit into
the flash tier when deploying hybrid clusters.
• Always factor in HA for both compute and storage.
• Additional infrastructure and clusters may be required
based on the following considerations:
-- Business: SLAs, licensing, security, budget, politics
-- Technical: Locality, cache amplification, traffic
patterns, affinity
Planning the Migration:
Follow Nutanix SAP best practices and guidelines and be sure to
use Nutanix, partner, and SAP-native tools when possible.
You can also use Nutanix Xtract to simplify the migration of your
VMs to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud. Xtract for VMs automates
“lift and shift” migrations, especially the tedious steps required
to manually migrate or rebuild VMs on the new environment.
48
Validating the New Environment Post Migration:
Compare current metrics to sizing metrics.
Naturally, Nutanix Services can help you with any or all of these
steps to put you on a path to greater infrastructure success.
SAP Case Study
Valpak Accelerates Both Traditional and Online
Business
After Valpak acquired Savings.com, it needed simpler, more cost-
effective infrastructure to support workloads including SAP, Oracle,
and SQL Server. The company needed to keep IT staff lean and
become more agile without sacrificing resiliency—all while increasing
performance. By adopting Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, Valpak:
• Accelerated deployments by 10x.
• Achieved 8x improvement in performance.
• Cut management time from 180 hours per month to just 2 hours.
• Experienced a 10x reduction in CapEx through a
pay-as-you-grow approach.
SAP Case Study
ASM Accelerates Batch Reporting by 5X
ASM International, headquartered in the Netherlands, is a leading
supplier of wafer processing equipment for semiconductor
manufacturing. ASM needed to replace aging infrastructure to
eliminate slow batch processing performance and get its operations
team out of constant troubleshooting mode for hardware supporting
SAP ERP, CRM, SCM, PI, BW, BOBJ, PLM, SRM, PORTAL, and more.
With Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, ASM:
• Improved batch processing performance by 5X to sustain
growing market demands.
• Reduced hours spent on operations by nearly 3X.
• Achieved overall system improvement between 50 and 500
percent.
• Consolidated SAP and DB VMs to reduce licensing costs.
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SAP Case Study

Multinational Food Company Modernizes SAP
Landscape
A well-known food company was looking for a way to speed the delivery of
new business projects. New deployments on its existing infrastructure that
included Electronic Data Interchange (B2BI), order to cash (SAP NetWeaver
and B2BI), SAP project staging (CRM, BW apps), and other applications was
too time consuming to satisfy increasingly aggressive business goals. The
company also faced space constraints in its datacenters, needed to control
ongoing storage costs, and wanted a solution to jump start its cloud strategy.

The IT team converted its “big iron” Unix environment using virtualized Linux
servers running on Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, achieving immediate results:
• 40 percent lower TCO.
• Huge reduction in overall footprint.
• Elimination of SAN.
• Increased agility for new deployments.
• Streamlined upgrades.
• A clear cloud roadmap.

Conclusion
SAP systems encompass nearly every aspect of the enterprise, so
it is vital to run your landscapes on reliable, secure, and high
performing infrastructure. Nutanix has proven itself by passing
SAP’s rigorous certification process for SAP HANA and
NetWeaver landscapes. Nutanix and SAP also have a collaborative
technical support agreement that gives our joint customers a
seamless support experience, from setup to operations to
optimizing the application stack. To learn more about the many
benefits of running SAP on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, get in
touch with our SAP experts at sap@nutanix.com. Be sure also to
check out nutanix.com/sap, where you can find more information
about our SAP solutions and read testimonials from our
customers who partnered with us on their Enterprise Cloud
journey for SAP.

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