Sun X4270 Virtualized for Two-tier SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode) Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark
- Sun achieved 36% better performance using Solaris and Solaris 10 containers than a similar configuration on SUSE Linux using VMware ESX Server 4.0 on the same benchmark both using 8 virtual cpus.
- Solaris Containers are the best virtualization technology for SAP projects and has been supported for more than 4 years. Other virtualization technologies suffer various overheads that decrease performance.
- The Sun Fire X4270 server with 48G memory and a Solaris 10 container configured with 8 virtual CPUs achieved 2800 SAP SD Benchmark users and beat the Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S5 server with 96G memory and the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on VMware ESX Server 4.0 by 36%. Both results used the same CPUs and were running the SAP ERP application release 6.0 enhancement pack 4 (unicode) standard sales and distribution (SD) benchmark.
- Both the Sun and Fujitsu results were run at 50% and 48% utilization respectively. With these servers being half utilized, there is headroom for additional performance.
- This benchmark result highlights the optimal performance of SAP ERP on Sun Fire servers running the Solaris OS and the seamless multilingual support available for systems running SAP applications.
- In January 2009, a new version, the Two-tier SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode) Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark, was released. This new release has higher cpu requirements and so yields from 25-50% fewer users compared to the previous Two-tier SAP ERP 6.0 (non-unicode) Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark. 10-30% of this is due to the extra overhead from the processing of the larger character strings due to Unicode encoding. See this SAP Note for more details. Note: username and password for SAP Service Marketplace required.
- Unicode is a computing standard that allows for the representation and manipulation of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. Before the Unicode requirement, this benchmark used ASCII characters meaning each was just 1 byte. The new version of the benchmark requires Unicode characters and the Application layer (where ~90% of the cycles in this benchmark are spent) uses a new encoding, UTF-16, which uses 2 bytes to encode most characters (including all ASCII characters) and 4 bytes for some others. This requires computers to do more computation and use more bandwidth and storage for most character strings. Refer to the above SAP Note for more details. Note: username and password for SAP Service Marketplace required.
SAP-SD 2-Tier Performance Landscape (in decreasing performance order).
SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode) Results (New version of the benchmark as of January 2009)
| System | OS Database |
Virtualized? | Users | SAP ERP/ECC Release |
SAPS | SAPS/ Proc |
Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun Fire X4270 2xIntel Xeon X5570 @2.93GHz 48 GB |
Solaris 10 Oracle 10g |
no | 3,800 | 2009 6.0 EP4 (Unicode) |
21,000 | 10,500 | 21-Aug-09 |
| IBM System 550 4xPower6 @5GHz 64 GB |
AIX 6.1 DB2 9.5 |
no | 3,752 | 2009 6.0 EP4 (Unicode) |
20,520 | 5,130 | 16-Jun-09 |
| HP ProLiant DL380 G6 2xIntel Xeon X5570 @2.93GHz 48 GB |
SUSE Linux Ent Svr 10 MaxDB 7.8 |
no | 3,171 | 2009 6.0 EP4 (Unicode) |
17,380 | 8,690 | 17-Apr-09 |
| Sun Fire X4270 2xIntel Xeon X5570 @2.93GHz 48 GB |
Solaris 10 container (8 virtual CPUs) Oracle 10g |
YES 50% util |
2,800 | 2009 6.0 EP4 (Unicode) |
15,320 | 7,660 | 10-Sep-09 |
| Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S5 2xIntel Xeon X5570 @2.93GHz 96 GB |
SUSE Linux Ent Svr 10 on VMware ESX Server 4.0 MaxDB 7.8 |
YES 48% util |
2,056 | 2009 6.0 EP4 (Unicode) |
11,230 | 5,615 | 04-Aug-09 |
Complete benchmark results may be found at the SAP benchmark website http://www.sap.com/benchmark.
Results and Configuration Summary
Hardware Configuration:
-
One, Sun Fire X4270
-
2 x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570 processors
(2 processors / 8 cores / 16 threads)
48 GB memory
Sun StorageTek CSM200 with 32 * 73GB 15KRPM 4Gb FC-AL and 32 * 146GB 15KRPM 4Gb FC-AL Drives
Software Configuration:
-
Solaris 10 container configured with 8 virtual CPUs
SAP ECC Release: 6.0 Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode)
Oracle 10g
Sun has submitted the following result for the SAP-SD 2-Tier benchmark. It was approved and published by SAP.
| Number of benchmark users: | 2,800 | ||
| Average dialog response time: | 0.971 s | ||
| Fully processed order line: | 306,330 | ||
| Dialog steps/hour: | 919,000 | ||
| SAPS: | 15,320 | ||
| SAP Certification: | 2009034 | ||
Benchmark Description
The SAP Standard Application SD (Sales and Distribution) Benchmark is a two-tier ERP business test that is indicative of full business workloads of complete order processing and invoice processing, and demonstrates the ability to run both the application and database software on a single system. The SAP Standard Application SD Benchmark represents the critical tasks performed in real-world ERP business environments.SAP is one of the premier world-wide ERP application providers, and maintains a suite of benchmark tests to demonstrate the performance of competitive systems on the various SAP products.
Key Points and Best Practices
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Set up the storage (LSI-OEM) to deliver the needed raw devices directly out of the storage and do not use any software layer in between.
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Solaris 10 Container best practices how-to guide
Disclosure Statement
Two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP SD benchmark based on SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) application benchmark as of 09/10/09: Sun Fire X4270 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) run in 8 virtual cpu container, 2,800 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570, 48 GB memory, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10, Cert# 2009034. Sun Fire X4270 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,800 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570, 48 GB memory, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10, Cert# 2009033. IBM System 550 (4 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,752 SAP SD Users, 4x 5 GHz Power6, 64 GB memory, DB2 9.5, AIX 6.1, Cert# 2009023. HP ProLiant DL380 G6 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 3,171 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570, 48 GB memory, MaxDB 7.8, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Cert# 2009006. Sun Fire X4270 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 2,800 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570, 48 GB memory, Oracle 10g, Solaris 10 container configured with 8 virtual CPUs, Cert# 2009034. Fujitsu PRIMERGY Model RX300 S5 (2 processors, 8 cores, 16 threads) 2,056 SAP SD Users, 2x 2.93 GHz Intel Xeon X5570, 96 GB memory, MaxDB 7.8, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 on VMware ESX Server 4.0, Cert# 2009029.
SAP, R/3, reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info: www.sap.com/benchmark