Intel SUSE Texperts Webinar

Editor's Notes

• #3: ----- Meeting Notes (2/6/12 15:39) ----- slide numbers need to get added-in
• #11: ----- Meeting Notes (2/6/12 15:39) ----- Dirk used 14 minutes.
• #16: Combine #19 and #20
• #18: ----- Meeting Notes (2/6/12 15:39) ----- Martin used 11 minutes
• #22: Only OS platform for SAP NetWeaver (NW) Enterprise Search Application (ESA) and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA) SAP launched ESA mid August with BWA and other specific applications launching at a later date SAP and SAP partners will be responsible for generating demand and promoting ESA and BWA, and drag SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications into the discussion Novell ® direct and indirect routes will only need to fulfill product orders generated through the sale of the accompanying SAP application by SAP and its partners Novell will primarily take a supporting role in SAP Demand Generation and Awareness Activities
• #24: Hello everybody! My name is Gerhard Saumweber and I am the CEO and Founder of Texperts, Inc. - After hearing about the trends in data centers moving towards Intel hardware architectures, learning about how SUSE Linux can help standardize the data center and most importantly make a big difference to the TCO, we need to think about how do we get there. “ Engage experts!”, is very often emphasized by hardware and software vendors to ensure the implementation of their products based on best practices. Many customer however, try to tackle these implementation and migration projects by themselves. The reason is clear, it is about cost savings in general, but especially in these economic times. Let’s take a closer look at the challenges / gotcha’s involved here in this case. First of all, it requires very special knowledge and foremost experience to migrate SAP applications running on different legacy UNIX hardware platforms i.e. AIX (Power), HP-UX (PA-RISC) and Solaris (Sun SPARC) to just name a few. Now, what do these hardware platforms all have in common? They all support generally big-endian-ness, whereas, Intel architectures are based on little-endian. Okay, I am pretty sure there are many participants wondering what endian-ness is? Let’s tackle this real brief. Endianness is a term that describes the byte order used to represent the SAP data in your database. so, why is this important? Therefore, these differences in endianness requires us to consider extra steps to complete a system migration without corrupting your SAP data. Big point! I guess, you all agree. Typically, database providers backup/restore software do not assist with this issue, and that’s why SAP does not recommend using the native database backup recovery tools to copy the contents of the SAP database between different endian platforms, even when the operating system and database remain the same. When the endianness of the machines differ, SAP recommends to transfer the database content using a specific SAP tool that understands both SAP and the endian issues between different hardware architectures. As with so many tools for SAP this is just another tool which requires solid expertise, a specific certification by a seasoned SAP migration consultant and lots of migration experience. Typically, these seasoned specialists are also familiar with the OS/DB combinations supported by SAP, they can assist you in fine tuning the DB-export/import process to reduce the downtime and know how-to work with involved 3 rd -parties like in hosted environments. These are just some of the very important reasons why you should consider to engage with a migration specialist, or better “an expert!” ----- Meeting Notes (2/6/12 15:39) ----- Dirk finished at 36 min.
• #25: Let’s turn the page and let’s take a look at the actual opportunity involved with migrating off of legacy UNIX to SUSE Linux. If we look at our current situation, then we’ll see SAP implemented on a proprietary hardware generally based on RISC hardware architecture in combination with a legacy UNIX operating system like for instance Solaris and let’s say an Oracle database. Now, if we are considering to migrate this SAP stack to a CISC hardware architecture by Intel then we have the following options: 1) Option # 1 is migrating the SAP application onto a similar architecture just with Intel hardware buy with SUSE Linux operating system and Oracle 2) Option #2 is migrating the SAP application onto a little bit different architecture. We’ll introduce a layer between the operating system and the Intel hardware, in particular VMware – the leading software platform for enterprise Virtualization, but with the same SUSE Linux operating system and Oracle. The crux here is, that by migrating to an Intel hardware architecture you are paving the way to Virtualization in addition to standardizing your modern data center and reducing the total cost of ownership. I am sure that this should be a pretty nice side effect as everybody is virtualizing departmental application servers, email servers like Exchange as well as on tier-1 ERP applications like SAP. Spinning it a bit further, we’ll even pave the road to the Cloud as Virtualization is the main driver of cloud-based architectures.
• #26: Let’s turn the page again and let’s take a look at what is all involved in a migration process from a legacy UNIX to SUSE Linux? What is the flow and sequencing of these phases look like? It’s obvious by just looking at the slide that this will not be a simple undertaking over a weekend!  A migration of SAP landscapes will take weeks or months, or many months depending on many different tasks in the planning and design phase and thereafter in the actual build and Go-Live phase. Very important to the success of these projects is a proper set up and experienced project management team which ensures not only an efficient progress of the migration project but also ensures that knowledge is being transferred along the way. In the planning and design phase it depends on the scope of the systems involved, the set direction, the architectural design, # and depth of assessments involved to gather the requirements and the final resulting design of the SAP architecture depending on it being a physical or virtual implementation. In the build phase, we need to consider proof-of-concepts for each production system and similar to other SAP projects testing, testing and testing to ensure a robust, stable and performing SAP system when it will be deployed and after Go-Live.
• #31: Move after summary
• #32: Headl;ine: Why involve experts
• #33: Move after summary