RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION: SCALING SAP

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The goal To demonstrate that SAP workloads can be effectively virtualized using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, allowing organizations to take advantage of the benefits of virtualization without compromising on performance and scalability. Why should I care? SAP is the world's leading provider of business software, with over 85,000 customers depending on SAP solutions to manage their business operations. What was tested? SAP SCALES UP LINEARLY FROM 1-4 X 2 VCPU GUESTS. VIRTUALIZATION EFFICIENCY UP TO 95% OF BARE METAL PERFORMANCE. The performance of SAP Server was measured on the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor running on an Intel server with 16 logical CPUs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization exhibited excellent scaling and performance across multiple configurations. Scale-up of a single VM with 2, 4, or 8 vCPUs yields up to 100% of expected maximum performance. Scaling up multiple VMs with multiple vCPUs on a single host also exhibits minimal loss of performance due to virtualization overhead.

What was the result? Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization scaled well, with low overhead costs of virtualizing multiple hosts and multiple virtual CPUs. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization exhibited up to 95% of bare metal performance with SAP. SAP is designed to make use of memory and multiple CPUs, and therefore any loss of performance due to consolidation reflects both the efficiency of the hypervisor platform as well as the efficiency of the SAP code. In Red Hat's testing, performance nearly comparable to bare metal (up to 95%) can be achieved by scaling the number of guests and vCPUs.

Scale-out of multiple virtual guests on a single host demonstrated up to 95% of bare metal performance using 8 x 2 vCPU guests or 4 x 4 vCPU guests and 86% of bare metal with 2 x 8vCPU guests.

Scaling Out the VMs A second series of tests involved scaling out multiple VMs of 2 or 4 vCPUs to total the 16 logical CPUs available in the server. The performance of the application shows good scalability and linearity. For example, the scaling of multiple 2 vCPU guests is nearly linear up to 4 guests (see below). Beyond four guests, scalability is slightly lower with increased reliance on hyperthreading.

WHAT WAS THE GOAL? Red Hat tested the performance of the SAP LinuxLab Certification Suite (SLCS) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests running on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. The results of Red Hat's SAP testing are scalability and performance measurements that support the productionreadiness of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for hosting multiple virtualized SAP workloads. WHAT WAS TESTED? Testing was performed on an Intel server with two Intel Xeon X5570 processors. These are 2.93 GHz quad-core processors that support Hyper-Threading Technology, so there are 8 physical cores, but 16 logical CPUs through hyperthreading. The host system has 48 GB of memory. Storage was hosted on fibre channel storage arrays. Scaling Up the VMs First, the performance of SLCS was measured by loading a single VM on the server, and assigning it 2, 4, or 8 vCPUs in the VM. As shown in the graph Scaling vCPUs and Memory of a Single Guest above, the performance scales linearly from 2 to 4 vCPUs, and then shows better than linear scaling from 4 to 8 vCPUs. Near-Bare Metal Performance SAP has been engineered to be highly scalable, and thus lends itself well to consolidation. Any loss of performance due to consolidation therefore reflects both the efficiency of the hypervisor platform as well as the efficiency of the SAP code. In Red Hat's testing, performance nearly comparable to bare metal (up to 95%) can be achieved by scaling the number of guests, with the best performance at 8 x 2 vCPU and 4 x 4 vCPU guest levels. See the graph Virtualization Efficiency: Consolidation on the front page. WHAT NEXT? For more information, please go to http://www.redhat.com/ rhev/server or contact your local Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization reseller.

Copyright 2009 Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, Red Hat Linux, the Red Hat Shadowman logo, and the products listed are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. All other names and marks may be trademarks of their respective companies. RHEVS026R3-20091030 October 30, 2009

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