Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight Fujitsu infrastructure and services optimize the value of SAP HANA® software to businesses, helping them benefit immediately from critical data as it emerges. Now you can act with precision on the latest information, instead of reacting inefficiently to yesterday’s news. Executive Summary The rise of Big Data is changing business economics. For the first time, it is possible to sift instantaneously through vast quantities of information, analyzing it for trends and insights that create competitive advantages and enable real-time decision making. Planning, forecasting, operational performance, and simulation software can now run faster and smarter, enhancing business success. The computing environment to enable that success must combine raw power to crunch the numbers quickly, agile flexibility to reach smoothly into any data source, and cost-effective dependability to safeguard business customers’ livelihoods. Integrated solutions based on SAP HANA® software, Fujitsu infrastructure, and comprehensive services handle those requirements brilliantly, at any scale. For implementations with multiple SAP HANA platform nodes, the solution incorporates NetApp FAS storage systems to provide access to shared storage. This approach from SAP and Fujitsu combines the extremely low latency of SAP HANA software with robust, flexible Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers, plus comprehensive services. Together, these matched solution building blocks help customers enhance competitiveness and address new usage models, rapidly and cost-effectively. These implementations serve small businesses with the Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA, as well as meeting the needs of medium-to-large businesses with either single-node (scale-up) or multinode (scale-out) options based on the Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA. Holistic services complete the offerings, including support from the Fujitsu SAP HANA Global Demo Center in Neckarsulm, Germany. The turnkey, end-to-end service approach includes everything from planning and financial services, to implementation assistance, to ongoing technical support.
Instantaneous insight is now simple to achieve, with minimal business disruption, using integrated technology based on SAP HANA® software, Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers, and comprehensive services. These solutions are available at any scale, and large multinode implementations extend functionality to mission-critical environments, incorporating NetApp FAS unified storage technology. Whatever the size of the implementation, analysis can be completed within microseconds of updates to either SAP or non-SAP data.
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June 2013 Version 2.0
Contents Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Overview: Enabling Real-Time Business Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Simplified Deployment with Full Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 SAP HANA Software Provides Instant Insight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Predictably Outstanding Results: Fujitsu Infrastructure for SAP HANA Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 T he Power to Reshape Business Operations, at Any Scale and Availability Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Offering for Small to Mid-Sized Organizations: Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Offering for Mid-Sized to Large Organizations: Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Holistic Services that Enable a Turnkey Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 T he Next Step: Transparent Central Management for Classical SAP Operations and SAP HANA . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 NetApp FAS Storage Provides Reliability and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
This paper outlines the business and technical benefits that are available with solutions and technology from SAP and Fujitsu. It consists of the following main sections: • Overview: Enabling Real-Time Business Innovation. Features of the new platform for real-time businesses of all types and sizes • Simplified Deployment with Full Integration. How the integrated solution simplifies deployment, minimizes disruption of existing environments, and lowers risk • SAP HANA Software Provides Instant Insight. Analysis within microseconds of updates to SAP or non-SAP data • Predictably Outstanding Results: Fujitsu Infrastructure for SAP HANA Software. System-level engineering and optimization that delivers performance and value • NetApp FAS Storage Provides Reliability and Performance. Industry-leading unified storage for cost-effective horizontal scalability
Overview: Enabling Real-Time Business Innovation In years past, computing operations on massive volumes of business data were performed mostly as after-hours batch operations. Long-running jobs chugged along at night and were deemed successful as long as they delivered results before morning. That approach is still an important part of the data processing at many companies, but there is also an increasing need for operational data analysis performed in real time as business happens. This development is marked by a series of related requirements: • Novel questions in a flexible framework. New business models often call for ad hoc queries, as opposed to preconfigured reports created by IT departments. • Real-time analysis. The need for business operations to respond to changing conditions as they emerge has become a key requirement in today’s competitive landscape.
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• More informed business decisions. The ability to identify trends and draw conclusions from ever-larger universes of data delivers strategic and tactical benefits. Conventional, disk-based database systems face a core limitation in providing the sort of real-time data analysis that this model calls for. Disk reads and writes inherently introduce latency into the system as a whole, which typically forces the processes of data collection and analysis to remain separated in time. The results are available only after the solution has completed the computational process. Even though advances in computing power continually shorten that time delay, a gap remains in these solutions between when a business data point occurs and when conclusions and decisions can be drawn. That reality can prevent businesses from responding in a timely fashion to emerging events.
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
As an alternative to conventional systems, in-memory computing with SAP HANA software actually holds an entire copy of the live data in system memory. That factor takes the latency of disk reads and writes out of the critical path for data analysis. Pre-certified solutions and technology from SAP and Fujitsu include hardware and software, plus supporting services, to deliver analysis for Big Data in real time. Together, these elements enable data acquisition and analysis, in effect, to be performed simultaneously. What’s more, missioncritical-ready offerings from SAP and Fujitsu help ensure that businesses can trust their core operations to these implementations. “Through the collaboration with Fujitsu, we give our customers an optimized hardware and services offering with maximized customer benefit and low TCO, giving them the opportunity to analyze missioncritical data in real-time and make business decisions on the fly.” – Sethu M., Chief Technology Advisor, GCO and Products, SAP AG
The ability to base strategic and transactional decisions on real-time data models increases the value of business data. In fact, in many cases, it can help transform very large data stores from liabilities into key assets. For instance, when those data stores come up in a strategic evaluation, the conversation may shift from storage and processing overhead to a discussion of how the data stores can be used to generate insights that create competitive advantages. A core part of that shift toward greater net value of large business data stores is that the technical efficiencies of
the in-memory computing solution have allowed real-world databases to be reduced in size substantially. The resulting lower infrastructural overhead is attractive in an era of shrinking budgets and helps produce greater strategic alignment between IT and the needs of the business as a whole.
Simplified Deployment with Full Integration SAP and Fujitsu collaborate closely on tightly integrated and optimized technology to deliver the business benefits of in-memory computing. That technology includes the following core building blocks: • SAP HANA software is a flexible, multipurpose, and data-sourceagonistic in-memory solution that combines SAP software components optimized to run on Intel-based hardware. The SAP HANA database is complemented by real-time replication services, data services, data and lifecycle management, and support for multiple interfaces based on industry standards. It also provides easy-to-use data-modeling tools for both business users and IT. • Fujitsu infrastructure and services support environments of any size— including mission-critical data centers—while minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO). These solutions are based on PRIMERGY rack-optimized servers and, for environments with multiple SAP HANA platform nodes, NetApp FAS storage systems. Fujitsu end-toend services complete the solutions with a comprehensive approach for turnkey implementation.
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
Because these solution components are tightly integrated through deep engineering commitments among SAP, Fujitsu, and NetApp, customers can rest assured that the overall solution is fully validated to work as a single system. Moreover, Fujitsu’s unique preconfiguration and installation process, including customer-specific settings (for example, IP addresses and switch configurations), enables companies to deploy in-memory computing smoothly, with minimal disruption to existing infrastructure and operations. Implementations can be undertaken rapidly, with the limited risk that comes with preproven technology and guidance from industry leaders. SAP brings to this collaboration its unparalleled experience in providing the core solutions that power businesses of all sizes, all over the world. The company’s products exemplify mature business software that performs quietly in the background—day-in, day-out—while also pushing the envelope in areas such as database design innovation and mobile-device support. As one of the world’s top five providers of servers and the fourthlargest IT services provider,1 Fujitsu is well positioned to help power the future of global real-time business operations. The company acts as a single point of contact based on specific service-level agreements for all infrastructure-related support topics, including NetApp storage, Brocade switches, and the SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications OS.
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“Around the globe, enterprises of all sizes rely on Fujitsu’s expertise to optimize their SAP environments. With SAP HANA, the dream of a real-time data platform that combines all transactional and analytical data for instant access and analysis comes true. The Fujitsu solutions and end-to-end services have been designed to optimally support SAP’s approach. But we have already gone a step further. The innovative FlexFrame Orchestrator management platform combines the operation of SAP ERP environments and SAP HANA infrastructures in one solution and thus provides unique and efficient IT management for real-time enterprises.” – Dr. Joseph Reger, Chief Technology Officer, Fujitsu Technology Solutions Together, SAP and Fujitsu have a broad, worldwide ecosystem of sales personnel, system integrators, and support infrastructure to assist end customers at every stage of the solution lifecycle. Because that ecosystem extends from preliminary planning, through execution, to ongoing support, it helps present a smooth integration path for customers. In fact, that smooth path highlights the high degree of integration within the engineered system itself. SAP HANA software is provided preinstalled on Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers and integrated with NetApp storage infrastructure. The robust design and planning that has gone into the solution before it ever reaches the customer decision point enables it to be installed and brought online in a matter of days.
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SAP HANA Software Provides Instant Insight Solutions offered by SAP and Fujitsu provide substantial business benefits with streamlined implementation. Companies that adopt this combination of proven, world-class technologies are able to analyze data within microseconds of updates to SAP and non-SAP data, reducing operational costs and optimizing flexibility in their IT infrastructures. As mentioned earlier, the ability of the SAP HANA platform to generate extremely fast response times is rooted in its in-memory database operation. By storing a complete copy of live data in system memory, SAP HANA software avoids the latency associated with disk reads and writes, which are a primary factor in limiting the performance and scalability of conventional database systems. Today’s 64-bit systems such as the Fujitsu PRIMERGY server platform are able to address increasingly large amounts of memory, and the prices of memory modules are continuing to fall. These factors help to position this model as a preferred, mainstream approach that can improve customers’ ability to address many of today’s emerging business challenges. • Increased competitive pressure. In the tough, modern business climate, rapid response to events can avoid missteps, which can be vital to success, or even survival. • Rapid solution adoption. As new software needs are identified, the data-source-agnostic flexibility of the SAP HANA platform can help companies accelerate the time to deployment.
• Novel usage models. Strategic initiatives are often only as valuable as IT’s ability to support them. The power of SAP HANA software significantly aids those strategic initiatives. One aspect of the large data stores maintained by many companies is that the data is unstructured, such as freeform text from wikis and social media. Enabling the systems that underlie business operations to interpret that information, compared to interpreting structured data such as statistics, is quite challenging. SAP HANA software is designed specifically to accommodate unstructured data, wherever it resides. That functionality streamlines the effort to get value from such data. Ultimately, any technology solution must sell itself through its benefits in financial terms. Here, the SAP HANA platform excels. In addition to rapid deployment of the overall solution, the environment’s ability to interact with any data source streamlines future integration efforts, slashing their cost and time to profitability. And in day-to-day operations, the solution is designed so that users can obtain the business insights they need on an ad hoc basis, rather than requiring IT organizations to create specialized reports that can accumulate significant costs over time. The in-memory operation of SAP HANA software analyzes business data at blazing speed. Integration with the full solution built in collaboration with Fujitsu helps ensure that customers can deploy that functionality with confidence.
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
redictably Outstanding Results: P Fujitsu Infrastructure for SAP HANA Software A long-standing tradition of solution co-engineering between SAP and Fujitsu provides synergies for outstanding value. The high degree of optimization present in the offerings from the two companies is reflected in Fujitsu’s status as one of the few SAP global partners. Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers are the foundation for proven, prevalidated solutions that are complemented by services to provide world-class infrastructure that reduces TCO and risk. With these offerings, customers do not have to spend time choosing and integrating diverse components. That characteristic saves time, effort, and expense while also paving the way for smooth scalability as business needs grow.
The Power to Reshape Business Operations, at Any Scale and Availability Level The potential of Big Data to drive innovation is not limited to any scale of business or implementation. To support the full range of possibilities, Fujitsu and SAP have developed precertified offerings for business opportunities of multiple types and sizes.
Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX300 or RX350 servers can be selected with various main memory options (from 64 gigabytes (GB) up to 256 GB) and combined with high-quality preinstallation of the SAP software or SUSE Linux, plus additional services for a smooth start and operation. This flexible offering brings real-time analytics to business operations at relatively small scale.
Offering for Midsize to Large Organizations: Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA Larger organizations benefit from the Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA, shown in Figure 1, which is optimized for in-memory computing and combines highest scalability and availability with reduced TCO. Figure 1. The Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA® FUJITSU POWER APPLIANCE (Building Block)
Management Server for SAP HANA® Database
Infrastructure Network (Interconnect, Storage, Client Access)
Offering for Small to Midsize Organizations: Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA Because the benefits of Big Data are not limited to the enterprise, Fujitsu offers the ready-to-connect Fujitsu Compact Appliance for SAP HANA, which is an optimized infrastructure for SAP Business One analytics powered by SAP HANA and the SAP Business One application, version for SAP.
Controller Nerwork (1Gbit)
Worker (1-4) Standby (5)
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
Storage (NFS)
The Fujitsu Power Appliance for SAP HANA can be implemented in entrylevel single-node or highly scalable multinode configurations. Operational continuity is secured in single-node configurations by the design of the Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers, which include standard redundant components such as hot-plug fans and power supplies. In multinode environments, availability is increased further using standby nodes and can be extended to a disaster-tolerant twosite topology. • Entry-level single-node offering (scale up). Initial, limited-scope implementations of SAP HANA within large organizations, including proofs of concept and test or development environments, are well suited to single-node configurations of the Fujitsu Power Appliance for the SAP HANA platform. Based on Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX600 or RX900 servers, these offerings deliver exceptional performance and capacity from a TCO-optimized, entry-level option. Organizations running simultaneous development and test projects can benefit even more from the Fujitsu hardware on VMware offering, which also includes preinstalled VMware vSphere 5.1 software. The high performance and capacity demands of customers who want to implement SAP Business Suite software on SAP HANA can be met with the special XL and XXL single node configurations, which can scale up to four terabytes (TB) of main memory and eight CPUs. Single-node systems can also be used as building blocks in multinode environments, enabling the option to extend initial implementations and shift from a scale-up to a scale-out scenario. 5
• Highly scalable multinode offering (scale out). Enterprise-scale, mission-critical business operations can take advantage of multinode implementations of the Fujitsu Power Appliance for the SAP HANA platform. The basic building block architecture, which is based on Fujitsu PRIMERGY Servers and NetApp FAS storage, allows companies to scale up easily. This approach is currently validated to support up to 32 database nodes, 8 standby nodes, and 16 TB of main system memory. Multinode environments offer embedded high-availability based on the differentiation of worker nodes and standby nodes, which take over in case a production server fails. The second pillar ensuring high availability consists of Network File System (NFS) and the shared NetApp FAS storage system, which ensures that all data is constantly mirrored. In case of data loss in main memory, data can be copied back from the storage system. For business-critical implementations of SAP HANA, disaster-tolerance can be realized by expanding the infrastructure to include two sites. Using this topology, all infrastructure components and data are reflected in a second data center. NetApp Fabric Metro Cluster FAS3250 and the NFS V3 Synchronous Replication protocol ensure synchronous mirroring to deliver continuous availability and zero data loss even in case of a total data center outage. An automated recovery process reduces the risk of human error and administrative overhead and ensures a quick return to normal operations. The secondary site can be equipped with an additional NetApp FAS3250 storage unit to be actively used as a development and test system during normal operations.
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Professional backups can be easily realized in single-node and multinode configurations by adding the Symantec NetBackup solution. NetBackup is currently the only solution to provide Big Data backup and recovery integration with the SAP HANA platform. Symantec NetBackup integrates with SAP HANA, allowing direct connection of backup agents to the SAP HANA database. Automating the backup process reduces the chance of human error and the potential for data loss.
Holistic Services That Enable a Turnkey Approach Services provided by Fujitsu play a vital role in simplifying implementations and reducing costs. Support from Fujitsu helps streamline the installation and upgrade process, for smooth integration and troublefree operation. Ongoing Fujitsu expertise, backed by its status as an SAP global partner, minimizes the effort needed for SAP HANA platform system administration and maintenance, in terms of considerations such as infrastructure extensions or software updates. • Accelerated first steps for implementation at the Global Demo Center. The relationship between Fujitsu and SAP has deep roots, with a co-engineering history that has been continuously active for many years. As part of its commitment to customers pursuing solutions based on the SAP HANA platform, Fujitsu has established a Fujitsu SAP HANA Global Demo Center, located in Neckarsulm, Germany. The infrastructure for SAP HANA at this facility, including SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the world.
Fujitsu uses this resource to provide real-world demonstration scenarios that help potential customers gauge the value of the Fujitsu and SAP solution. Customers that want to go a step further can also use the Demo Center infrastructure to upload their data and run individual proof-of-value projects. The Center is staffed by experienced consultants who assist organizations in jointly developing plans and insights related to how SAP HANA software running on Fujitsu PRIMERGY servers can produce value through rapid business insight. • End-to-end service concept. Fujitsu provides assistance to businesses as they incorporate solutions based on SAP HANA into their operations, to provide a fulllifecycle turnkey solution. The Fujitsu service portfolio provides presales consultation, TCO analysis, and financial services, as well as database assessment, optimization, and migration. Additional services in areas such as installation, integration, and ongoing support and optimization complete the comprehensive service approach: - Implementation and integration services. Fujitsu has developed a customizable set of services based on best practices, designed to get the SAP HANA software up and running quickly, effectively, and cost-efficiently, including design consultation and training services. - Ongoing infrastructure and operations support. Fujitsu provides comprehensive system support in the form of SolutionContract, which covers all elements of the hardware infrastructure (including NetApp storage, Brocade switches, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
for SAP applications), forming a solid foundation for SAP HANA software to run on.
The Next Step: Transparent Central Management for Classical SAP Software Operations and SAP HANA FlexFrame Orchestrator addresses the central challenge of unifying SAP HANA with the rest of the SAP software landscape, including datacenter processes and management. This innovative solution from Fujitsu supports the consistent, uniform management of all SAP software landscapes, including SAP HANA. This new development is based on 10 years of experience with FlexFrame. The advantages include simplified administration and high availability, combined with low TCO and cost reduction. Furthermore, FlexFrame Orchestrator supports all IT provisioning models, regardless of whether the applications are run in the customer’s own data center, delivered as a managed hosted service from an external provider, or deployed from the cloud.
NetApp FAS Storage Provides Reliability and Performance When scale-out requirements call for the use of multiple nodes for the SAP HANA platform, shared storage (with a shared file system) is required to provide concurrent access to all storage resources in the environment among all of the nodes. The solution from SAP and Fujitsu uses NetApp fabric-attached storage (FAS) for this purpose—specifically the NetApp FAS3200 Series Storage System. NetApp has a long history of leadership in the field of NFS-based storage infrastructure, as well as
extensive experience collaborating with Fujitsu on SAP solutions. In the case of the solution from Fujitsu based on SAP HANA, the NetApp FAS3200 Series Storage System meets the infrastructure’s requirements without additional host-based prerequisites. This is a cost-effective approach that also allows additional NetApp storage systems to be implemented, for simple horizontal scaling. NetApp Data ONTAP®, the operating system used by the storage systems, transparently manages data to help ensure that it is stored persistently and consistently, as an added measure to preserve data integrity. It also incorporates RAID 6 functionality to protect against double-disk failure within a RAID group, while affording administrators a great deal of configuration flexibility. Moreover, disks can be added easily to scale vertically without system downtime or performance impact. From a mission-critical perspective, redundant controllers can be added to provide fault tolerance and measure load balancing. NetApp storage systems provide fast and efficient methods for data protection, disaster recovery, fault tolerance, and business continuity. The SAP HANA platform is currently certified with key functionality in these areas, enabled by the following NetApp technologies: • Snapshot™, which makes pointin-time copies of data while applications are running • SnapVault®, a disk-to-disk backup solution that makes use of Snapshot copies • SnapMirror®, a data-replication solution for disaster recovery • MetroCluster™, clustering and mirroring software for high availability and disaster recovery
Drive Operational Advantages with Continuous, Real-Time Insight
With shared storage for today and forward-looking features for tomorrow, the NetApp FAS3200 Series Storage System is an excellent addition to the integrated solution for SAP HANA software running on the Fujitsu Power Appliance for the SAP HANA platform.
Conclusion SAP HANA software running on optimized Fujitsu infrastructure is the foundation for a highly optimized solution that can power your business into the future. Take full advantage of the data stores within your company, wherever they reside, and turn new data into instantaneous insight. The opportunity has arrived to increase your competitive advantage to the next level with business operations informed by the best information available, a critical ingredient for success at any scale. The best place to start is the Fujitsu Global Demo Center for SAP HANA, which is designed specifically to uncover the needs and opportunities that your business faces in relation to in-memory computing. A remotely accessible infrastructure for SAP HANA including SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA will be available at the Center to provide insights and pave the way for strategies that can propel your business forward. Expert consultants are on hand to help you make the most efficient and effective use of the opportunity, and special services pave the path to SAP HANA, covering the whole process from planning to implementation and if required even to operation in high-security data centers. Contact your local sales representative or expert.sap@ts.fujitsu.com, and you’ll be on your way. 7
For more information, visit ts.fujitsu.com/hana and www.sap.com/hana
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www.fujitsu.com/global/about/profile/info/.
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