® ®

Oracle SAP

for
T E C H N O L O G Y U P D A T E

g
10
D A T A B A S E

Oracle for SAP

is safe, reliable
and scalable
– the Grid enabled
platform

No. 15 Oracle for SAP, April 2006

www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap
 Oracle for SAP
is safe, reliable and scalable
– the Grid enabled platform

10 g
D A T A B A S E

CONTENTS

1 Editorial
2 Update: Oracle Database 10g and Real Application Clusters 10g for mySAP
6 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Stadtwerke Munich (Windows)
8 Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) Advantages for SAP Customers
10 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at S.R.I., Fujitsu Siemens, (Solaris)
12 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at Gas Natural, BW (Linux)
15 SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) Certified Configurations for Windows and Linux
16 Dr. Oetker: DB2 to Oracle migration to SAP BW
18 Informix: Oracle database migration at Testo
22 Oracle Data Mining for SAP Business Warehouse Customers
25 Delta Consulting: RAC Services for SAP Customers
26 ChevronTexaco: Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) for SAP at ChevronTexaco
28 Burda: HP Tru64 to HP-UX Oracle to Oracle Migration
31 COOP Switzerland: Oracle Advanced Customer Services
34 Japan Aviation Electronics (JAE) using Oracle Customer Services for SAP
36 Dell: Configuring a Highly Available Linux Cluster for SAP Services
44 Oracle RAC and Egenera
46 SAP INFO Solutions: Active Global Support – What’s New?
47 TUSC: Oracle Partner for SAP
48 Oracle PREMIUM Services for SAP R/3 Customersr s
51 BPEL: Integration to SAP, Webservices
54 Useful Links Oracle for SAP Customers
54 Imprint
 Oracle for SAP 1

DEAR SAP CUSTOMER,

I hope you will enjoy reading this 15th Edition of the Oracle for SAP Global
Technology Update.
For over 17 years Oracle has been the leading database for SAP customers and we
remain committed to our long term goal to provide safe, reliable, and scalable
database technology for our SAP customers. Two thirds of SAP customers run their
SAP application on an Oracle database, leveraging their investment in Oracle technology.
As an ongoing commitment to our joint customer base, SAP and Oracle have extended
the long standing Development, Reseller and Support relationship.

Oracle9i Real Application Clusters (RAC) is now available on all HW platforms and Oracle 10g Release 2 is now
shipping to SAP customers! This is a major milestone for SAP customers running the Oracle database; it enhances
database availability, scalability, and it lowers the TCO. While unprecedented market pressure to decrease costs
and provide fast interconnect technology prefaced the development of grid technology, the development of
Oracle 10g grid technology will provide SAP customers with additional benefits.

In this edition of the Oracle for SAP Technology Update you will read about Oracle’s 10g technology benefits
to SAP customers and Oracle Data Mining Technology integration, which provides SAP customers advanced
analytics embedded in SAP BW as an optional feature. We have also included a significant number of new
SAP on Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) customer success stories.

You will read about Oracle Services and Support available to SAP customers including; database migrations,
and performance tuning. Also learn how customers worldwide have reduced costs by migrating their Informix
database under SAP to Oracle. The Oracle database technology has a proven track record to minimize IT costs
throughout the whole life cycle of an SAP application.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the newsletter!

Any news about this and other topics will be published immediately on our web site, so check back periodically
at: www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions or comments.
E-mail: saponoracle_de@oracle.com For price information about Oracle9i Real Application Clusters contact your
Oracle or SAP Account Manager or E-mail us at: saponoracle_de@oracle.com

Sincerely

Gerhard Kuppler

Senior Director Corporate SAP Account

Oracle Corporation
 2
U P D AT E – O R A C L E D AT A B A S E 1 0g A N D
R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S 1 0g F O R M Y S A P
INTRODUCTION
Oracle Database 10g has been designed to reduce the
g
10 cost of manageability, to deliver increased performance
for all types of workloads and to provide major new
high-availability features.
D A T A B A S E
Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for
Enterprise Grid Computing to lower hardware costs
by leveraging low cost components and by greatly
increasing resource utilization levels, therefore com-
plementing the Advanced Computing Infrastructure
concept of SAP.
As with previous Oracle database versions, all trans-
parent features of Oracle Database 10g are immediately
available for all types of SAP applications. The initial
certification of Oracle Database 10g by SAP has been
done at the end of the first quarter of 2006. After the
initial certification more new Oracle Database 10g
features will be adopted by SAP over time.
F E AT U R E S I M M E D I AT E LY
SUPPORTED BY SAP
The features described in this section are available
for and offer benefits to all types of SAP applications.
They are supported with the initial certification of
Oracle Database 10g now.
Instant Client
Instant Client allows you to run your applications
without installing the standard Oracle client or
having an ORACLE_HOME. OCI-based applications
like mySAP work without modification, while using
significantly less disk space than before.
Rename Tablespace
You can now rename a tablespace. You no longer have
to create a new tablespace, copy the contents from the
old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace. This
feature makes it easier, for example, to migrate a dic
to transport a tablespace to a database that already
contains a tablespace of the same name.
Online Segment Shrink
This feature shrinks segments of tables and indexes
online and in-place that have free space in them,
thereby enhancing efficiency of space utilization.
Automatic Optimizer Statistics Collection
This feature automates the collection of optimizer
statistics for objects. Objects with stale or no statistics
are automatically analyzed, so administrators no
longer need to keep track of what does and what does
not need to be analyzed, nor to perform analysis by
hand.
End-to-End Application Tracing
The feature simplifies the debugging of performance
problems in multi-tier environments. It will only be
available for new versions of the SAP software and
not for existing versions.
Online LONG to LOB Migration
In this release tables with LONG and LONG RAW
data, still used by many SAP applications, can now
be migrated online to LOB data from within the
BR*SPACE utility of SAP.
NEW FUNCTIONALITY WITH
SAP BW 7.0
SAP BW users will benefit most from the new features
describes in this section. They are supported with
the initial certification of Oracle Database 10g now.
Faster Drop and Truncate Table
These two operations perform substantially faster by
using improved algorithms in accessing the database
buffer cache. In particular small tables, often used by
SAP BW, benefit the most.

In Memory Undo
Block changes by short transactions are now managed
cleverer by the database server resulting in less CPU
cycles.
Improved Scalability for Partitioned Objects
Dropping partitioned tables and indexes is now
substantially faster by using a new algorithm for
identifying the blocks of a partitioned object in the
buffer cache and for cleaning these blocks in the
buffer cache. The SAP BW application benefits the
most, as dropping partitioned objects is a frequently
used operation in SAP BW.
Tests performed using a query on a table with 1,000
partitions show that Oracle 10g’s new strategy of
sharing partitioning metadata results in less SQL mem-
ory usage in the SGA (9.2.0.6: 52KB, 10.2: 11KB –
this means that every single query on this table will
use 5 times less memory).
O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N
CLUSTERS 10g
Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) allows Oracle
Database to run any packaged or custom application,
unchanged across a set of clustered servers. This pro-
vides the highest levels of availability and the most
flexible scalability. To keep costs low, even the high-
est-end systems can be built out of standardized, com-
modity parts. Oracle 10g RAC provides a foundation
for Oracle’s Enterprise Grid Computing Architecture.
Oracle RAC technology enables a low-cost hardware
platform to deliver the highest quality of service that
rivals and exceeds the levels of availability and scala-
bility achieved by the most expensive, mainframe
SMP computers.
Oracle 10g RAC is not included in the initial certifi-
cation of Oracle Database 10g. In the same way as for
Oracle 9.2 RAC, a separate release process is carried
out. During the second and third quarters of 2006,
there are one or two Oracle 10g pilot projects planned
that will lead to Oracle 10g RAC being released in
the SAP environment during the third quarter of
2006.
Oracle 10g Update for SAP – supported features 3
Integrated Clusterware
Oracle RAC 10g offers a complete clusterware mana-
gement solution as an integral component of Oracle
RAC 10g available on all platforms Oracle Database
10g runs on. This clusterware functionality includes
mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messaging and
locking, cluster control and recovery, and a services
provisioning framework. No 3rd party clusterware
management software need be purchased. Oracle will,
however, continue to support select 3rd party cluster-
ware products on specified platforms.
With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle provides
a High Availability API so that non-Oracle processes
can be put under the control of the high availability
framework within Oracle Clusterware.
Single System Image Management
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g has been significantly
enhanced to enable true single system image manage-
ment of cluster database deployments. Enterprise
Manager’s Cluster Database Page provides a single
view of system status across multiple nodes. It also
enables direct drill down to individual instances when
needed.
A new cluster configuration verification tool and
improvements in the diagnostic tools first introduced
in the Oracle9i Database release help users both avoid
problems and resolve problems more quickly should
they occur.
Data Guard Integration for Disaster Recovery
With Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g, the manage-
ment component of Oracle Data Guard, Data Guard
Broker, is now completely integrated with RAC.
Data Guard disaster recovery environments involving
Oracle RAC databases can now be as easily managed
as those employing single instance databases.
F E AT U R E S T O B E S U P P O R T E D
L AT E R B Y S A P
Backup Compression
If disk space is an issue, or your media-management
software does not support compression, RMAN pro-
vides the ability to compress RMAN backup sets.
4
Full Database Begin Backup Command
It is no longer necessary to issue a separate command
to place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You
can now use the ALTER DATABASE statement to
place all tablespaces in backup mode. Also, the
BEGIN BACKUP command now runs faster than
before.
Change-Aware Incremental Backup
By using a new type of log file to track blocks that
have changed in the database, RMAN can avoid
scanning the entire datafile during an incremental
backup. Instead, the amount of data scanned is pro-
portional to the amount of data changed.
Secured Redo Transmission
When using the Advanced Security Option of Oracle
Database 10g the security of a Data Guard environ-
ment can be increased by preventing possible tampe-
ring of redo data as it is being transferred to the
standby database. As long as SAP has not certified
the Advanced Security Option this feature will not
be available for SAP installations.
Data Pump Export and Import Utilities
The Data Pump Export and Import utilities provide
very high-speed bulk movement of data and meta-
data from database to another. These utilities offer
several significant advantages over the original
Export and Import utilities, including: the ability to
completely restart export and import jobs; the ability
to detach from and reattach to long-running jobs;
the ability to estimate how much space an export job
would consume; support for export and import ope-
rations over the network; and support for fine-grained
object selection, based upon objects and objects types.
This feature will initially not be integrated within
the SAP administration tools.
The new Data Pump Export and Import utilities can
each be run in parallel, resulting in better performance
in loading and unloading data and metadata.
Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespaces
The transportable tablespace feature now enables
tablespaces to be transported across different plat-
forms therefore making a platform migration for a
SAP customer much faster.
Flashback Technology
In this release, Oracle introduces expanded database
flashback capabilities. If a major error occurs, such as
a batch job being run twice in succession, the data-
base administrator can request a flashback operation
that quickly recovers the entire database to a previous
point in time, eliminating the need to restore back-
ups and do a point-in-time recovery. In addition to
flashback operations at the database level, it is also
possible to flash back an entire table in this release
of the Oracle database. Similarly, a new capability
allows the database to recover tables that have been
inadvertently dropped by a user. The existing flash-
back query capabilities have also been improved.
• Flashback Database: This feature introduces the
FLASHBACK DATABASE statement in SQL. It
let you quickly bring your database to a prior point
in time by undoing all the changes that have taken
place since that time. This operation is fast, because
you do not need to restore the backups. This in turn
results in much less downtime following data
corruption or human error.
• Flashback Reinstantiation: This feature reduces
the need to reinstantiate the old primary database
following a failover. This in turn lets you more
quickly restore full resiliency after a failure. This
is done by using the SQL statement FLASHBACK
DATABASE to roll back the primary database in
time to synchronize with the standby database.
• Flashback Standby Database: This feature
improves the switchover and failover time of a
standby database. You no longer need to specify a
log apply delay, because you can now roll back the
standby database if some error occurs on the primary
and is propagated to the standby.
• Flashback Table: This feature introduces the
FLASHBACK TABLE statement in SQL, which
lets you quickly recover a table to a point in time
in the past without restoring a backup.
• Flashback Versions Query: Using undo data
stored in the database, you can now view the
changes to one or more rows along with all the
metadata of the changes.
 Oracle 10g Update for SAP – supported features 5

• Flashback Drop (Recycle Bin): Oracle now A D D I T I O N A L I N F O R M AT I O N

provides a way to restore accidentally dropped
tables. Prior to Oracle 10g, a DROP command
permanently removed objects from the database.
In Oracle 10g, a DROP command places the object
in the recycle bin. The extents allocated to the
segment are not reallocated until you purge the
object. You can restore the object from the recycle
bin at any time. Within SQL*PLUS you are
able through the SHOW RECYCLEBIN [origi-
nal_name] command to view the objects that are
available for purging or reverting using the PURGE
and FLASHBACK BEFORE DROP commands.
• Flashback Transaction Query: This feature intro-
duces flashback transaction query, which lets you
examine changes to the database at the transaction
level. As a result, you can diagnose problems,
perform analysis, and audit transactions.
Automated Storage Management (ASM)
ASM automates and simplifies the optimal layout of
datafiles, control files, and log files. Database files are
automatically distributed across all available disks, and
database storage is rebalanced whenever the storage
configuration changes. This feature also provides
redundancy through the mirroring of database files.
ASM was particularly designed for using low cost
servers and disks. However, ASM support by SAP
will not be available with the initial certification of
Oracle Database 10g though. ASM will be added
later only for installations of new versions of SAP
products. A migration path for older versions of SAP
products will follow once the initial certification for
ASM is been done by SAP.
The SAP Database Guide: Oracle, which is available
via the Media Library on service.sap.com, describes
support for new Oracle 10g features in SAP NetWeaver
2004s. The Database Upgrade Guide (Upgrade to Oracle
Database 10g) describes the technical details of the
upgrade process.
SAP OSS Note 720886 is the master entry point for
information about Oracle Database 10g integration
into the SAP environment. OSS Note 828268 provides
an overview of new features that can be used in the
SAP environment and points to other OSS notes that
discuss individual features in more detail (see page 54).
CONCLUSION
Oracle Database 10g provides the necessary infra-
structure of making the SAP landscape more respon-
sive to the changing business environment. Oracle
Database 10g gives you the flexibility you need to
implement Enterprise Grid Computing, even using
low cost servers and disks. The design of Enterprise
Grid Computing complements the Adaptive
Computing Infrastructure concepts of SAP. Oracle
Database 10g provides the benefit of lowering risks
with lower manageability costs, greater scalability
and predictability and the highest levels of availa-
bility.

F E AT U R E S T O B E S U P P O R T E D
L AT E R B Y S A P
The SAP Database Guide: Oracle, which is available
via the Media Library on service.sap.com, describes
support for new Oracle 10g features in SAP
NetWeaver 2004s. The Database Upgrade Guide
(Upgrade to Oracle Database 10g) describes the tech-
nical details of the upgrade process.
SAP OSS Note 720886 is the master entry point for
information about Oracle Database 10g integration
into the SAP environment. OSS Note 828268 provides
an overview of new features that can be used in the
SAP environment and points to other OSS notes
 6

“The objectives which we had pursued with migration towards Oracle Real Application
Clusters have been greatly surpassed. The improvements with respect to costs, availability,
performance and scalability can be clearly evidenced. We have been able to optimize SAP
use effectively in Microsoft Windows with Oracle RAC and are therefore in a strong position
for the future”

— RUDOLF BAYERL
Head of System Operations, Area of SWM Services GmbH
Information and Process Technology

S TA D T W E R K E M U N I C H I S P U R S U I N G N E W AV E N U E S
FOR SAP USE IN WINDOWS WITH ORACLE REAL
A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S ( R A C )

Stadtwerke Munich
Services GmbH
Industry:
Utility/Public Sector
Annual Revenue:
2.95 billion euros (2004)
Employees:
Around 7,000
Oracle Products & Services:
• Oracle database 9.2.0.5
• Oracle Real Application
Clusters (RAC)
• Oracle OCFS
• Oracle Support
Key Benefits
• Options for optimizing cost
efficiency
• Higher failure reliability
• Improved scaling potentials
• Performance improvements
• Increase in investment
safeguarding
Improvement of
High Availability
Cost Reduction
Long-term IT concept
to ensure ROI
Streamlined DBA
productivity
State-of-the-art High-
Availability Concept
Intensive use of SAP entails higher ting, purchase handling, maintenance manage-
requirements ment and much, much more. In total, SWM
has around 3000 users. The Microsoft Windows
The Stadtwerke Munich (SWM) is the largest
platform combined with an Oracle database is
municipal enterprise in Germany with around
the preferred medium for SAP use at the end
7000 employees and group revenue of 2.95
of the mainframe era, though open-source
billion euros (2004). From the private indivi-
platforms (above all Linux) have also figured
dual or medium-sized company through to the
in the considerations for quite a while now.
global player, customers of all types can find a
These are also based on Oracle, and more-over:
partner in SWM to supply them with power,
the extent of SAP use has been – and still is –
water and associated services reliably and cost
continuously increasing. The SAP database
effectively. In addition to power supply and
volume is growing by around 50 gigabytes a
services, the spectrum offered encompasses the
month, and currently totals around 2 terabytes.
complete energy and water value-added chain.
In addition to SAP, SWM has well over 100
SWM is also a municipal service provider
other applications which operate together on
offering high-quality service and promoting
an Oracle database. Extensive experience has
leisure activities in the world famous city on
already been gathered in non-SAP environ-
the Isar, thanks to its indoor and outdoor
ments with the innovative database clustering
swimming pools. And with the comprehensive
technology Oracle Real Application Clusters.
mobility package of MVG (subway, bus and
tram), SWM ensures the inhabitants of Munich
Good experience with Oracle RAC in a
mobility in a way that is friendly to the city
non-SAP environment
and environment. To provide its services,
SWM is available around the clock – 24 hours “Ever more demanding challenges for SAP
a day, 365 days of the year. applications, combined with a growing data
volume and increasingly deteriorating perfor-
mance, were the reasons behind the reorienta-
This type of “all-round supply” has important
prerequisites for the IT systems used. These tion towards RAC. We also wanted to utilize
too have to be available around the clock – the advantages which Oracle RAC provides for
especially the SAP solutions used. SAP R/3 SAP use in Windows, especially as our existing
(Version 4.6C) and the branch solution IS- experience was very positive”, declares Rudolf
Bayerl, Head of System Operations in the area
U/CCS (Version 4.64) enable the management
of customer and supplier data, service accoun- of Information and Process Technology at SWM

Services GmbH. Oracle RAC has enabled the
longstanding SAP customer SWM (which had
already employed SAP R/2 before SAP R/3) to
combine several advantages: hardware invest-
ment safeguarding, increase in failure reliabi-
lity, performance increases and additional
options for improved scalability.
After several discussions with Oracle, Microsoft
and SAP as well as the storage supplier EMC
and the hardware provider Dell, a project was
formulated with the following objective:
Oracle RAC was to be used together with SAP
R/3/IS-U/CCS and Microsoft Windows 2003
Server Edition as a productive application at
SWM for the first time in the world as part of
a pilot project. April 1st 2004 was earmarked
as the project start. Existing Microsoft clusters
were to be used for the central instance, while
an RAC configuration was to be employed for
the database. In the case of SWM, this meant
that Oracle database clustering was to be
operated on 3 nodes with three instances from
then on, instead of a conventional central
instance.
Step by step towards a mutual goal
As this involved a pilot project, more time
than is usually the case was calculated for
its implementation. As the Head of System
Operations H. Bayerl explains, “The result
was important for us. Everyone involved was
basically sitting in the same boat and striving
towards the same objective.”
All project steps were worked out according to
a project plan that was drawn up beforehand.
Problem cases and platform-specific adaptations
were approached jointly and solved with the
objective in mind. The first phase involved
setting up the new SAP-Oracle-RAC-R/3
landscape including new hardware. The work
was carried out with current SAP data right
from the start. The second phase comprised
testing, while the system and individual
elements underwent continuous tuning.
“Specialists from the Development department
of Oracle USA assisted in work on the Oracle
S A P R eOarlaA
c lpep D
lia
cat at iboans eC l1u0sgt e–r sI nafto rSm
t aadt itowne ri sk eC u
Mrur enni cchy 7
Cluster File System (OCFS) over several weeks
as part of the tuning measures. We achieved
our mutual goal on a step by step basis. The
commitment shown by the partners involved
was remarkable. The entire project team set
about its tasks with dedicated enthusiasm,”
emphasizes Manfred Fischer, Systems Engineer
at SWM Services GmbH.
Surpassing objectives previously set
SAP productive operation with Oracle Real
Application Clusters on the operating system
platform Windows 2003 Server Edition and
clustered Dell computers commenced at the
beginning of June 2005. So far SWM is ex-
tremely satisfied with the results. That should
come as no surprise: “The improvements we
had aimed for have been greatly surpassed,”
summarizes IT expert Bayerl.
“Tests performed prior to productive deploy-
ment revealed that the computer performance
with Oracle RAC in Windows was higher than
expected. While the dialog response times with-
out Oracle RAC were on average 450 milli-
seconds, these improved significantly with
Oracle RAC to reach around 340 milliseconds,”
said system specialist Fischer.
“This situation has led us to examine integra-
tion of the SAP-HR system operating separa-
tely in the RAC environment, which would
signify savings in the administration costs.”
But that is not everything. The availability
has increased demonstrably, to be precise from
98.9 to 99.5 percent (within a monitoring
period of two months), which has important
consequences for SWM in view of its aim to
achieve as great a SAP availability as possible.
The BladeFrame allows an organization to
8

It goes without saving that the “fail-over func-
tionality” was extensively tested before the
productive start. Three instances serve one
database in parallel. A Windows cluster is
operated on the three nodes in order to ensure
that the central instance is also failsafe.
Furthermore, the new technology has made it
possible to increase scalability to a higher level,
thus providing the benefits of extended invest-
ment safeguarding. This consequently enables
an upgrade from a 3-node to a 4-node environ-
ment at any time. It is also possible to achieve
an additional system extension with compara-
tively inexpensive hardware. “The sky's the
limit for us now,” aptly summarizes one mem-
ber of the IT department.
Further Oracle use is definitely in planning
Thanks to the positive results experienced with
Oracle RAC both for SAP use in Microsoft
Windows and when using non-SAP applications
on an open-source basis, the IT experts at SWM
aim to extend the use of Oracle Real Application
Clusters. That means there are plans for a
migration of all smaller applications to Oracle
combined with use of Oracle RAC. In other
words, “we’ve shown that we can kill more or
less several birds with one stone using Oracle
RAC. The cost aspect plays a crucial role for
this. Oracle RAC makes us hardware-indepen-
dent while enabling us to achieve the same or
even more with less hardware.”

O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C AT I O N C L U S T E R S ( R A C )
ADVANTAGES FOR SAP CUSTOMERS

Oracle RAC enables the Oracle Database Server to run real applications on clusters. By real
applications we mean that RAC does not only support applications designed with a clustered
database architecture in mind, but mainstream business applications of all kinds. This
includes popular packaged products such as SAP. It includes both OLTP (e.g. mySAP ERP)
and DSS (e.g. SAP BW).

High Availability and Workload Distribution
One of the key drivers to move to Oracle RAC
is its compelling active/active architecture.
This architecture improves high availability and
provides better resource utilization. It reduces
unplanned as well as planned downtime, but
even if no problem occurs, Oracle RAC allows
customers to distribute the workload to as
many nodes as are available.
With a single SMP server, if anything fails the
whole machine goes down – user processing is
interrupted and can take 20 to 30 minutes to
resume on a cold standby system (active/passive
architecture). In such an environment, when the
primary system fails, administrators have to
manually dismount and remount storage volu-
mes, user connections have to be established to
the new server and the buffer cache in the stand-
by’s memory needs to be populated with the
most frequently used data.
Oracle RAC’s active/active system offers virtually
uninterrupted processing for users and elimina-
tes the need for these recovery steps – all cluster
nodes are always connected to all the storage so
no volume dismounting and remounting is
required. Users on the surviving nodes remain
connected, only the users on the failed node
need to reconnect.
Oracle RAC helps to reduce planned down-
time as well. As RAC nodes can be added and
removed “on the fly,” maintenance tasks such
as hardware or operating system upgrades can
be performed on individual nodes without
shutting down the system completely.

1a: Active/passive cluster solution (failover cluster)
Performance and Scalability
SAP’s applications ares based on a 3-tier archi-
tecture: the data are managed by a database
server, the application functionality runs on
an application server, and on the user’s device
runs nothing but the presentation functiona-
lity.
This architecture provides for scalability at the
application layer, because SAP supports the
distribution of the application workload across
several application server instances, which in
turn can be run on several application server
machines.
However, SAP’s architecture is not as scalable
at the database layer, as it assumes that there
is one single database server only. Therefore, in
the past, when the workload was growing, at
the application layer it was up to you to either
replace the existing machine by a bigger one
(“scale up”) or add an additional machine of
similar size and power (“scale out”) – whereas
at the database layer the “scale up” approach
was your only option. Oracle RAC has chan-
ged that: As for an application an Oracle RAC
system looks perfectly like one single database
server, the SAP application now accepts the
existence of several Oracle instances running
on several machines. In other words: Oracle
RAC gives you all the scalability options at
the database layer which you have always had
on the SAP application layer.
O r a c l e R e a l A p p l i c a t i o n C l uO
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1b: Active/active cluster solution (Oracle RAC)
Grid Computing (Adaptive Computing)
Today, businesses are putting IT organizations
under tremendous pressure to deliver the high-
est quality of service, in terms of maximum
availability and scalability, at the lowest pos-
sible cost, and at the highest level of efficiency
and flexibility. In short, IT is being asked to
do much, much more with much, much less.
Enterprise Grids make these seemly impossible
challenges achievable. Enterprise Grids, made
up of large configurations of very low cost, com-
modity clusters, dramatically reduce the cost
of computer hardware. Oracle RAC technology
enables this low-cost hardware platform to deli-
ver the highest quality of service that rivals and
exceeds the levels of availability and scalability
achieved by the most expensive, mainframe
SMP computers. By dramatically reducing
administration costs and providing new levels
of administration flexibility, Oracle is enabling
the enterprise Grid environment.
The Enterprise Grid will have a profound im-
pact, enabling business to be more adaptive,
proactive and agile. With enterprise Grids,
data centers will have the ability to meet the
changing demands of business at each moment
in time – just in time. Application workloads
will be managed as services that must meet
defined levels of quality. Processing resources
and storage will be allocated to services in a
fluid fashion to ensure that those quality levels
are maintained. Each processing node or stor-
age component in the Grid can change its
individual personality almost instantaneously
without any downtime for any application.
 10

“We have achieved all our objectives. Despite the fact that the solution is very
innovative, Fujitsu Siemens Computers implemented the project without any
hitches and faster than planned. That is not necessarily the rule in the IT sector.”

—RAINER WOHLHÖFNER
Head of Information Technology,
SRI Radio Systems GmbH

M A N A G I N G M A X I M U M AVA I L A B I L I T Y S I M P LY A N D E F F I C I E N T LY:

SRI RADIO SYSTEMS TAKES A NEW APPROACH TO

RUNNING SAP R/3

SRI Radio Systems

GmbH, Durach Powerful, reliable business processes are a top About SRI Radio Systems
priority for more and more companies. Yet this
Few mobile phone users know what they are,
usually means that costs grow faster than the
but use them just the same: wireless base
demands, for example due to redundant infra-
www.sri.de stations with UMTS and GSM technology from
structures and the time and effort needed for
The Customer
SRI Radio Systems (SRI). The company from
operations management. That is why SRI Radio
SRI Radio Systems GmbH, Durach, a suburb of Kempten, Germany,
Systems took a different approach, introducing
Durach employs just over 500 people and has long
a solution that comprises a unique combination
been an established partner of carriers. The
The Project of leading software on Solaris-based PRIME-
latter have come to respect the high standard
Optimization of the POWER servers and is distinguished by fault
IT infrastructure for SAP®
of quality of the systems, for example, and the
tolerance, performance on demand, optimal use
R/3® to ensure higher
refined production and logistics processes with
of resources and efficient management. For the
and simpler operations which SRI ensures its ability to deliver at
first time in the world, Fujitsu Siemens Compu-
management short notice. The fact that the company lives
ters implemented SAP R/3 on Oracle Real
up to the very highest standards was confir-
The Solution Application Clusters (RAC) with VERITAS
med when it was named “The Best Factory”
The world’s first Solaris- Storage Foundation™ for Oracle RAC (SFRAC)
based implementation
in the Industrial Excellence Award 2005.
from Symantec Corporation (formerly VERI-
of SAP® R/3® on Oracle TAS Software).
Real Application Clusters;
installation and manage-
ment with VERITAS Storage Benefits for SRI Radio Systems The solution at a glance
Foundation™ for
• Maximum availability for business processes • Introduction of a disaster-proof cluster environment for
Oracle RAC from
• No unused server capacities SAP R/3
Symantec Corporation
• Lower administration overhead • Migration from SAP R/3 4.6c to Oracle RAC
Partners:ey Benefits: • Simple scalability of the environment • Implementation and management with VERITAS Storage
Oracle and Symantec • Improved response times Foundation™ for Oracle RAC
Cost Reduction • Rapid implementation of the new solution • Servers: 3x PRIMEPOWER 450, each with four SPARC™
Long-term IT concept in less than three months processors and 16 GB main memory
to ensure ROI • Operating system: Solaris
Streamlined DBA
• Concept: SRI Radio Systems and Fujitsu Siemens Computers
• Implementation partners: Oracle and Symantec Corporation

Optimization according to the minimax
principle
Whether in Rovaniemi, Durban or Hamilton,
SRI supplies and installs turnkey base stations
worldwide within just five days on request – a
service that would be unimaginable without
perfect production and logistics processes.
And the availability demands that SRI makes
of its entire SAP environment are accordingly
high. However, they were hard to reconcile in
practice because the production line runs five
or six days a week over three shifts. That left
only a very narrow time frame on the wee-
kend for maintenance work. “Any
problems there would have had an immediate
impact on our business,” says Rainer Wohlhöf-
ner, Head of Information Technology at SRI.
That was a risk that SRI wanted to minimize
with a new solution offering maximum availa-
bility for the SAP environment and simpler
operations management.
Fujitsu Siemens Computers offered the ideal
concept with a high-availability parallel com-
puting environment.
VERITAS SFRAC and SAP R/3 on Oracle
RAC were implemented on three Solaris-based
PRIMEPOWER servers. And there were good
reasons for this choice. With its multiple,
simultaneously active nodes, Oracle RAC
ensures maximum fault tolerance for the data-
base. Since the workload is distributed across
the cluster, companies can use several smaller
and low-cost servers and, if needed, expand
the environment flexibly by adding new
servers. Effective support is offered here by
VERITAS SFRAC. Components of the inte-
grated solution include special cluster server
technology and a cluster file system to enable
simpler installation and management of RAC
databases. In the event of an error, this ensu-
res that there is a smooth switchover between
the servers; one of the systems remains the
master and data consistency is retained.
SAP on Real Application Clusters (RAC) at S.R.I. with Fujitsu Siemens 11
Here are the details of the solution, which has
been tested by SAP exclusively for Fujitsu
Siemens Computers. One Oracle instance and
an application server are installed on each
system in the cluster. The enqueue server and
the replicated enqueue have also been separated
and virtualized. SRI uses VERITAS SFRAC
for cluster management and switchover. The
impact of this combination is enormous:
maximum availability, yet minimum admini-
strative overhead and costs. There is reliable
protection against individual potential error
sources. The entire environment is also disaster-
proof, since one node is installed at a separate
location. Optimal use is made of computing
power. SRI was also able to reduce its hardware
investments, since no redundant systems are
required. This would not have been possible
with conventional clusters. And, last but not
least, users profit from response times that are
better by around 40 percent. So it is no wonder
that Wohlhöfner is satisfied with the new
solution: “The concept is very convincing. We
also liked the fact that Fujitsu Siemens Com-
puters needed less than three months for the
project and that the changeover was complete-
ly transparent. Our 480 employees didn’t
notice a thing.”
12

“The SAP infrastructure changeover has completely fulfilled our expectations. We can benefit from the
SAP-validated and certified infrastructure architecture model with Oracle RAC and Linux in a variety
of respects for SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM use.”

— JOSÉ LUIS CHECA,

Systems & Architecture Manager,
Gas Natural

S A P N E T W E AV E R B U S I N E S S I N T E L L I G E N C E / S A P
S T R AT E G I C E N T E R P R I S E M A N A G E M E N T
AT A G L A N C E
Gas Natural has utilized a system platform chan-
geover to optimize SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP SEM
use and create advantages in terms of efficiency
With approximately 10 million customers, the Gas
Natural Group based in Barcelona represents a key
international player in the energy sector. The Gas
Natural Group, operating in a total of 10 countries
with just under 6,700 employees, achieved annual
net profit 633.9 million euros in the financial year
2004. Since deregulation of the energy market in
1998, the multinational company has been pursuing
an ambitious expansion and diversification strategy.
In addition to the production, supply and transport
of natural gas, the energy group now generates elec-
tricity with its own power stations and wind turbine
generators, which it provides to end consumers and
companies. To increase competitiveness and realize
growth-oriented company objectives, Gas Natural has
intensively utilized solutions provided by the mySAP
Business Suite family since 2000.
“SAP solutions are an important cornerstone for us on
the path towards further profitable growth,” states
José Luis Checa, Systems & Architecture Manager at
Gas Natural.
Several objectives on the to-do list
In the autumn of 2004, Gas Natural introduced an
extensive realignment for the system platform/archi-
tecture utilized, with the specific aim of optimizing
use of the combined application solutions SAP
NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM. As IT Manager José Luis
Checa explains, “To begin with, there was a real need
for action to get the system performance and response
times up to a better level. At the same time, we also
endeavored to improve the cost efficiency for SAP NW
BI-/SAP SEM operation.
And on top of that, we also wanted to be able to
respond to a more intensive future use of the SAP
solution in a more flexible and straightforward way.”
A significant trigger for optimizing the system per-
formance was the batch and online operation occurring
at the same time, in which extremely large data
volumes had to be processed in a very short time. This
mixed operation was called for in particular because
of increased processing requirements with the SAP
SEM consolidation of budget/finance data in Latin
America. The total worldwide SAP environment of
Gas Natural with over 5000 users is served centrally
from Barcelona, 7 days a week X 24 hours a day from
2 major computing centers.
Added value through a combination of the
tried-and-tested with the new.
A taskforce consisting of members of the Gas Natural
IT section examined solution alternatives for achieving
the objectives set out and evaluated these in detail.
The following innovations were adopted, which were
to be implemented as part of a project:
• Implementation of a horizontal architecture model
for extending the database level based on Oracle
Real Application Clusters 9i with simultaneous
improvements on the application level, without
changing these technically.
• Validation and certification of the infrastructure
architecture by SAP.
• Introduction of the uniform operating system
platform Linux Red Hat with newIntel-based
hardware on the application and database level for
SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM use; but without funda-
mentally modifying the SAP solutions.

• Migration of the existing SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM
database to the new RAC database cluster Linux
platform.
• Extensive tests, so as to be able to check functional
correctness and carry out performance measure-
ments for the old and new environment.
According to IT expert Mr. Checa “we opted for RAC
as we had positive experience with the Corporate Data
Warehouse used since 2000 and which currently has a
volume of 2.2 TB. At the same time, we were also
striving towards improving system performance.
The decision for Linux was justified on the basis that
a more cost-effective platform was associated with the
SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP SEM in comparison to
the Unix system used up until now – in particular
through the use of standard Intel/-AMD servers.”
Short project realization time – great results from
the partners involved
The optimization project was realized in a time frame
of just 3 months – including validation and certifi-
cation of the infrastructure model. The new SAP NW
BI/-SAP SEM system platform has been running since
January 2005. The system utilizes a 2-node Red-Hat
cluster with two Intel-based HP servers on the appli-
cation level.
The database level consists of a 7-node cluster with
Linux Red Hat 3.0 and Oracle RAC 9.2.0.5 as well
as the Oracle Cluster File System 1.0.13 on 7 Intel-
based HP servers. Formerly, Windows (Intel server)
was used on the application level and Unix (Unix
high-performance computers without RAC) on the
database level. In addition to the SAP validation/cer-
tification and the extension of the new SAP system
platform, the project work focused on database migra-
tion (size of the database: around 290 GB) towards
RAC as well as extensive tests with special test tools.
As Gas Natural IT Manager Mr. Checa recalls,
“Everyone involved pulled together wonderfully for
the work. That meant great results. The effective
teamwork between SAP, Oracle, HP and Red Hat
was a crucial factor for the success of the project.”
“The use of database clusters has meant that SAP
NW BI/-SAP SEM response times have improved
by an average of 144.5 percent.”
SAP on RAC at Gas Natural 13
Impressive productivity and efficiency boosts
Mr. Checa sums up what has been achieved as follows:
“The SAP infrastructure changeover has completely
fulfilled our expectations. We can benefit from the
SAP-validated and certified infrastructure architecture
model based on Oracle RAC and Linux in a variety
of respects for SAP NetWeaver BI-/SAP-SEM use.”
Measurements carried out by Gas Natural have thus
revealed that “the SAP NW BI/-SAP SEM response
time have improved by an average of 144.5 percent
thanks to the use of database clusters. The level of
satisfaction among users has increased considerably.”
Furthermore, the energy group can now realize
potential platform extensions, which may be neces-
sary because of increasing SAP NW BI/-SAP SEM
user numbers. “All we do then is bring further RAC
nodes or servers into operation,” states Mr. Checa.
In the Corporate Data Warehouse strategy of Gas
Natural, SAP NW BI/-SAP SEM (currently over 700
named users) represents a hugely significant element,
which is becoming increasingly more important for
the entire company operation. In addition, the SAP
database availability has improved further because of
the new system platform. If one (or more) RAC nodes
fail for some reason, the others immediately assume
their task(s). The three database administrators
responsible for the databases at Gas Natural are also
responsible for the RAC implementation.
Cost reduction through Linux
When it comes to the Linux platform, Gas Natural is
equally satisfied with the results achieved. More pre-
cisely: “Linux allows us to significantly reduce the SAP
operating costs. Instead of special Unix servers, we can
now utilize more cost-effective standard Intel/AMD
servers. In comparison to Unix, the cost ratio is at
least 1:10,“ stresses IT expert José Luis Checa. Gas
Natural also wants to extend RAC/Linux to the SAP
IS/U application in future, in addition to the SAP
NetWeaver Business Intelligence/SAP Strategic Enter-
prise Management. The objectives here: to reduce the
time frame with batch runs for accounts settlement;
but at the same time have recourse to cost-effective
standard servers, or improve system scalability against
the backdrop of continually increasing numbers of
customers. The planning for this is already underway
in the multinational and expansion-oriented energy
group.
14
Summary
Gas Natural has optimized SAP NetWeaver BI-SAP
SEM use on the basis of Oracle Real Application
Clusters (RAC) and Linux. Thus, the multinational
energy group has boosted system performance,
increased IT cost efficiency and can also respond to
further SAP NW BI-SAP SEM use very flexibly in
terms of its IT capabilities.
Sector
Energy service sector
Internet address:
www.gasnatural.com
The most important challenges:
• Improvement in the SAP NetWeaver BISAP SEM
system operation resulting from a change to the
user application, in particular via an overlapping
of batch and online processing
• Cost reduction in the SAP infrastructure.
Project aims:
• Introduction of new infrastructure technology
components for optimized SAP NetWeaver (NW)
BI-/SAP SEM use, with significant system or per-
formance improvements.
• Strategic realignment of the SAP infrastructure
for a more cost-efficient and future-flexible IT
expansion, based on a SAP-certified infrastructure
architecture model and standard IT Components,
without farreaching changes on the application
level.
Decision for Oracle RAC and Linux:
• Experience already gained with the Oracle Real
Applications Cluster (RAC) solution.
• Realization of cost savings via a platform
migration towards open source/Linux.
Highlights of the implementation:
• Formulation of feasibility studies with concrete
project stages.
• SAP certification for the new infrastructure
architecture.
• Extension of the new SAP-RAC-Linux environ-
ment together with new Intel server hardware
and changes on the database and application level.
• Close coordination between SAP, Oracle, HP and
Red Hat.
• Extensive tests for the new SAP-RAC-Linux
platform.
Main benefits for the customer:
• Above-average improvement in response times;
the level of satisfaction among SAP NW BI-/SAP
SEM users has increased demonstrably.
• Future security through SAP validation and
certification of the new architecture model.
• Simplified scalability for SAP solutions based on
databases; more flexible SAP NW BI-/SAP SEM
extension.
• Cost savings with the SAP infrastructure platform.
• Basis for the use of cost-effective Intel/AMD-
based “standard servers.”
• No general changes required for the SAP software.
• Further increase in the SAP high availability.
Existing System landscape:
• SAP R/3 Enterprise (4.7) and SAP IS-U (4.64)
• SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence 3.1 and
SAP Strategic Enterprise Management 3.2
Database
• Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) 9.2.0.5
with Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) 1.0.13
Hardware
• Hewlett-Packard HP
Operating system
• Linux Red Hat AS 3.0
 Certified SAP on RAC Configurations for Windows and Linux 15

C E R T I F I E D S A P O N R A C C O N F I G U R AT I O N S F O R W I N D O W S A N D R A C
We have separate scenarios for Windows and Linux as well as for RAC 9.2 and RAC 10.2 (in controlled availability from 04/2006
on i.e. for selected customers)

Windows Linux

1. Oracle RAC 9.2 on Windows x86 and IA64 (no support for x86_64)
• Oracle 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8
• OCFS 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8 for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• Windows 2003 Release 1 (no support for Windows 2003 Release 2)
minimum 2 nodes
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services
(SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instances)
3. RAC 9.2 on Linux x86, x86_64, and IA64 for RHEL4 or SLES9
• Oracle 9.2.0.7 or 9.2.0.8
• OCFS2 1.2.0 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• RHEL 4.2 or higher
• SLES9 SP3 or higher

• iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes
Not supported:
– crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum
two cards)
– Infiniband
– raw devices
2. Oracle RAC 10.2 on Windows x86, x86_64 and IA64 (from 04/2006
on for selected customers)
• Oracle 10.2.0.2 or higher
• OCFS 10.2.0.2 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• Windows 2003 Release 1 (no support for Windows 2003 Release 2)
minimum 2 nodes
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services
(SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instance)
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (SAP
Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instance on same node)
• minimum 2 nodes without SAP Enqueue Replication
• minimum 4 nodes with SAP Enqueue Replication (2 nodes for RAC
and 2 seperate nodes for Red Hat Cluster or HP ServiceGuard Cluster
for SAP Enqueue Replication)
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red Hat
Cluster on two separate nodes (SAP Central Instance cannot be
co-located with RAC instances on same node)
Not supported:
– iSCSI – Firewire – crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit
Ethernet, minimum two cards) – Infiniband – Red Hat GFS
– Veritas CFS – ASM – raw devices
4. Oracle RAC 10.2 on Linux on x86, x86_64 and IA64 for RHEL4 or
SLES9 (from 04/2006 on for selected customers)
• Oracle 10.2.0.2 or higher
• OCFS2 1.2.0 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software
• NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software

• iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes • RHEL 4.2 or higher

• SLES9 SP3 or higher, minimum 2 nodes without HP ServiceGuard
Not supported: or Red Hat Cluster (Oracle Clusterware for SAP Replicated Enqueue),
– crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet, minimum minimum 4 nodes with HP ServiceGuard or Red Hat Cluster for SAP
two cards) Enqueue Replication (2 nodes for RAC and 2 seperate nodes for Red
– Infiniband Hat Cluster or HP ServiceGuard Cluster for SAP Enqueue Replication)
– ASM • SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (2 node con-
– raw decives figuration, co-location of SAP Central Instance with RAC Instance)
• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red Hat
Cluster (minimum 4 nodes are required, SAP central instance cannot
be co-located with RAC instance on same node)
Not supported:
– iSCSI – Firewire – crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit
Ethernet, minimum two cards) – Infiniband – Red Hat GFS
– Veritas CFS – raw devices
16

With this slogan, Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG produces and markets a wide variety of products
under the brand name established since 1891. In developing the first storable and ready-made baking
powder in 1893, Dr. August Oetker laid the foundations for a corporate group which currently operates
on a successful international basis with around 21,000 staff in six different business segments.

“QUALITY IS THE BEST RECIPE”

With Dr. August Oetker KG as a holding company,
the Oetker Group is also active in the beer and spark-
ling wine area as well as in shipping and financial
services In addition to the food business segment.
Companies from the chemicals industry, publishing
and the five luxury hotels of the Oetker Group are
brought together in a further business field.
The Oetker Group achieved a turnover of 6.4 billion
euros in the financial year 2004 and is poised for
further international growth.
A business warehouse with minor faults
Preparations have been underway for the final aban-
donment of the mainframe world since 2001 at
Dr. Oetker. The necessity of conversion from OS 390
and DB2-based computer to Unix was out of the
question here.
In 2003 it became clear that an anticipated and inter-
nationally available business warehouse (BW) solution
with DB2 UDB based on SAP was rapidly reaching
its limits. The enormous growth in the database led
to bottlenecks in the system extension. Tables were
sometimes defective and the system activation was
inconsistent in its execution. A typical result of this
was that no attributes could be added to strategically
important tables for recording and updating sales
customer data. Deadlocks were the order of the day.
“We had to allow for at least one man day per week
on average for solving everyday problems, both in
regard to the database and for the applications, which,
of course, was not a sustainable situation,” states
Jörg Mucha, IT Organizer in the areas of Organiza-
tion, System Development and Business Intelligence.
For Mucha and his team, this meant an unjustifiable
extra workload as a result of programming and help
programs. Reliable reporting was also only possible
in certain circumstances or by indirect means in this
scenario. A reorganization of the system architecture
appeared unavoidable.
Migration to new territory
In the summer of 2003, Oracle was given the chance
to prove that the problems extant could be solved
through a migration of the existing SAP BW to
Oracle9i.
The test migration from DB2 7.2 to Oracle9i turned
out to be more difficult than initially assumed. This
reason for this lay in the fact that, in contrast to SAP
R/3, SAP BW had been developed using a database-
dependent approach in certain areas while the SAP
migration tools (R3load) did not take these depen-
dencies sufficiently into account. Despite these chal-
lenges, the results have convinced Dr. Oetker to move
to the database platform.
In December 2003, the Oetker Group concluded a
license agreement with Oracle for 3000 named users,
in order to replace the existing 53 DB2 installations.
The project began with the above SAP BW, the pro-
ductive conversion of this to Oracle 9.2 occurring in
the first six months of 2004.
After the success of these first migrations, the
systems of the Radeberg brewery and of Henkell &
Söhnlein will migrate to Oracle in this and the
forthcoming years in addition to the ERP systems of
Dr. Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG.
The advantages of a SAP business warehouse whose
operation is based on Oracle gradually became all the
more visible. Despite the very complex systems with
over 400 Infocubes, the problems which constantly
occurred when using the previous database, such as
optimizing and locking, vanished into thin air.
 D r. O e t k e r, D B 2 t o O r a c l e m i g r a t i o n f o r S A P B W 17

At the same time, the Oracle database proved to be As the manager responsible, Frank Pickert, IT Head
more economical in disk usage. Another concept in of Dr. August Oetker Nahrungsmittel KG, is now
saving numerical values and the use of bitmap indi- convinced of the merits of Oracle: “The growing
ces, which the SAP BW only uses with Oracle as complexity of the applications at Dr. Oetker calls for
standard, enabled disk space requirements to be an operationally reliable database system with corre-
reduced by around 20 percent. The path towards sponding growth potential. We regard the Oracle DB
achieving this proved to be “stony” in many res- as a strategic platform for integrating our affiliated
pects, especially as the migration from DB2 to companies in a uniform BW, ERP and CRM frame-
Oracle and SAP BW represented a voyage into work as well as for all further SAP and non-SAP
uncharted territory. applications extending beyond these modules.”
A team of specialists from the Oracle Support and It was and is a good tradition at Dr. Oetker to always
Solution Center in Walldorf, SAP experts and the opt for the products and services of the relevant
customer Oetker succeeded in realizing the migra- market leaders. This principle has been confirmed
tion within a time period which was very reasonable yet again with the migration from DB2 to Oracle9i,
given the complexity of such an application. At the as Oracle remains the number one choice worldwide
same time, SAP had to supplement the existing for 70 percent of all SAP applications.
tools with newly developed reports which, after It will come as no surprise then that all CHESS
transfer of the data from DB2 to Oracle, converted systems are based on the Oracle database.
the database in such a way as though the SAP BW
system were developed and setup with Oracle right
from the start. The process developed at Dr. Oetker
has meanwhile been successfully implemented with
further customers who have realized a similar migra-
tion. After the introductory phase, the system now
works with full stability at Dr. Oetker and is set to
be extended in the near future.
“We are very satisfied when it comes to operational
reliability” is how Dr. Franz Brüggemann, IT Busi-
ness Manager at Dr. Oetker, describes the current
situation. “We've finally eliminated the deadlock
problems. This and many other aspects were crucial
in our decision to incorporate Oracle as an integral
component in our entire CHESS business warehouse
in future”.

Harmony in an international environment

In the next few years, the company is endeavoring
to harmonize all systems in the international group.
A new UNICODE-based environment with R/3, a
BW and a CRM-System, in which the previous
systems are consolidated, were created under the
project name CHESS (Consolidation and Harmoni-
zation of the European SAP Systems). CHESS has
been productive since early 2004 and is continually
expanding through the integration of individual
national systems. The experiences gained from opera-
tion of the existing SAP BW systems was taken into
account when planning CHESS.
18

Amazing Improvements

Performance problems in response to constant increase in SAP usage and the announce-

ment that SAP would not support Unicode functionality for Informix forced the company

Testo to take action in its database utilization. A successful Informix-Oracle migration has put

this producer of professional test equipment in good hands. Various advantages were real-

ized by the platform change and not just those measured in monetary value.

T E S T O A G I N G E R M A N Y M I G R AT E S T H E I R
D ATA B A S E F R O M I N F O R M I X T O O R A C L E F O R
THEIR SAP SYSTEM

From the time Testo was founded in the year Nevertheless, where the operating system and
1957 until today the company has conti- database were concerned Testo continued with
nuously grown from a small to medium size what was tried and true. “We had built up
business and currently employs about 1,300 extensive Tru64 and Informix know-how that
people worldwide (2004 sales: 105 million we wanted to continue to be able to exploit
euros). In recent years the expansion-oriented that” explained Alexander Bühler of the Testo
Testo AG
Lenzkirch, Germany
company has achieved especially large gains in IT team. For some time now Testo has employ-
growth. It was not without reason that the ed various tools of the mySAP Business Suite:
Industry: “Growth Plus Testo” corporate group was ran- SAP R/3 (4.6C) with the components FI, CO,
Specialist for ked among the “500 mid-cap companies with MM, PP, SD, QS and HR as well as mySAP
Measurement Technology, the strongest growth” last year. Today the CRM (4.0) and SAP BW (3.2). Applications
23 Subsidiaries company from the Southern Black Forest has for e-mail, fax and telephone are also used.
operations worldwide with 23 subsidiaries. The HP hardware with Cluster File System
Annual Revenue: consists of two ES40 units, each with 4 Alpha
2004, 105 M€ Testo has always used its IT to efficiently CPUs and 10 GB memory.
shore up its growth while also using it to
Employees: continuously improve efficiency at the com-
1,300 pany. For about 10 years the test equipment
specialist utilized an ERP system from the
Oracle Product: Bäurer company together with HP hardware
Oracle Database based on the Tru64 operating system and a
9.2.05 database from Informix. In early 2002 Testo
Key Benefits: turned away from the Bäurer ERP software
Improvemen and switched to SAP R/3, primarily to safe-
guard its future needs especially in considera-
tion of its new international orientation.

Negative aspects forced company to act
As he reports: “The first problems surfaced
after about a year and a half with regard to
system stability and performance. We had
interfaced a number of subsidiaries to our
central SAP system, and this led to rapid
growth in data. Users complained again and
again about long, unacceptable response
times. The reason for these difficulties was
our Informix database.” Of course Testo could
have gotten a handle on the problem to some
extent by means of additional server equipment,
but the company did not want to make any
cost-intensive investments in hardware.
When another disadvantage of the database
materialized the company felt compelled
to act. Testo wanted to utilize the Unicode
capability offered by SAP, because it was
expanding with large subsidiaries in Asia and
this required multi-byte representation of
character sets. “After the IBM takeover of
Informix, SAP announced that it would no
longer support Unicode capability for Infor-
mix” explained Bühler. That sealed long-time
Informix user Testo’s decision to migrate to
a different SAP database system.
The company scheduled three months for an
evaluation or market analysis for the purpose
of selecting the database system Testo would
purchase for its future SAP operations.
According to comments by SAP expert Bühler
“The Microsoft Windows operating system
was excluded from the outset, and therefore
also the Microsoft SQL Server database. And
IBM’s DB 2 was not under serious considera-
tion either. Therefore we focused our evalua-
tions on the Oracle and MaxDB databases.”
I n f o r m i x - O r a c l e d a t a b a s e m i g r a t i o n a t Te s t o 19
Speaking in favor of Oracle according to Testo
was the fact that the prepared database is
available on most operating systems, and as a
stand-alone database it is not preloaded on the
hardware side. The analysis also indicated that
a migration to Oracle would not require the
purchase of any newer, faster hardware. Further-
more, the Oracle RAC (Real Application
Clusters) would offer the option of additional
– Alexander Bühler,
scalability, also without requiring additional
hardware. Another argument Testo offered in SAP Basis Administrator
favor of Oracle was said that SAP itself uses Testo AG
the database for productive systems, and good
and meaningful feedback was obtained from
various customers who were given as referen-
ces. That is how Bühler of the Testo IT team “ The upshot of this heightened
level of satisfaction and the
portrayed the decision-making process.
corollary reduction in demand
Smooth database Migration – without
for our support is that the IT
any stumbling blocks
team, especially the admini-
The Informix-Oracle migration ran like
clockwork and according to plan. strators, can now devote their
The key work steps were executed one after energies to other important
another: First the creation of a client copy of
SAP R/3 and a client copy of mySAP CRM,
tasks, projects for example ”
then transfers to a test system with Oracle,
a test migration with SAP Tools (Run time:
About 50 hours), and complete integration
testing (including subsidiaries).
According to Testo the migration “…was
tested for about three weeks.” During that
time period we were only able to identify
three faults, and it was possible to correct
these rat her quickly.”
20

monthly overview October monthly overview November

processor load in the course of the day 20/10/2004 processor load in the course of the day 18/11/2004
 I n f o r m i x - O r a c l e d a t a b a s e m i g r a t i o n a t Te s t o 21

Afterwards work began on the production Yet another improvement realized by database
migration that was to be executed over a migration, and one that is very meaningful
weekend. The migration was started on a for the mid-size company, is this: The IT
Friday evening about 7:00 pm, and it was team hardly gets any more phone calls from
completed by Sunday evening at 6:00 pm. users with regard to performance problems.
The primary tasks were: SAP Export from “The upshot of this heightened level of satis-
production system using SAP Tool R/3exp faction and the corollary reduction in demand
(18 hours); in parallel, installation and confi- for our support is that the IT team, especially
guration of Oracle on the production system; the administrators, can now devote their ener-
SAP Import to the production system using gies to other important tasks, projects for
SAP Tool R/3load (6 hours); startup of the example”, stated Bühler.
production systems and testing. No errors of
any kind were found, and the startup of the In his concluding remarks he revealed that
SAP production systems ran smoothly and it is not just the SAP users who are satisfied
without any problems. with the Informix-Oracle migration; manage-
ment too is satisfied in light of the financial
Funds for further IT implementations advantages based on the fact that Oracle made
hardware expenditures obsolete. This meant
“In contrast to our Informix experience the that funds could be invested in new SAP pro-
differences were quite astounding” was the jects, e.g. in the introduction of mySAP ERP
assessment of SAP expert Bühler. He added: for which Testo already has firm plans.
“Oracle is currently saving us a lot of money.”
That is because in spite of further increases in
data volume – and with the same hardware
and same CPU – usage loading of the systems
has quite simply been reduced. “Before Oracle
came along the load on the database server
was between 60 and 70 percent. Today it is
between 20 and 40 percent. And the load on
the application server has also been reduced,”
according to analyses by Testo. Before the
Informix-Oracle migration the data volume
was approx. 290 GB, whereas currently is at
330 GB.

Testo has an appreciation for the significance

of this reduction in server load. The bottom
line is that the company will not need to per-
form any cost-intensive hardware upgrades
in the foreseeable near future. And if it does,
it will always be possible to use Oracle-RAC
technology which distributes load to multiple
computing nodes.
22

O R A C L E 9 i D ATA M I N I N G C O N N E C T O R 1 . 1
F O R m y S A P TM B W

The ODM Connector enables users of SAP ® Business Warehouse 3.5 to mine data seam-
lessly using Oracle9i Data Mining within the SAP Data Mining framework. This SAP-certified
solution gives users the powerful and scalable Oracle9i Data Mining in-database algorithms
to extend and complement the SAP analytics offering.

ODM CONNECTOR 1.1 Mining in the database provides SAP customers

With the seamless integration of Oracle9i
Data Mining and SAP BW 3.5 and SAP CRM,
the ODM Connector provides SAP customers
advanced analytics embedded in the Oracle9i
database. Data and business analysts benefit
from the wide range of state-of-the-art data
mining functionality that is exposed through
the SAP Data Mining framework.
With BW 3.5, SAP released an API that third
party vendors can use to connect their solution
to the SAP Data Mining framework. Oracle has
certified Oracle9i Data Mining with the official
BW-DMI 3.5 interface of SAP AG through the
ODM Connector. Integration saves SAP users
time and money to leverage Oracle’s in-database
mining capabilities.
The ODM Connector integrates all of the
Oracle9i Data Mining algorithms and provides
model viewers using the Oracle9i Data Mining
Browser. The Connector automatically maps
SAP data types and transparently performs
clean up and recovery actions.
with increased data security, as data need not leave
the database. Moreover, in-database mining is
scalable using Oracle’s Real Application Clusters
(RAC), allowing all the data to be mined, not
just a sample. Avoiding copies of data, SAP
customers can maintain a single version of truth.
The ODM Connector allows customers to
leverage their investment in Oracle as most
SAP customers use the Oracle Database.
Because Oracle9i Data Mining is embedded in
the Oracle9i Database, mining results can also
be accessed through other Oracle tools, inclu-
ding Discoverer, OLAP, and Reports. Using
Oracle9i Data Mining, SAP customers can
achieve an overall lower total cost data mining
solution for analysis, development, and deploy-
ment while being fully integrated with their
SAP environment.
SAP BW 3.5
With BW, SAP delivers ready-to-go and easily
extensible reports, data infrastructure, and
mining models for selected best business
practice scenarios. The immediate benefits
of using this business content are reduced
implementation time and costs.

BW provides the Analysis Process Designer,

which enables a workflow-based, graphical
definition of the data mining activity. Users
choose from a palette of tools for identifying
data to mine, transformations on that data,
and mining activities, e.g., model building.
Oracle Data Mining algorithms are accessed
 Oracle Data Mining for SAP customers 23

SAP BW Analysis Process Designer – workflow-based SAP BW Data Mining Workbench

specification of transformations and mining

All Oracle9i Data Mining algorithms are made

The model viewing components of the Oracle9i
available in the ODM Connector as highlighted
Data Miner Browser are also integrated with
in the Instance Upgrade.
the ODM-BW Connector. This enables users
to see the model details as defined by Oracle9i
SAP BW Instance Upgrade
Data Mining. For example, in the figure below
we see the rules produced by the Adaptive
Bayes Network algorithm.

SAP BW Data Mining Browser – model viewer

As models are defined and built, they appear

in the Data Mining Workbench. Here the list
of available models and their status along with
the identifying vendor name.
24
T E C H N I C A L S P E C I F I C AT I O N S
Data Preparation
• BW-provided transformations
• Automatic data binning as part of model
build and apply (scoring).
In-Database Mining
Platform Requirements • All model build and apply operations
Oracle9i R2 Data Mining occur within the Oracle9i Database.
runs in Oracle9i R2 Data- • Default settings for all Oracle9i data mining
base on all supported
operations. Ability to override and specify
platforms.
settings.
SAP BW 3.5 SP05
including SAP J2EE Supervised Learning
Application Server 6.40 • Prediction of binary or multi-class outcomes
is required. with supporting probability (e.g., assuming
A, B, C, or D as possible outcomes, B will
occur with 60% probability).
• Real-time scoring performance for individual
records.
Attribute Importance
• Identify attributes as important for predicting
a target attribute using Minimum
Description Length algorithm.
• Most applicable for explicit attribute selection
for Naïve Bayes. Automatic attribute
importance/selection preprocessing is in-
cluded in the Adaptive Bayes Network
algorithm.
Naive Bayes Algorithm
• Makes predictions using Bayes’ Theorem,
which derives the probability of a prediction
from the underlying evidence, as observed
in the data.
• Naive Bayes cross-validation permits the
user to test model accuracy on the same
data that was used to build the model, rather
than building the model on one portion of
the data and testing it on a different portion.
Adaptive Bayes Networks Algorithm
• Like Naive Bayes, Adaptive Bayes Network
(ABN) builds models based on counts
observed from the data.
• ABN supports three modes of operation: build
a pruned Naïve Bayes model, a single-tree
model, or a boosted multi-tree model.
• In the single-tree model, ABN provides
model transparency with human readable
rules, e.g.:
IF MARITAL_STATUS = “Married“
AND EDUCATION_NUM = “13-16“
THEN CHURN= “TRUE“
Model Evaluation
• Confusion matrix for Naive Bayes and
Adaptive Bayes Networks models
• Lift calculation for Naive Bayes and
Adaptive Bayes Networks models
Unsupervised Learning
Association Rules Algorithm
• Find the occurrence and likelihood of co-
occurring events, e.g., Q, R, and S are
associated with Z, 452 times, with 78%
confidence.
• Finds rules with support greater than a
minimum support and confidence greater
than a minimum confidence.
• Filtered rules retrieval using ODM Browser
Clustering Algorithms
• Enhanced k-Means Algorithm: The hierarchi-
cal, distance-based k-means algorithm
partitions the data into a predetermined
number of clusters. The k-means algorithm
supports only numerical attributes.
• Orthogonal Clustering (O-Cluster)
Algorithm: Creates a hierarchical, grid-based
clustering model. The resulting clusters
define dense areas in the attribute space.
Clusters are described by intervals along
the attribute axes and the corresponding
centroids and histograms. O-Cluster supports
both numerical and categorical attributes.
It is particularly good in high dimensional
space (many attributes).
• Example results: Records 12, 15, and 25 are
members of Cluster_1. Output includes:
cluster centroids, histograms per attribute,
and cluster rules.
 Delta Consulting: RAC Services for SAP customers 25

D E LTA C O N S U LT I N G

Delta Consulting, Inc. is an SAP-focused consultancy offering extensive SAP consulting

services and Software Components for it’s SAP Customer Base. Delta has a strong
commitment to providing innovative and practical solutions that combine real-world
business expertise and products designed to extend and enhance the value and performance
of a customer’s SAP investment.

Our consulting services utilizes an extensive Services to be provided by Delta Consulting

database of senior consultants which average include:
over 9 years of SAP specific experience that
spans all SAP solutions and business services • RAC Implementations
that address the functional, technical and • Database Migrations Delta
infrastructure requirements of an SAP solution. • Tuning and Performance Optimization For additional
In additional, through our extensive Partner • System Healthchecks information regarding
network we can provide worldwide deployment • Backup/Recovery and Hot Standby Solutions Delta Consulting,
capabilities in the development area. please visit our website
Over two-third’s of SAP’s customers run their at www.go-delta.com
As a certified SAP Services Partner for over applications on Oracle. With SAP’s endorse- or contact
Jack Tomb,
10 years and a member of the Oracle Preferred ment and certification of Oracle9i RAC the
Partner at
Partner Program (OPP), Delta Consulting is motivation to implement RAC includes: 610-558-1730.
pleased to announce its selection by Oracle
to extend its agreement to provide consulting • Higher Availability
services for Oracle Real Application Clusters – New Requirements
(RAC). Using SAP with Oracle RAC offers a – Maintenance window negotiation
unique solution for SAP customers already – More and more workplaces rely on
running Oracle by providing them with a SAP R/3
total solution that provides high availability
and scalability. Our team includes highly • More Flexibility
skilled and experienced Oracle DBA’s who are – Dynamical growth by adding servers
trained and certified in SAP basis administra- – Better reuse of equipment
tion.
• Cost Savings
Oracle9i RAC is the highly scalable and – Buy cheaper servers (scale out)
reliable database cluster for mission critical – Reduce maintenance costs
SAP solutions. Our commitment and focus
on this technology enables Delta Consulting Realize Real ROI…the Rewards of Innovation.
to bring the best practices for migrating an Let Delta Consulting provide your organization
existing SAP R/3 4.6D installation from a with the infrastructure services required to
single instance Oracle database to a multiple power your SAP environment.
instance Oracle RAC cluster database confi-
guration.
26

"RMAN has greatly improved reliability of backups and database copies for our customers.
We can now consistently deliver QA and development environments to our customers to
meet their project needs. With automated database duplication, RMAN allows us to perform
trouble free cloning.”
— R I C H B E R N AT,
Sr DBA/SAP Basis Administrator
ChrevronTexaco

CHEVRONTEXACO: ORACLE RECOVERY MANAGER

( R M A N ) D U P L I C AT E – D B A T I M E S AV E R T O T H E
RESCUE

Overview These databases manage critical information

ChevronTexaco relies on Oracle Recovery
Manager (RMAN) for guaranteed backup
and more importantly, recovery of its Oracle
ChevronTexaco Corp.
databases that underpin a comprehensive suite
of SAP applications, servicing 25,000+ US-
Industry:
based employees. In addition, ChevronTexaco
• Ranks among world’s
utilizes RMAN to automate the cloning of
largest global energy
companies
SAP databases for QA and development pur-
poses, and to effectively restore all databases
• Ranks among world’s
largest crude oil and
at a secondary site in the event the production
natural gas producers data center suffers a complete disaster or
• Markets Chevron,Texaco,
outage.
Caltex fuel products
worldwide
Introduction
ChevronTexaco Corp. was formed by the
Annual Revenue:
merger of Chevron Corp. and Texaco Inc. It
$120 billion
ranks among the world’s largest and most
competitive global energy companies, with a
Employees:
125 year legacy tracing back to a seminal oil
50,000 in 180 + countries
discovery in 1879 near Los Angeles, California.
ChevronTexaco is active in more than 180
countries, and is engaged in every aspect of
the oil and gas industry, including exploration
and production; refining, marketing and
transportation; chemicals manufacturing and
sales. Its fuel products are marketed world-
wide through the Chevron, Texaco and Caltex
brands.
ChevronTexaco’s U.S. SAP DBA group is
responsible for six production databases,
encompassing a total of 7.5 TB, accessed by
over 20,000 selfservice users, 3,000 named
users, and 5,000 financials application users.
for all of ChevronTexaco’s SAP modules, in-
cluding Financials, HR, Production Revenue
Accounting, BW, and Sales & Distribution.
The databases sustain high transaction rates,
with approximately 3-5% of data changing
on a daily basis, generating 20-50 GB of
archived logs daily.
RMAN improves ability to clone database
Subsets of the databases are regularly cloned
(or, “refreshed”) for QA and development
environments – in total, 20 TB across 30+
databases. Production cloning refreshes occur
monthly and on-demand. On occasion, project
database refreshes are requested to different
points-in-time, to accommodate various
project phases. In just one day, these refreshes
can incur 6+TB of data movement.
ChevronTexaco faced many challenges to sup-
port ongoing development projects. The SAP
DBA group depended on a myriad of SQL and
shell scripts to perform refreshes. As data vol-
ume steadily grew, refreshes were not complet-
ing within the required refresh window, which
interfered with development schedules. These
challenges, stemming from reliance on OS-
level backup and restore procedures, included:
• Refresh could not be performed to the same
host, and required a separate database server
• Renaming of Oracle datafiles and directories
during restore
• Parsing SQL to rename datafiles and rebuil-
ding controlfile during restore

Because of these challenges and the impact on
internal applications responsible for sensitive
data ranging from employee personal informa-
tion to payroll statements, it became apparent
that the SAP DBA group needed a simpler,
more effective backup, recovery, and refresh
method. After investigating several alternative
tools and their associated costs, the IT group
proceeded to standardize on RMAN for all SAP
databases. RMAN has met those challenges
head-on.
With RMAN, ChevronTexaco consolidated to
a single set of RMAN scripts accessible by all
databases. By using the RMAN DUPLICATE
to clone a database, ChevronTexaco greatly
simplified their scripts and expanded their level
of automation.
RMAN enables ChevronTexaco to:
• Easily refresh an instance to the same or a
different host, at a current or point-in-time,
and automate renaming of datafiles
• Reduce tape consumption by 80% by
utilizing incremental backups, which only
backup changed blocks
Detect physical block-level corruptions
• Configuration
during backup and restore
• Validate block integrity of weekly full
backups using RESTORE DATABASE
VALIDATE
• Ensure that all files needed for restore are
present
• Configure backup retention policy to easily
obsolete backups that are no longer required
• Centralize backup and recovery management
for 40+ databases
RMAN enables the DBAs at ChevronTexaco
to meet their SLA:
• Recovery time objective (RTO) for complete
restore of the production databases of 72
hours, from declaration of disaster. For
restoring individual databases, an RTO of 1
hour for every 100 GB of data to be restored.
• Weekly full backup to tape completing in
5 hrs for a 2 TB production database, with
average throughput of 110 MB/sec using 2
tape devices.
C h e v r o n Te x a c o , R M A N f o r S A P 27
• Development-mandated refresh windows. Backup & Recovery Challenge
For example, a 2 TB refresh to be completed • Creation of QA and develop-
in 9 hours. ment databases not complet-
ing within set timeframes,
Conclusion impacting testing and develop-
ment schedules
ChevronTexaco uses Oracle Recovery Manager
to provide simple and reliable backup, reco-
Backup & Recovery Solution
very, and database refreshes, while adding no
• Oracle Recovery Manager,
additional license and integration cost to their
Oracle 9.2.0.4
existing environment. • 6 production SAP databases
The SAP DBA group reaped considerable cost • 500GB to 2TB per database
savings and productivity benefits: • 250 – 1400 datafiles per
• Hardware savings through ability to refresh database
database to the same host, without requiring • 25,000+ named users
• Weekly incremental level 0 of
a separate server production databases to tape
• Tape storage savings using RMAN incre- • Daily incremental level 1
mental backups backups
• 20 TB across 30+ databases for
• No additional cost, as RMAN is integrated QA, development environments
with the database • Monthly RMAN DUPLICATE to
• Simplified scripts and greater levels of refresh QA instances
automation • Disaster recovery time objec-
tive of 72 hrs, for restoring
• Easier delivery of development environment production databases at
refreshes to customers, meeting their time- remote site
frames
System & Network
• Automated and reliable solution to provide
guaranteed data restoration
• (13) HP N-class & RP servers
for production, QA, and deve-
RMAN Benefits lopment environments
• Guaranteed, accurate backup and recovery • 4-8 CPUs per server
• Automatic block corruption detection • 6-20 GB memory per server
and repair • HP-UX 64-bit
• Performance-optimized, spacesaving • Oracle9i Database, R 9.2.0.4
backup and restore operations • 1-10 databases/server
• Fine-granular data operations at table- • SAN attached StorageTek
space, datafile, archive log, controlfile, 9840A and 9980 tape drives,
and block level 1GB fibre
• HP OpenView Storage Data
• One-step database cloning
Protector 5.1
• Extensible to third party media managers
• No additional license cost – RMAN is an
integrated feature of the Oracle Database
Server
For More Information
• Oracle9i Recovery Manager User’s Guide
• RMAN on OTN
28
“This complex SAP migration to HP Integrity servers ran seamlessly and the result is a trib-
ute to the spirit of the cooperation that existed between Burda, HP, Oracle and Intel. We
gained valuable knowledge, service quality and time.”
— M AT H I A S E N D ,
B U R D A D I G I TA L S M O O T H LY M I G R AT E S
SAP ENVIRONMENT TO HP’S POWERFUL
I N T E G R I T Y S E RV E R P L AT F O R M
Burda Digital GmbH
Hamburg-based Burda Digital GmbH is a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Burda Group.
Although it has expanded to serve wider mar-
kets, its principal role is still to provide IT
services for all the Burda publishing and print
businesses.
One of SAP’s first customers, Burda Digital
has decades of experience with SAP business
solutions. Burda Digital is renowned for its
abilities in this field and is responsible for
providing SAP® R/3® services to 1,300 of
the 7,400 employees of Hubert Burda Media,
ensuring that the IT environment is capable
of handling up to 800 users simultaneously.
To support Hubert Burda Media, Burda
Digital runs many functions including salary
payments, monthly finance calculations, invoice
processing, advertising and sales management
plus a wide variety of other daily business tasks.
To handle the various business tasks, fifteen
separate SAP R/3 instances were deployed in a
three-tier architecture environment, of which
six were productive systems running SAP R/3
4.6C. An additional two SAP Business Infor-
mation Warehouse (SAP BW) instances were
also implemented in a two-tier architecture to
handle the data warehouse operations.
Manager of System Technology, Burda Digital GmbH
End of the road
“Our SAP R/3 environment had been running
on two AlphaServer GS160 systems on the
Tru64 UNIX operating system and TruClus-
ter,” said Mathias End, manager of system
technology at Burda Digital.
“Unfortunately, the platform had reached the
end of its lifecycle and could not be extended
further.”
Burda Digital decided to seek a new, future-
oriented hardware solution that could improve
existing performance and enable growth.
To find the best solution provider, Burda
Digital assessed contenders on their ability
to deliver technology as well as their ability
to provide an innovative solution. Critical
considerations were the planned development
of microprocessor technology, the vendor’s
experience wimplex SAP R/3 environments
and the ability to deliver quality service.
The analysis also considered performance and
scalability as well as special capabilities such
as multi-OS support and partitioning.
On all counts, Burda Digital decided that
only one system could be seriously considered:
the HP Integrity server with Intel® Itanium®
2 processors.

Proven for SAP
“Our objective was to identify a platform that
was ideal for all our applications, including
data warehousing and CRM, as well as the
subscription management system that had been
developed over many years and on various OS
platforms,” said Thomas Giessler, manager of
system technology applications at Burda Digi-
tal. “For this reason, the multi-OS capability
of the HP Integrity platform was closely ex-
amined. Another factor in favor of HP Integrity
servers was the fact that the system is already
widely used for SAP and HP could provide
many verifiable references.”
HP’s flexibility was another critical factor in
Burda’s decision. According to End, at every
stage of the project, from initial offer and
drafting of the contract, to readiness to support
ISVs, HP clearly stood out from its competi-
tors. “HP was always willing to deal with our
requirements,” he said.
The solution provided for Burda Digital’s
SAP R/3 environment consists of two HP In-
tegrity rx8620 servers based on Intel® Itani-
um® 2 processors, both with 48 GB RAM and
running HP-UX 11i. They are connected to an
HP StorageWorks EVA 5000 storage system
with a total capacity of 12 TB. This is in turn
connected to the company’s wider storage
network by HP StorageWorks SAN switches.
Backup is provided by an HP StorageWorks
ESL 9595 tape library, managed by a Veritas
NetBackup Enterprise Server 5.1 running on
an HP Integrity rx2600 server. An additional
HP Integrity rx2600 server is used for test and
quality control in the storage and backup
environment.
Smooth transition
Working to a pre-defined plan, migrating to
the HP Integrity platform was seamless and
efficient and was achieved in less than 36 hours,
due largely to the HP Smooth Transition Process.
This process speeds up and simplifies the trans-
fer of Oracle databases from Tru64 UNIX to
HP-UX 11i.
B u r d a , O r a c l e t o O r a c l e M i g r a t i o n ( Tr u 6 4 - H P U X ) 29
Developed jointly by HP and Oracle, the HP
Smooth Transition Process minimizes transfer
times by using procedures already implemen-
ted within SAP environments but which,
until now, had not been used during standard
SAP migration procedures.
According to Geissler, it was a “major factor”
in keeping the project on schedule.
By choosing the HP Smooth Transition meth-
ods rather than more traditional SAP data
transfer, planned production downtime was
kept to a minimum and more SAP systems
were migrated within the same timeframe.
The changes for Burda Digital have been
profound. The workload previously handled
by eight Alpha processors is now performed by
just four Itanium 2-based HP Integrity servers.
The company has substantially reduced its IT
administration overheads and has also made
great advances in scalability and flexibility.
Initial tests showed that the new SAP R/3 en-
vironment with only four CPUs still delivers
an outstanding response of 200 to 400 ms.
Most importantly, Burda Digital has greatly
increased its customer satisfaction with quick,
efficient and flexible responses to user requests.
“This complex SAP migration to HP Integrity
servers ran seamlessly and the result is a tribute
to the spirit of the cooperation that existed
between Burda, HP, Oracle and Intel,“ added
End. “We gained valuable knowledge, service
quality and time.”
30

Challenges Solution Results

• It is the responsibility of Burda Digital
GmbH to provide vital SAP business
applications to 1,300 employees in virtually
every discipline of the Burda Group.
• Burda’s SAP environment was running
on two AlphaServer GS160 systems but
they had reached the end of their life.
• This was compromising not only the
current ability to deliver SAP but also
future growth plans of the group.
• Processing power has doubled with just
four HP Integrity servers now doing the
work of the previous eight Alpha pro-
cessors and SAP R/3 performance has
accelerated as a result of database reorgani-
zation.
• The complex migration ran seamlessly
and was achieved in under 36 hours.
• Burda Group now has the business advanta-
ges of scalability, flexibility, increased
customer satisfaction and reduced over-
heads.
• It was decided to migrate the SAP environ-
ment to two powerful Intel® Itanium®
2-based HP Integrity rx8620 servers.
• Storage and backup were provided with
HP StorageWorks EVA 5000, HP Storage-
Works ESL9595 and two HP Integrity
rx2600 servers.
• The new HP Smooth Transition Process
developed jointly by HP and Oracle was
used to speed up the migration of the
SAPR/3data.

Technology highlights: HP Services

• HP 24 x 7 support and guaranteed four hour response

Hardware
• 2 x Itanium 2-based HP Integrity rx8620 servers
• 2 x Itanium 2-based HP Integrity rx2600 servers
• 1 x HP StorageWorks EVA 5000 storage system
with 12 TB capacity
• HP StorageWorks SAN switches
• HP StorageWorks ESL 9595 tape library
Software
• SAP R/3 4.6C and SAP Business Information
Warehouse (SAP BW)
• HP-UX 11i v2 rel. 11.23
• Oracle database rel. 9.2.04 version
• Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server 5.1
• HP Proactive Essential Service
Why HP?
• On performance and scalability as well as special
capabilities such as multi-OS and partitioning,
Burda Digital decided that HP Integrity servers were
the only systems that could be seriously considered.
• HP’s Integrity offering is a proven platform for
running the mySAP Business Suite applications and
HP has the best knowledge and experience for
implementing SAP.
• HP’s flexibility and willingness to solve problems
made it stand out from the competitors.
 COOP Switzerland, Oracle Advanced Customer Services 31

“Databases are important pillars of support when using SAP. If the database systems do
not run optimally or are not available, this will have serious consequences for business
continuity. With Oracle Advanced Customer Service (ACS), we can benefit from an excellent
database support which has paid off for our business in many diverse ways.”

— MANUEL HONEGGER,
Head of Development, Member of the Management.

COOP ENSURES AGREED SERVICE LEVELS

D U R I N G S A P O P E R AT I O N W I T H O R A C L E
ADVANCED CUSTOMER SERVICES (ACS)

The best possible service support for Oracle ACS ensures support expertise and Industry:
Commerce/Retail trade
Oracle SAP customers support quality
Turnover:
Although hundreds and thousands of custo- In addition to this, the Coop has been using Over 14 billion CHF
mers of the retail giant Coop in Switzerland the Oracle Advanced Customer Service for SAP
Employees:
are not aware of the IT system in their daily since the spring of 2003, allowing it to utilize Around 50,000
encounters, its effective functioning ensures a whole series customized support/service
that customers can always obtain the goods Oracle products & services:
options.
• Oracle databases
and products they are looking for at the right Extension of the existing SAP landscape around • Oracle Advanced
time and in the right amount in over 1500 the SAP BW solution was a particularly crucial Customer Service (ACS)
markets. The essential SAP corporate solutions factor behind this decision. Both the require- for SAP
and special commercial applications form the ments for the database systems and the associa- Key Benefits:
basis of a successful business for the second ted support needs increase in conjunction with • Immediate and efficient
largest retail group in Switzerland. this. escalation management
(troubleshooting)
If the SAP Retail and SAP Business Warehouse Although it already has a team of database ad- • Faster upgrades
(BW) systems (all based on Oracle-databases) ministrators, the Coop felt that it was important
are not running, the business continuity, turn- • Reduced downtimes/-
to underpin the above SAP extension with a
over and image of the Coop will be at stake. Maintenance of business
more specialized and intensive database support
continuity
“Our Oracle databases in SAP operations have on a lasting basis. This was primarily intended
always been fundamentally critical to our to ensure that definite service support levels in • Planning for support
success. If they failed or did not run optimally, capacities
respect to system availability, performance and
we would encounter significant problems,” system stability can be adhered to better. • Optimized system
states Manuel Honegger, Head of Development management
at the Coop Switzerland, drawing attention to • Proactive system
As IT Manager Honegger declares, “we require
the high priority of the databases used in the monitoring
support know-how and excellent service quali-
SAP environment. The famous retail group
ty which we ourselves do not have. We there- • Increased productivity in
from Switzerland had “deliberately decidedly
fore decided in favor of the Oracle ACS /SAP the database administra-
for Oracle as part of a strategic evaluation.”
service offer.” The Coop has over 3500 SAP tion
users altogether. In the SAP Retail environ- • Permanent support for
ment, the Oracle database reveals a capability
of more than 4 terabytes, while in the SAP BW
area the 2 terabyte limit has recently been
exceeded.
32
Customized support services are provided
As for every Oracle ACS customer, individual
database services were provided for the Coop
with clear assignment areas. In the case of
the Coop, the following Advanced Customer
Services modules, amongst others, were pro-
vided:
- Fixed allocation of an Oracle SAP support
specialist
- Guarantee of optimum system performance
- Support in minimizing the system downtime
- Advice and assistance for system upgrades
- Optimum system handling for increasing
datavolumes
- Know-how and technology transfer in
Oracle/SAP matters
- Implementation and realization of best
practices
“After our positive
- Proactive system management
experience, we no
longer want to do
- Optimization of the total cost of ownership.
without the Oracle
The basis for this is a customized support
Advanced Customer
plan oriented towards the interests of the Coop
Service for SAP.”
with agreed capacity provision. Target/Actual
comparisons are regularly performed, as is the
exchange of all relevant information over the
remaining time realization of maintenance
– MANUEL HONEGGER
activities, changes to the basic system settings,
Head of Development
Member of the Management upgrade changes, Oracle technology renewals
Coop AG as well as via the capacities already utilized.
The Coop is able to use a special Oracle Web-
site (portal) which serves as a type of infor-
mation and communication platform between
Oracle and Coop.
Oracle Advanced Customer Support:
Tangible benefits
Coop IT Manager Honegger provides a
positive summary for the Oracle Advanced
Customer Service implemented: “Oracle ACS
for SAP is very clearly worthwhile. We bene-
fit from the services provided as well as from
the expertise and enormous pool of experience
which Oracle offers with ACS Services for
SAP customers.”
He continues, “two escalations occurred which
we were successfully able to overcome in a
very short time with the help of the Oracle
SAP specialist. Without this support, we would
have been confronted with massive problems
in at least one case and the business continuity
could have been seriously at stake. Thanks to
Oracle ACS, we were able to fulfill the service
levels specified.”
The fact that Oracle ACS for SAP enables the
option of a real-time, fully up-to-date exper-
tise/innovation transfer is regarded as a signi-
ficant advantage. Continuous contact with the
Oracle SAP specialist allows the Coop to con-
tinuously optimize the Oracle SAP system
operation. “He knows just what is important
to us, and has a profound level of experience
as well as tremendous knowledge regarding
innovations.
This results in recommendations which allow
us to maintain our pioneering role and enable
us to continually realize leading-edge solu-
tions,” emphasizes Honegger, and concludes
by saying “after our positive experience,
we no longer want to do without the Oracle
Advanced Customer Service for SAP.”
34

U S I N G P E R F O R M A N C E A N A LY S I S T O F I N E T U N E
T H E O R A C L E D A T A B A S E S U P P O R T I N G S A P.
R E D U C E D I S C I / O T O A M A X I M U M O F 1 / 1 0 0TH!

Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Ltd.

Information System Division

Electronic parts manufacturer Japan

Japan Aviation Electronics
Industry, Ltd. (JAE)
Headquarters:
1-21-2 Dougenzaka,
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Founded:
August 20, 1953
Capital:
10billion 690million yen
Sales:
Consolidated 115billion
800million yen/Independent
96billion 600million (2004)
Employees:
Consolidated 4,960/
Independent 1,783
(as of March 2005)
Business Summary
Focusing on connectors
for print foundations and
automobiles, JAE is also
expanding to demands in
portable electronics such
as laptops and cell phones.
Also manufacture system
equipment like displays,
Aeronautic/-Astronautic
products, such as gyros and
optical devices. Particularly,
JAE’s aeronautic/-astronautic
products are adopted in the
H2A Rocket and possess
top level technology
in the world.
Aviation Electronics Industry, Ltd. uses
SAP R/3 to integrate the backend systems
of 18 domestic and international compa-
nies to strengthen their global business.
As usage increased and data expanded,
the slowing of response led to a "Perfor-
mance Analysis” in October of 2004 based
on the Oracle database solution support,
“Advanced Product Services for SAP”,
offered by Oracle Corporation Japan for
SAP Systems. Not only did this improve
performance, but it was also successful
in eliminating error in batch processing.
Professional performance tuning services
are excellent supporters in making the
usage of R/3 more reliable.
Strengthening Global Business by
simultaneously introducing SAP R/3
into 18 associated companies
Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Ltd. (JAE)
started 52 years ago as a company repairing
aeronautical electronics. Currently, JAE manu-
factures four main product groups including
connectors, system devices such as switches
and input devices, aeronautic/astronautic prod-
ucts such as the world-class inertia sensor used
in the H2A Rocket and optical devices such as
optical fiber couplers. Global development has
been an early focus for JAE, and international
sales accounts for 35.2% of their total sales.
Also, as opposed to 7 associated companies
domestically, JAE possesses 11 associated
companies in Asia, United States, and Great
Britain.
JAE’s SAP R/3 based backend system is called
“J/1 System.”
“We named the system ‘J/1’ because it was a
project to make JAE number 1 in all fields.
By integrating the backend systems of sales,
production/supplying, inventory/distribution
and accounting to a global standard, we have
pursued a global operation where associate
companies around the world can cooperate
proficiently,” says JAE Information System
Division’s System Senior Manager Kunio
Uehara.
Since the company headquarters began full
operation in November 1998, group develop-
ment has gone smoothly and in August 2003,
the backend systems of the headquarters and
all 18 associated companies were replaced with
SAP R/3. Unified management of all corporate
activities was made possible by ERP. Oracle
was chosen as the central database for this
system.
“We first chose the Windows technology, and
then chose Oracle as the most secure and relia-
ble database in the Windows environment.
The fact that Oracle was the most commonly
used database for SAP R/3 users in Windows
environments or in environments that include
programs such as UNIX was also a factor in
our choice,” says Mr. Uehara.

Currently, JAE’s sales are steadily increasing.
Total sales in 2004 reached 1.4 times the total
sales in 1998. On the other hand, if the inven-
tory assets in 1998 were to be 100, they have
been condensed to 54 in 2004.
As usage expands and data increases,
response is slowed down
Implementation has achieved great results but
it also had problems. Data is growing at a pace
much faster than anticipated.
“In 2004 when our 18 companies simultane-
ously upgraded to standardize the R/3 version,
the increase in data accelerated even further.
A project to archive the data was launched,
but the rate of data increase was greater than
what could be deleted. Every month data
grew by 20GB, and claims from users about
slow response began to be a problem”, says
Information System Division’s Kazuo Yasuhara.
It was then that they learned of Oracle
Corporation Japan’s performance tuning
service for SAP users, “Performance Analysis.”
As a result of Performance Analysis, the
usage of the database became easier
“Performance Analysis” has two phases, a
“Performance Diagnosis” and “Tuning” based
on the result of the diagnosis. JAE performed
a performance diagnosis in October 2004.
As apparent by the fact that they were success-
ful in the big bang integration of SAP R/3
without the consultation of an outside party,
JAE possessed high enough technology within
the company to execute the actual tuning
operation. The “Performance Diagnosis” did
not require the stopping of everyday services or
to install a special program, or to even spend
time for preparation. A professional from Oracle
visited the site and analyzed the 12 telebytes
of raw data over two days. The report produced
was full of important suggestions.
For example, by utilizing Oracle’s new UNDO-
domain, batch processing errors due to ORA-
1555 that had been occurring over 50 times a
month was completely eliminated, and the
J a p a n Av i a t i o n E l e c t r o n i c s ( J A E ) u s i n g O r a c l e C u s t o m e r S e r v i c e s f o r S A P 35
administrator no longer has to respond to
problems at night or on their off days. By fol-
lowing the suggestions and revising the logic
in the SQL string, it was found that the batch
processing that took approximately 5 minutes
could be shortened by almost 1 minute. Also,
there were some SQL strings that reduced the
database’s occupying buffer by up to 1/100th
just by creating a secondary search.
“Overall I/O was reduced and buffers could
be used more efficiently, making the usage
of the database easier. Overall performance
should have increased also,” says Mr. Uehara.
“It gave us hints for improvement in the future,
and taught us a lot. We are beginning to see
the plan to prevent performance decrease,”
“We have more space
adds Mr. Yasuhara.
in our database,
Performance Analysis is effective when done
and performance has
periodically, 1~2 times a year. If the diagnosis
gone up.”
is performed at times of addition of application
modules or storage increases, it can also prevent
— KUNIO UEHARA
problems prematurely.
Japan Aviation
“With” Opening Dreams and the Future with
Electronics Industry, Ltd
Technology” as their unified concept, Japan
Information System Division System
Aviation Electronics Industry continues to
strengthen their global operations. In order to
Senior Manager
maintain their ERP and Database in optimal
condition, JAE will continue to use “Perfor-
mance Analysis” in many different ways.
A word from the professional
Issues with database operation such as
decrease in performance, increase in data
and needs for upgrades are not foreign to
SAP systems. By utilizing our knowledge
gained through SAP development support, “Oracle gave us hints
for improvement in
we will see that the Oracle used in your
SAP system is operating to fit your needs. the future, and taught
If you are wondering how to operate and us a lot.”
maintain your database in SAP, please give
our service a try. — K A Z U O YA S U H A R A
Japan Aviation
— EISUKE SEKIGUCHI Electronics Industry, Ltd
Information System Division
Oracle Corporation Japan
Support Service Headquarter
 36

C O N F I G U R I N G A H I G H LY AVA I L A B L E L I N U X C L U S T E R
FOR SAP SERVICES

Clusters of Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers using Oracle9i Real Application Clusters (RAC) can provide SAP ®
software environments with a flexible, scalable, and highly available database platform. The database
will continue to run if one of the Oracle9i RAC database nodes fails; however, vital SAP functionality
such as the message server and the enqueue server can still be single points of failure. To protect
these services from failure and thus unwanted downtime or even data loss, IT administrators can run-
them on a Red Hat ® Enterprise Linux ® OS–based cluster to compliment the Oracle9i RAC database
cluster and maintain service in a highly available manner.

– B Y D A V I D D E T W E I L E R , A C H I M L E R N H A R D , F L O R E N Z K L E Y,
T H O R S T E N S TA E R K , A N D W O L F G A N G T R E N K L E

Setting up a highly available SAP system on Linux Setting up the Red Hat cluster
requires eliminating any possible single point of To set up the Red Hat cluster for the SAP software,
Related Categories: failure for the database as well as for the various SAP administrators should first determine whether the
components of the overall system. While the database Red Hat Package Manager (RPM™) packages for the
Clustering is made highly available by means of Oracle9i Real Red Hat Cluster Suite are installed (see Figure 1).
Database Application Clusters (RAC) technology, SAP applica- Depending on the availability of updates, the version
Dell/EMC storage tions can be made highly available by protecting the numbers the availability of updates, the version num-
High availability (HA) SAP central instance – which includes the message bers may differ. Administrators should install the most
Linux.
server and the enqueue server – from failure. In addi- recent version of these packages. They should then
Oracle
tion, SAP management tools require a common shared prepare the shared storage and the network connec-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
$ORACLE_HOME directory, which requires the Highly tions. Throughout the example scenario used in this
SAP
Available Network File System (HA NFS) service ex- article, the server names ls3219 and ls3220 are used
Visit porting the Oracle executables, the SAP executables, and for the first and second cluster nodes, respectively.
www.dell.com/powersolu- the SAP shared files such as profiles and the /sapglobal
tions directory.
for the complete category
On Linux, the node membership for Oracle9i RAC [root@ls3220 root]# rpm -q clumanager
index.
database nodes is managed by the Oracle cluster clumanager-1.2.16-1
manager (oracm), which is designed specifically to [root@ls3220 root]# rpm -q redhat-config-
manage RAC nodes. Therefore, administrators should cluster
implement a second, independent cluster to make the redhat-config-cluster-1.0.2-2.0
$ORACLE_HOME directory and the SAP central
instance services highly available. This must be perfor-
med on a second set of hosts, because each node can Figure 1: Checking for Red Hat Cluster Suite RPM packages
be a member of only one cluster. Membership in two
independent clusters with potential conflicts on current
node status would render the cluster nodes unusable for
each of the respective clusters. This second cluster uses
the Red Hat Cluster Suite.

A Cluster File System allows all nodes in a
cluster to concurrently access a device via the
standard file system interface. This allows for
easy management of applications that need
to run across a cluster. OCFS (Release 1) was
released in December 2002 to enable Oracle
Real Application Cluster (RAC) users to run the
clustered database without having to deal with
RAW devices. The file system was designed to
store database related files, such as data files,
control files, redo logs, archive logs, etc.
OCFS2 is the next generation of the Oracle
Cluster File System. OCFS2 is available since
August 2005 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (by default
included in every SLES9 SP2 installation).
OCFS2 has been designed to be a high perfor-
mance general-purpose cluster file system.
With it, one can store not only database related
Configuring the network
Both nodes must have two available Ethernet interfaces.
One interface is used for cluster communication between
the two nodes and should be on a private network. The
other is the publicly visible network interface. Depending
on the specific requirements of the environment, admini-
strators may want to set up four interfaces—two for each
node—using the Linux kernel bonding mechanism. This
provides a highly available network connection on each
channel and secures the cluster against failure of one single
com-ponent (network interface card, network cabling, or
switch) on the respective communication channel.
Administrators should reserve one public IP address for
each node. In this example scenario, these addresses are
10.17.64.25 for node ls3219 and 10.17.64.26 for node
ls3220. Administrators should also reserve one private
IP address for each node. For dell3219, the private address
is 172.16.42.34; for dell3220, the private address is
172.16.42.35.
Additionally, administrators should reserve three IP addresses
for the cluster services to be used as virtual IP addresses.
Dell-Linux SAP on RAC - Promotion 37
files on a shared disk, but also store Oracle
binaries and configuration files (shared Oracle
home) making management of RAC even easier.
Also any other non-Oracle binaries or non-Oracle
configuration files (such as shared SAP direc-
tories) can now be stored on shared disks.
OCFS2 contains the following additional features:
- Meta data caching
- Meta data journaling
- Cross node file data consistency
- Easy to administer, including operation as
shared root fs
- Multiple block size support
- Supports up to 254 cluster nodes
- Context-dependent symbolic links (CDSL)
support for node specific local files
- Async io and direct io support for
database files for improved database
performance
- Full integration with Linux kernel from 2.6 on.
[root@ls3219 root]# cat /etc/sysconfig/
network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=10.17.64.25
NETMASK=255.255.252.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
GATEWAY=10.17.64.1
Figure 2: Example public interface setup file for node ls3219
They should configure the interfaces (or virtual interfaces)
with these addresses, either by using the redhat-config-
network program or editing the respective interface setup
files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. Figure 2 shows
what the public interface on ls3219 should look like.
Administrators should set up all the interfaces on the nodes
according to the host names and IP addresses. This is the
same setup principle that is used in the Oracle9i RAC
cluster: one public and one private IP address per node.
38
Disk /dev/sdb: 314 MB, 314572800 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 300 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 300 307184 da Non-FS data
Disk /dev/sdc: 314 MB, 314572800 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 300 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 300 307184 da Non-FS data
Figure 3: Example quorum partitions on host
[root@ls3220 root]# devlabel add -s /dev/raw/raw1
-d /dev/sdb1
RAW: /dev/raw/raw1 -> /dev/sdb1
Added /dev/raw/raw1 to /etc/sysconfig/devlabel
[root@ls3220 root]# devlabel add -s /dev/raw/raw2
-d /dev/sdc1
RAW: /dev/raw/raw2 -> /dev/sdc1
Added /dev/raw/raw2 to /etc/sysconfig/devlabel
Figure 4: Binding the partition as a raw device
Configuring the shared storage
After testing the network connections, administrators can
set up the shared storage. The cluster software needs two
small partitions as quorum devices, which should be confi-
gured on separate logical units (LUNs) to maximize inde-
pendence and minimize possible contention. The partitions
must have a minimum size of 10 MB each. However, the
usual minimum size for a LUN on a Dell/EMC storage
array is 100 MB. The quorum LUNs will be bound later as
raw devices.
Additionally, administrators should create one or more LUNs
to hold the file systems for the data to be exported via the
HA NFS server. They should follow Oracle recommendations
regarding the size for $ORACLE_HOME and SAP recom-
mendations for the executables (approximately 300 to 400
MB depending on the kernel version), and they should take
into account the data that will be stored in the LUNs as well.
Once the LUNs have been created on the storage system,
administrators can make them available to the nodes.
[root@ls3220 root]# devlabel status
brw-rw---- root disk /dev/raw/raw1
--[RAW]--> /dev/sdb1
brw-rw---- root disk /dev/raw/raw2
--[RAW]--> /dev/sdc1
brw-rw---- root disk /dev/homedir ->
/dev/sdd1
Figure 5: Checking the status of partitions
[root@ls3220 root]# raw -qa
/dev/raw/raw1: bound to major 8, minor 17
/dev/raw/raw2: bound to major 8, minor 33
Figure 6: Checking the status of partitions
[root@ls3220 root]# /etc/init.d/clumanager status
clumembd is stopped
cluquorumd is stopped
clulockd is stopped
clusvcmgrd is stopped
Figure 7: Checking the status of partitions
The next step is to create partitions on the quorum and NFS
storage LUNs. For the quorum LUN, one partition is enough.
Because administrators will bind these partitions as raw devi-
ces, they can set the partition type to “da” (non-file-system
data) with the t option of fdisk. Figure 3 shows what the
quorum partitions would look like on the host in the example
scenario. Administrators should create and format partitions
on the LUNs for the NFS directories.
Next, administrators should create persistent symbolic names
for the partitions with devlabel. This program makes the parti-
tion device names resilient against device name reordering
(for example, when the SCSI scan order is different). In the
example scenario, the persistent symbolic name /dev/homedir
is created for the partition used for the NFS export.
Because the quorum disks are raw devices, they must be
bound so as to be available to the kernel. When the special
symbolic name /dev/raw/rawn is used with devlabel, the link
is created and the partition is bound as a raw device (see
Figure 4). Note that the identifier changes to “RAW.”

Administrators can check the result with the devlabel
status command (see Figure 5).
Administrators can check whether the raw devices are
bound. As shown in Figure 6, the raw command displays
the major and minor numbers of the bound devices.
Administrators can check these numbers against the cur-
rently assigned block devices (from devlabel status).
Once the devlabel settings have been finalized, administra-
tors can copy the /etc/sysconfig/dev-label file to the same
directory on the other host. Then, they can log in to that
host and issue the devlabel restart command. Admini-
strators should not try to add raw devices and symbolic names
themselves; they should allow devlabel sort out the unique
IDs collected on the other node to ensure that the same
physical device is bound under the same symbolic name.
Configuring a clustered NFS service
Once the network and devices are configured, administra-
tors can activate the Red Hat cluster. Logged in as the root
user, administrators can check whether the cluster services
are running (see Figure 7). If the output does not show that
the cluster services have stopped, administrators should stop
them by issuing the stop argument to the init-script. Then,
they can start the redhat-config-cluster program, preferably
in a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) session.
Administrators should begin by setting up the raw devices
for the cluster quorum. In the Cluster Configuration Tool,
administrators should go to Cluster>Shared State to display
the Shared State dialog box. In this box, administrators
should enter the names of the two raw devices: /dev/raw/raw1
and /dev/raw/raw2.
They should then add the two nodes as members of the clu-
ster by clicking the Members tab and going to File>New.
In the dialog box, administrators should enter the name of
the host (ls3219 in this example scenario). They should then
repeat this step for the other cluster member (ls3220). They
can leave “Enable SW Watchdog” checked – this enables the
software watchdog timer, which allows a cluster member to
reboot itself if the system hangs.
Next, administrators can name the NFS service by clicking
the Services tab and then the New button to display the
Service dialog box. They should provide a name without
spaces or special characters (this simplifies querying the sta-
tus from the command line). In the example scenario, the
HA NFS service name is RAC_NFS_directories. Neither a
failover domain nor a user script should be assigned.
Dell-Linux SAP on RAC – Promotion 39
Administrators can click the OK button and go to File>Save
to save the changes to the cluster configuration.
In the next step, administrators can add a device to mount,
a service IP address, and NFS clients to the service. In the
example scenario, 10.17.64.27 is used as the IP address for
the HA NFS service. To specify a service IP address, admi-
nistrators should click the Services tab of the Cluster
Configuration Tool. Then they can select the service and
click the Add Child button. Next, administrators select
“Add Service IP Address” in the popup window and specify
an IP address with netmask and broadcast in the next
window. Although the netmask and broadcast addresses are
optional, best practices recommend setting them.
To add the device to be mounted by the service, administra-
tors can click the Services tab of the Cluster Configuration
Tool, select the service, and click the Add Child button.
They can then select “Add Device” and click the OK button.
Then they can specify a device special file (in this example,
/dev/homedir) and a mount point (/sapmnt/clu_export).
Each device must have a unique device special file and a
unique mount point within the cluster and across service
boundaries. Administrators can specify a directory from
which to mount the device in the Mount Point field. This
directory cannot be listed in /etc/fstab because it is automa-
tically mounted by the Red Hat Cluster Manager when the
service is started. Administrators should choose a file
system type from the FS Type list (ext3 is used in the exam-
ple scenario).
Administrators can specify options for the device. If the
Options field is left blank, the default mount options (rw,
suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async) are used.2 Admini-
strators can check “Force Unmount” to force any applica-
tion that has the specified file system mounted to be shut
down prior to disabling or relocating the service (when the
application is running on the same cluster member that is
running the disabled or relocated service). When finished,
administrators can click the OK button and go to File>Save
to save the changes to the /etc/cluster.xml configuration file,
and go to File>Quit to exit the Cluster Configuration Tool.
Testing the cluster
Once the cluster is configured, administrators can begin the
first cluster test. They should test the cluster first on one node,
and then on the other. First, administrators should restart
the redhat-config-cluster program and go to Cluster>Start
local cluster daemons. Once the status display shows that
the host has changed from “Unknown” (red) to “Active”
40
(normal color), administrators can enable the service by
selecting it in the Services window and clicking “Enable.”
The service status should change from “Disabled” (red) to
“Running” (black). On this node, administrators should
now see the mounted device under the configured mount
point. If administrators do not see the device, they should
check the system log for cluster service error messages.
After a successful test on one node, administrators can copy
the /etc/cluster.xml file into the same directory on the other
node. Then, they can start the cluster services there, either
with the init script or with the redhat-config-cluster graphical
user interface (GUI). Administrators also should test swit-
ching the service between the two cluster hosts.
Adding clients to the clustered NFS service
After testing that the cluster runs properly, administrators
should extend the configuration of the NFS service to export
one or more directories to the clients. Administrators should
check that the NFS daemon and the portmapper run on both
hosts and are configured to start automatically. They should
execute the following commands on both hosts:
/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 nfs on
/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 portmap on
This enables automatic starting in the runlevels 3, 4, and
5. Administrators can check the result by entering the
following command:
/sbin/chkconfig –list service
The output should look similar to the following:
[root@ls3220 root]# /sbin/chkconfig --list nfs
nfs 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on
5:on 6:off
In addition, the output should look similar for the other
service. Administrators should perform these steps on both
hosts.
Next, administrators should return to the cluster configura-
tion GUI and click the Services tab. They should select the
NFS service and click the collapse/expand indicator, or twistie,
on the left to display the contents. Administrators should
see the service IP address and the service device. They can
then select the device and click the Add Child button. A
popup window asks for the export directory name. In this
example scenario, everything below /sapmnt/clu_export is
exported, and the following directories are exported with
different access permissions:
• /sapmnt/clu_export/readonly (ro, async)
• /sapmnt/clu_export/read_write (rw, sync)
• /sapmnt/clu_export/read_write_root (rw, sync,
no_root_squash)
Even when it is not immediately necessary to create an export
that is root-writeable and preserves the user ID (without
reassigning nfsnobody to root), best practices recommend
configuring the export with these settings – to enable back-
ups and quick file distribution among the hosts.
The allowed client and permissions are attributes of the NFS
Export Client object, which is a child of the NFS Export
object. Administrators can add the clients again by selecting
“NFS Export” and clicking the Add Child button. When
finished, the NFS service structure should resemble the
structure of the XML file /etc/cluster. xml (see Figure 8).
Note: The NFS export is under the control of the Red Hat
cluster, and the directories exported there must not appear
in the /etc/exports file used by the non-clustered NFS
daemon.
Client-side mount options
On the client side, the directories are mounted under
/sapmnt/homedir/readonly following a schema where
/sapmnt/hostname/directory mounts directories exported by
hostname. All clients mount the exported directories there.
The /etc/fstab entries for the example scenario are shown
in Figure 9.
Adapting the SAP directory structure
Locally, symbolic links point to the NFS-mounted directories.
For example, the SAP instance DVBGS00 would expect the
directory structure shown in Figure 10 on its server. The
directories are located on NFS and can be found in the same
location (that is, with the identical pathname) on every host.
The /usr/sap/RAC/SYS directory links to /sapmnt/RAC (see
Figure 11), and the /sapmnt/ RAC directory links to the NFS
directories (see Figure 12).
In the example scenario, the NFS directories are organized
by system ID (SID) to support more than one SAP system
(see Figure 13). The readonly/ and readwrite/ incarnations
of the RAC_sapsystem directory show that the directories
used by an SAP system are divided by these attributes, as
shown in Figure 14.
Configuring SAP central instance services for the cluster
 Dell-Linux SAP on RAC - Promotion 41

can contact the enqueue server via the UNIX® Interprocess

Service RAC_NFS_directories Communication (IPC) mechanism; if they are not part of the
central instance, clients contact the enqueue server via the
service_ipaddress
SAP message server. As opposed to all other components of
ipaddress=”172.16.42.60”
netmask=”255.255.255.0”
the SAP system on the application layer, the enqueue server
broadcast=”172.16.42.255” holds a state – an in-memory table of granted locks – that
cannot be recovered gracefully if the service fails. The mes-
device name=”/dev/homedir” sage server, which consequently plays an important role in
mountpoint=”/sapmnt/clu_export” contacting the enqueue server, holds no state; it receives
fstype=”ext3” only incoming connection requests and transfers them to the
forceunmount=”yes” addressee. The message server can be restarted after failure,
with no impact other than delayed communications. The
nfsexport name=”/sapmnt/clu_export/readonly”
enqueue server is a potential single point of failure in an
client name=”172.16.42.0/24”
options=”ro,async”
SAP system, isolated from the seamless failover provided at
the database layer.
nfsexport name=”/sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite” The SAP solution to the enqueue challenge is the stand-alone
client name=”172.16.42.0/24”
enqueue server and the enqueue replication mechanism. With
options=”rw,sync”
these components, the enqueue server runs as a stand-alone
nfsexport name=”/sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite_root” program and can be contacted directly by enqueue clients.
client name=”172.16.42.0/24” Additionally, a second enqueue server – called the enqueue
options=”rw,sync,no_root_squash” replication server – is started; its only task is to maintain a
second copy of the enqueue state table (lock table). Communi-
cating regularly with the enqueue server, the enqueue repli-
Figure 8: NFS service directory structure
cation server keeps its copy of the enqueue table current. If
Configuring SAP central instance services for the cluster the enqueue server fails, it can be restarted on the host where
the enqueue replication server runs. When the enqueue
Access to data in the underlying database of an SAP system
replication server runs. When the enqueue replication server
is synchronized with a special lock system called the SAP
recognizes that the enqueue server has started up, it will
enqueue mechanism. This mechanism serializes access and
transfer its current lock table before exiting.
prevents access from being changed for more than one
The newly started enqueue server can now continue without
requesting party.
losing valuable enqueue state information. Additionally,
The enqueue server usually runs as a service of the SAP cen- OS-level high-availability software makes the enqueue ser-
tral instance. If clients run in the same SAP instance, they ver available via a virtual, clustered IP address, masking the
restart from the clients so that they always connect to the
ls3220:racadm-DVBGS00 > find /usr/sap/RAC/ same IP address.
DVBGS00/* -prune
/usr/sap/RAC/DVBGS00/data Splitting the central instance
/usr/sap/RAC/DVBGS00/log To secure the SAP system’s services in high-availability clus-
/usr/sap/RAC/DVBGS00/sec
ter, administrators must split the traditional central instance
/usr/sap/RAC/DVBGS00/work
into dedicated instances because a large “service block” can
Figure 10: Directory structure for DVBGS00 SAP instance be difficult to monitor. Furthermore, this large block makes

# HA NFS exports
homedir:/sapmnt/clu_export/readonly /sapmnt/homedir/readonly nfs\ hard,intr,nolock,ro,bg 0 0
homedir:/sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite /sapmnt/homedir/readwrite nfs\ hard,intr,sync,bg 0 0
homedir:/sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite_root /sapmnt/homedir/readwrite_root nfs\ hard,intr,sync,bg 0 0

Figure 9: Example /etc/fstab entries

42

ls3220:racadm-DVBGS00 > ls -l /usr/sap/RAC/SYS/

total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 racadm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 racadm
lrwxrwxrwx 1 racadm
Figure 10: Links to/sapmnt/RAC
sapsys 4096 Nov 11 12:44 exe
sapsys 18 Jan 24 14:48 global -> /sapmnt/RAC/global
sapsys 19 Jan 24 14:49 profile -> /sapmnt/RAC/profile

ls3220:racadm-DVBGS00 > ls -l /sapmnt/RAC/

total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 racadm sapsys 49 Jan 24 14:49 exe -> /sapmnt/homedir/readonly/RAC_sapkernel/exe-640-21
lrwxrwxrwx 1 racadm sapsys 46 Jan 24 14:49 global -> /sapmnt/homedir/readwrite/RAC_sapsystem/global
lrwxrwxrwx 1 racadm sapsys 46 Jan 24 14:49 profile -> /sapmnt/homedir/readonly/RAC_sapsystem/profile

Figure 11: Links tothe NFS directories

restarting services difficult,

[root@ls3220 root]# ls -l /sapmnt/clu_export/readonly/RAC_sapsystem/
because administrators must total 8
also restart parts of the central drwxrwxr-x 3 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 28 03:16 profile
instance that have not failed.
[root@ls3220 root]# ls -l /sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite/RAC_sapsystem/
To run the enqueue server as total 24
a master/slave service, the two drwxrwxr-x 6 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 26 18:30 DVBGS00
services should always reside drwxrwxr-x 2 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 28 02:46 global
on different hosts. The mes- drwxr-xr-x 11 racadm sapsys 4096 Nov 11 11:00 trans
sage server is not bound to a
[root@ls3220 root]# ls -l /sapmnt/clu_export/readwrite/RAC_sapsystem/DVBGS00/
particular host. Because these total 16
are the two services that con- drwxrwxr-x 2 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 28 06:38 data
stitute a central instance, the drwxrwxr-x 2 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 27 11:01 log
cluster can run only those drwxrwxr-x 2 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 26 18:53 sec
drwxrwxr-x 2 racadm sapsys 4096 Jan 28 08:36 work
services, and all application
servers must be outside the Figure 14: Directories used by an SAP system
cluster. However, for systems
management purposes, the message server can run together For each instance, administrators must define an instance
with a dialog service, and an application server can reside in profile and a start profile, according to SAP documentation.
the cluster, or close to it. In the example scenario, the enqueue They can start and stop these instances in the same manner
server; the enqueue replication server; the message server; that they start and stop SAP instances installed by default.
and an application instance with dialog, update, batch, and However, to put these instances under the control of the
spool work processes all run as services in the cluster. high-availability cluster, administrators must provide scripts
for the cluster that conform to the UNIX System V init
In the example scenario, the traditional central instance conventions—that is, Bourne shell (bash) scripts that offer
DVEBMGS is split into multiple instances as follows (the a start, stop, and status function.
two numerals at the end of each instance name represent the
system number): For example instance profiles and start profiles, visit Dell
Power Solutions online at www.dell.com/powersolutions.
• DVBGS00: Dialog, update, batch, gateway, and spool
work processes Switching between different user environments
• DM01: Dialog service (for local administration) and To start the SAP services, the programs use the environment
message server of the SAP administrative user. Because those environment
• E02: Enqueue server parameters differ from instance to instance, a simple way to
• R02: Enqueue replication server switch between different environments for the same OS user
Note that the enqueue server and the enqueue replication is desirable. To achieve this switching, administrators can
server must have the same system number (02) separate from adapt the default environment contained in the sapenv.sh
the rest of the instances; otherwise, the takeover of the and dbenv.sh scripts for each instance, and rename the script
enqueue table will fail. sapenv_INSTANCENAME.sh. Then, they can create a script-

RAC_app_server DVBGS00 ls3216 10.17.64.22
RAC_message_server DM01 ls3221 10.17.64.27
RAC_enqueue_server E02 ls3222 10.17.64.28
R02 no address. Bound to the public IP address
of the owning member.
Figure 15: Virtual IP addresses and cluster services for SAP
instances
RAC_app_server /etc/init.d/sapappserver-RAC
RAC_message_server /etc/init.d/sapmsgsrv-RAC
RAC_enqueue_server /etc/init.d/sapenserver-RAC
Figure 16: Corresponding init scripts for cluster services
let – a reusable script element – containing a source statement
such as the following:
#!/bin/sh
source sapenv_INSTANCENAME.sh
If administrators source this scriptlet, the user has the
matching parameters for INSTANCE_NAME in the
environment. This can also be seen in the start() and stop()
functions of the initscripts package, because the scriptlet is
sourced before executing the command.
Integrating the SAP instances as a cluster service
Administrators must create virtual IP addresses for all of
the SAP instances, except for the enqueue replication server.
The enqueue replication server always runs on the host not
owning the enqueue server and attaches itself to the enqueue
server (as opposed to the enqueue server trying to contact
it). It can be bound to the public IP address of the respective
cluster member, even if this means that it changes IP address
with every service relocation.
The DVBGS, DM, and E instance each require a virtual IP
address, so that they are always present under the same
address from outside the cluster. Because DVBGS and DM
also appear in the instance list (SM51), administrators should
adapt the instance name to show the host name belonging
to the service IP address, not the currently active cluster
member IP address. Administrators can do this by setting
rdisp/myname to virtualhostname_SID_SAPSYSTEM. In this
manner, the instance names remain stable after relocation of
the service from one cluster member to another.
Administrators should create cluster services for the SAP
instances and give each service a virtual IP address as a child.
Figure 15 shows this configuration for the example scenario,
and Figure 16 shows the corresponding init scripts. As shown
in Figure 15, R02 does not have a service. This configuration
Dell-Linux SAP on RAC - Promotion 43
is used in the example cluster because a service order cannot
be defined, nor can services be set in a relationship. Each
service is independently monitored and treated without regard
to the other configured services. Because the enqueue server
and the enqueue replication server are dependent and must be
started and stopped on opposite hosts and in a specific order,
administrators must start and stop the enqueue replication
server from inside the sapenserver-SID script.
Next, administrators can enter the scripts as “user scripts”
in the service definitions and configure a check interval, which
typically varies from 30 to 60 seconds. Before transferring
control of the services to the cluster, administrators should
run the scripts manually to test their functionality.
Building a reliable platform for SAP
Oracle9i RAC for SAP on Linux can provide a stable, flexible,
and scalable environment, provided administrators follow
proper planning and installation procedures. By using the SAP
enqueue mechanism with Linux, administrators not only
can protect the database from unplanned downtime, but they
also can set up the SAP environment to avoid disruptions to
end users.
David Detweiler is the Dell SAP Alliance Manager in Europe, the
Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and a member of the Dell SAP Compe-
tence Center in Walldorf, Germany. The Dell SAP Competence Centers
help ensure that current and future Dell technologies work together with
SAP solutions and provide customers with the architecture, functiona-
lity, reliability, and support expected of mission-critical applications.
Achim Lernhard has worked at the Dell SAP Competence Center in
Walldorf, Germany, for three years as part of the SAP LinuxLab. He
assisted the Oracle9i RAC on Linux pilot customer from installation to
productivity and worked on the hardware certifications.
Florenz Kley is a consultant for SAP Technology Infrastructure. He has
worked for five years at the Dell SAP Competence Center in Walldorf,
Germany, as part of the SAP LinuxLab. He conducted performance
benchmarks to help prove the scalability and performance of Oracle9i
RAC for SAP on Linux and helped build the architecture for Dell’s
Oracle9i RAC on Linux pilot customer.
Thorsten Staerk is a consultant at the Dell SAP Competence Center in
Walldorf, Germany, as part of the SAP LinuxLab. He has worked exten-
sively on Oracle9i RAC technologies for SAP, researches new SAP techno-
logies and functionality, and certifies Dell platforms for SAP on Linux.
Wolfgang Trenkle is a senior consultant at the Dell SAP Competence
Center in Walldorf, Germany, and is also a member of the Dell EMEA
Enterprise Solutions Center team in Limerick, Ireland. In addition to
serving as a consultant and supporting proof of concepts, Wolfgang
provides training materials and tools to Dell’s global SAP community.
“Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, November 2005. Copyright © 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.”
44
IMPLEMENTING SAP/ORACLE RAC ON
E G E N E R A’ S P R O C E S S I N G A R E A N E T W O R K –
E N H A N C E D H I G H AVA I L A B I L I T Y A N D
PERFORMANCE WHILE LOWERING TCO
Oracle’s Real Application Clusters (RAC) offers a powerful, horizontally scalable environ-
ment for SAP applications. Organizations can gain even more advantages by implement-
ing this clustered application tier on the Egenera® BladeFrame® system with its innovative
Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture.
The BladeFrame allows an organization to
implement the entire three-tier computing
architecture on a single chassis. This ability,
combined with the PAN virtualization and
management capabilities, allows organizations
to achieve the high availability, scalability and
performance required for these mission-critical
applications, while significantly lowering
Egenera GmbH
datacenter complexity and total cost of
ownership (TCO).
Egenera BladeFrame Overview
The Egenera BladeFrame system was designed
to better solve the multiple pain points of to-
day’s complex enterprise-class datacenters, which
have evolved in the past few decades based on
a classic server architecture that no longer meets
current requirements. By integrating processing,
networking and management functionality
previously dispersed across server hardware,
data networks and operating systems, Egenera
has created a new architecture, the PAN, which
consolidates and simplifies the allocation and
management of computing power.
Egenera’s PAN architecture enables utility
computing by providing a pool of stateless
processing nodes (Egenera Processing Blade™
modules which are in a bladed form factor).
These processing nodes contain no disk drives,
network interface cards or host bus adapters:
nothing that would give the server a specific
identity or state.
Instead, all points of state and identity have
been moved to the fabric switch, enabling
virtualization of both servers and connecting
datacenter infrastructure.
The system was designed for mission-critical
applications such as databases, application
servers and transaction processing making it
ideal for SAP and Oracle implementations.
Oracle RAC and SAP on the Egenera
BladeFrame
The physical features and built-in virtualization
capabilities of the BladeFrame system provide
a natural and optimized synergy with Oracle
RAC and SAP implementations. The combined
solution lowers the TCO for large databases
through:
• High Availability
• Scalability
• Manageability
• Price/Performance
High Availability
Egenera blades can be easily configured for the
high availability needed for mission-critical
applications such as mySAP ERP. A single
spare processing blade can be designated as
the failover blade for multiple RAC nodes,
replacing the need for hot-standby servers and
clustering software. Unlike legacy x86-based
architectures, the BladeFrame replaces a failed
node with a backup automatically within
minutes. When the “new” Processing Blade
is started, it has exactly the same state – the
application with the exact network and stor-
age configurations – of the failed blade. The
BladeFrame’s virtualization capabilities trans-
fer all of the server’s characteristics. Thus,
the time that system capacity is compromised
due to a failed node is reduced from days or
hours to minutes.

All of the switching internal to the BladeFrame
is virtualized, automatically creating high
availability for network, storage and console
connectivity.
Scalability
Unlike high-end SMP machines, which have
finite limits in their ability to add processing
capability, the BladeFrame can readily deploy
new processing ability to meet dynamic user
demands. The BladeFrame creates a pool of
processing blades that are deployed entirely
through management software and without
physical intervention. Hence, a single Blade-
Frame could quickly scale to 24 Oracle RAC
nodes, bringing as many as 192 processors
and 768 GB of memory to work against the
database.
With the long delays required to bring legacy
servers online, enterprises have had to size their
database servers to meet peak demand and high
availability requirements, resulting in utiliza-
tion rates around 20 percent. The BladeFrame
increases server utilization by correctly scaling
both the type and number of Processing Blades
allocated to an SAP application. For example,
BladeFrame Processing Blades form a pool of
processing capability that can be brought into
service when needed and repurposed when no
longer required. In addition, applications can
be easily moved from one size of blade to
another to match the processing requirements.
Manageability
Deploying a cluster on the Egenera BladeFrame
is very easy. Egenera’s virtualization capabilities
reduce the number of hardware components
required for standard server configurations by
80 percent. There are no NICs, HBAs or SAN
switches to configure and cable. All configu-
ration is done through software. By transfor-
ming manual, physical tasks into automated,
software-based tasks, the BladeFrame allows
system administrators to rapidly establish an
Oracle RAC installation for SAP.
Oracle RAC and Egenera 45
The BladeFrame also excels at ongoing system
management. Its virtualization technology
enables a customer to move an Oracle RAC
database from one Processing Blade configura-
tion to another, or add a node to a cluster, on
the fly. In addition, Egenera PAN Manager™
software dynamically allocates SAN disks to
servers, optimizing the functions provided by
Oracle Automated Storage Management,
which spreads database blocks across multiple
SAN disks/LUNs. The combination of Oracle
ASM and Egenera PAN Manager software
allows users to migrate a live Oracle database
to a different set of disks/LUNs without any
interruption of service or downtime.
Price/Performance
The BladeFrame’s combination of high-per-
formance x86 CPUs and a dedicated, high-
bandwidth, low-latency backplane provides
unparalleled price/performance for three-tier
SAP applications with Oracle RAC. The
Egenera 2.5 Gbps high-speed low-latency
backplane allows for faster communications
among database, application and Web appli-
cations running on the Egenera BladeFrame.
Oracle databases communicating with other
application tiers will experience a higher level
of performance than if that communication
was via a standard Ethernet network. The
backplane provides for improved performance
of Oracle databases, by providing a high-speed
network for inter-node message passing co-
ordinated using Oracle’s Cache Fusion.
Lower TCO
Compared to traditionally architected servers,
the Egenera BladeFrame and its PAN archi-
tecture would save approximately 50 percent
in total costs over a three-year period, including
substantial top-line benefits for Oracle/SAP
installations:
• Up to 70 percent savings on capital and
maintenance costs
• Reduces labor costs for configuration and
ongoing support by up to 80 percent
46

Egenera/SAP/Fujitsu Siemens Computers under the brand PRIMERGY BladeFrame as

Alliance part of their Dynamic Data Centre solutions.
Egenera is a new SAP Global Technology
Partner certified for Microsoft Windows with More information can be found at:
a Competency Center established in Walldorf. www.egenera.com
The innovative Egenera BladeFrame with its www.fujitsu-siemens.com/le/products/stan-
PAN architecture enables a dynamic IT envi- dard_servers/bframe/index.html
ronment that supports SAP NetWeaver and
mySAP mission-critical requirements while Contact:
lowering datacenter TCO and complexity – Egenera GmbH
enabling superior performance. SAP Competence Center
Altrottstr. 31, SAP PartnerPort
Fujitsu Siemens Computers, in a strategic D-69190 Walldorf, Germany
OEM alliance with Egenera, is selling and Phone +49 6227 73-3480
supporting the Egenera BladeFrame in EMEA sapcc@egenera.com

SAP INFO
SOLUTIONS: Active Global Support ISSUE 7 JANUARY 2006

W H AT ’ S N E W ?
Oracle Version 10g available
Now that Oracle Version 9i has been on
the market for a few years, the time has
come for its successor, Oracle Version 10g
to be made available to SAP customers.
The first step towards that goal was taken
in the last quarter of 2005, when mySAP
Business Suite 2005 and its platform
SAP NetWeaver 2004 were launched;
the latter only supports Oracle 10g. The
validation process for certifying Oracle
10g for use with SAP products based on
the 4.6D_EXT and 6.40 kernels (for
example, SAP R/3 4.6C SR1, SAP R/3
Enterprise 4.7, SAP NW 2004, and
mySAP ERP 2004) began immediately
thereafter and will conclude in the first
quarter of 2006.
As was the case with Oracle Version 9i,
SAP will only certify the terminal release
of Oracle 10g (that is, Version 10.2). This
strategy has proved a great success in terms
of quality in the past. For SAP customers,
an added benefit of starting at the terminal
release is the reduced amount of effort
involved in upgrading from other release
tracks of 10g. Of course, Version 10.2 also
boasts a raft of new features, with special
focus on manageability and database ad-
ministration.
Oracle 10g aside, one of Oracle’s hottest
properties for SAP customers at the mo-
ment is the parallel database variant RAC
(Real Application Clusters), which was
already available as an optional extra in
Oracle9i. Although its predecessor OPS
(Oracle Parallel Server) did not prove
adequately scalable in SAP environments,
those problems have now been overcome,
thanks in part to innovations, such as
high-speed memory interconnects. As a
result, Oracle RAC now offers effective
new solutions at database level for ensu-
ring 24/7 system availability or adapting
dynamically to growing or uneven system
loads.
SAP has been working on the Oracle RAC
project since 2002 and, in collaboration
with Oracle, set up a validation process to
certify the operating-system specific use
of Oracle RAC. The first customer went
live before the end of 2002 with an RAC-
based SAP R/3 system running on the
operating system Tru64. Recently the cus-
tomer pilot projects for the final remaining
operating systems were als successfully
completed. Oracle RAC is now officially
available to all SAP customers. Around
10 SAP customers are running a live
RAC-based system on a variety of opera-
ting systems.
Dr. Christian Graf, SAP AG
 Oracle Partner for SAP 47

“The expertise and depth of TUSC allows us to focus on strategic projects…”

– M A R S H A D U V D E VA N I
Manager
Database Administration IFF

INDUSTRY LEADER CHOOSES TUSC

REMOTE DBA

Challenge Solution Results

An acquisition and
turnover caused a
dramatic increase in data-
base administration
and monitoring needs.
IFF chose TUSC Remote IFF maintains over
DBA to monitor its 40 databases in
Oracle environments and 7 countries with one
mentor its Oracle DBA. full-time DBA.

About TUSC

IFF is a leading creator and manufacturer of
flavors and fragrances used in a wide variety of
consumer products – from fine fragrances and
toiletries, to soaps, detergents and other house-
hold products, to beverages and food products.
IFF is dedicated to The Pursuit of Excellence in
every area of its business, using knowledge, crea-
tivity, innovation and technology to continually
provide customers with the highest quality
products and service and superior consumer
understanding.
IFF has sales, manufacturing and creative facili-
ties in 34 countries worldwide and annual sales
exceeding $1.9 billion. In 2000, IFF acquired
Bush Boake Allen, formerly the industry’s 7th
biggest player. To manage its Oracle systems
environment, IFF relies on TUSC Remote DBA.
“IFF has over 40 Oracle databases, including a
large ERP implementation,” stated Marsha
Duvdevani, Manager, Database Administration.
With systems in the United States, Australia,
South Africa, India, Sweden, Turkey and Singa-
pore, 24/7 monitoring, performance tuning and
emergency support is essential.
The four-year partnership with TUSC began TUSC is an Oracle Advantage
when IFF acquired Bush Boake Allen, a for- Partner providing expert-level
mer competitor and TUSC client. Duvdevani integrated solutions to
explained, “One of our DBAs knew of TUSC Global 2000 customers since
1988. TUSC supports SAP
and we needed additional Oracle expertise,
clients running on the Oracle
so it made sense to add our databases to the
database through our Remote
TUSC contract. TUSC enabled a smooth
DBA organization. We have
transition of incorporating support of the newly supported SAP running on
acquired system and by mentoring our DBA.” Oracle for many years with
our Remote DBA service while
IFF has come to depend on Remote DBA and also helping SAP clients
Managed Services, and benefits from TUSC’s in performance tuning and
technical knowledge and expertise. “We benefit other DBA tasks through our
from our TUSC DBA’s experience with count- Database Administration
less other systems,” Duvdevani said. Through group. TUSC provides a
comprehensive set of con-
a web portal, which includes system reports
sulting services in the areas
and documentation on all work performed, “We
of strategy, architecture,
know that our systems are being maintained,”
implementation, support
Duvdevani continued, “The expertise and depth and training.
of TUSC allows us to focus on strategic pro-
jects, not system maintenance, knowledge gaps Get information about TUSC
and turnover.” at www.tusc.com
or send an email to:
NIEMIECR@Tusc.com
Phone +1 630-960-2909
48
ORACLE PREMIUM SERVICES FOR SAP R/3
CUSTOMERS
Oracle is the most widely used platform in SAP R/3 environments. Oracle Services offers
comprehensive services to all SAP customers: Premium core technology services and
workshops, as well as migration and integration services.
Oracle and SAP
More than three quarters of all SAP customers
entrust their data to a core Oracle database.
Over a million registered users at about ten
thousand locations have come to expect the best
technology and performance that the Oracle
database brings to the SAP R/3 environment.
Its outstanding attributes are a direct result of
over ten years of intensive partnership between
SAP and Oracle.
Naturally, this SAP and Oracle cooperation
does not end with technology exchange. Custo-
mer support and satisfaction are the tangible
day to day benefits of this partnership. A key
enabler of this customer support is SAP’s
requirement for permanent on-site consulting
staff to provide immediate support ranging from
application development to critical problem
response. The SAP Support and Services group
at Oracle’s Solution Center was created to co-
ordinate this focused customer support. We
are a worldwide services group providing
assistance in all aspects of SAP R/3 operation.
Specifically our mandate covers tasks ranging
from management of increasing data volumes,
performance optimization and setup of high
availability solutions, to data exchange bet-
ween the SAP R/3 system and other Oracle
databases over a secure interface.
Our offering of SAP-specific services covers
the design, operation and management of your
SAP R/3 environment. Our services include core
technology services, migration and integration
services, as well as a workshop program.
We make sure that you stay on the leading
edge: Oracle Services in concert with SAP is
leveraging over ten years of experience in
delivering R/3 solutions founded on the Oracle
database.
Core Technology Services for SAP R/3
Customers
Performance analysis and recommendations
Getting optimized performance from the SAP
R/3 system is one of the primary objectives of
R/3 customers. A parameter setup for the
customer’s environment cannot be optimized
without specific knowledge of R/3, since the
patterns of R/3 database access are rather dif-
ferent than those of other Oracle implemen-
tations. Therefore the Solution Center’s SAP
Support and Services group offers a service in
which it monitors the customer’s system over
a defined period of time and then recommends
parameter settings that would be optimal for
the customer.
The development of performance-based
ABAP/4® statements is also critical to the
database’s performance. Taking advantage of
the performance measurement tools provided
by the R/3 System can make it very easy to
analyze even the most expansive statements.
The Solution Center’s SAP Support and Services
group also offers a detailed analysis and fine
tuning service for the customer’s system
specifically from the perspective of the Oracle
database.
Hot standby databases
SAP R/3 system downtime often disrupts pro-
ductive activity. In the case of a system crash,
recovery might take several hours during which
time it is impossible to perform any effective
work on the system. The duration of system
downtime can be minimized by implementing
a hot standby database. This means that the
customer sets up two similar systems. The
first system operates as a normal database server
with all users connected. The second system
operates as a backup for the first database.

Backup operations continually recover all
incoming archive files from the first database
server. In the event of a crash of the database
server, the ‘hot standby’ server can be opened
very quickly, and all application servers can
connect to that system. Then the administrator
has enough time to analyze the crash while all
of the users continue to work. This technique
is fully supported by SAP for R/3 Release 3.0F
and Oracle7 Release 7.3.3 or higher, and it has
been implemented at a number of customer
sites. The Solution Center’s SAP Support and
Services group offers assistance in implementing
and testing hot standby solutions by using
either the SAP-provided tool implementation
or Oracle tools for Oracle releases prior to 7.3.
Setup and reorganization
The constantly increasing data volume of a
SAP R/3 installation can often no longer be
managed by a standard setup. Parameter
changes need to be specifically targeted to the
Oracle database underlying SAP R/3. Our team
designs and implements Very-Large-Database
concepts brought in line with the R/3 require-
ments. Where desired, the Solution Center
SAP Support and Services can provide help
in writing reorganization scripts, so data
restructure can be executed in an acceptable
timeframe for any table structure.
Backup/restore/recovery concepts for mission-
critical systems
The R/3 System often represents the most
important processes of a company’s business.
Downtime therefore quickly leads to disruption
of productive activities. Companies need a
detailed recovery methodology. The Solution
Center’s SAP Support and Services group pro-
vides special backup/restore/recovery works-
hops in which different backup procedures and
rules are discussed. They also offer tips and hints
in using the tools provided with your SAP
software. Oracle services can also be requested
to assist in setting up, implementing and
testing the backup strategy.
Oracle PREMIUM Services for SAP R/3 Customers 49
Migration Services for SAP R/3
A great majority of all SAP R/3 installations
run on an Oracle database. The Solution
Center’s SAP Support and Services group is
certified by SAP for R/3 database migrations
and can perform migrations for companies who
wish to migrate their SAP R/3 installation
from a non-Oracle database to Oracle. Profes-
sional service can be provided for migrations
of any SAP database. Several customer systems
have already been successfully migrated by the
Solution Center’s SAP Support and Services
group. We offer you the best migration service
you can get, because we have the experience
needed to handle any problems that may arise
from the database administrator’s perspective.
The Solution Center’s SAP Support and
Services group can also offer customers intro-
ductory training in using the new database.
Migration steps
• Analysis of current system
- Determine storage capacity of the
destination system
- Examine database-specific configura-
tions and customer-specific R/3
implementations
• Migration to a test system
- Write scripts for the necessary
unloads
- Start the database unload
- Create space calculation for your
target database within the database
unload
- Load the unload files to a test system
- Conduct intensive testing of the
migrated system (performed by the
customer) over a time period of 2-4
weeks
• Migration to the productive system
- Modify the import scripts based on know-
ledge gained from import to the test
system
- Perform the load on the production system
50
• Examination of migration results
- A special team within SAP is available to
examine the customer system via remote
connections
• Working instructions
- Short working instructions are given to
the DBA
- Explain major administration steps
- If requested, migration can be followed
up by an administration workshop.
Workshop: Oracle for SAP R/3
The Workshop: Oracle for SAP R/3 is designed
for database administrators of an R/3 system
to get, in a compact and practical form, all of
the information they need to run an R/3
system optimally.
The workshop is run by professional Oracle
consultants whose experience is based on daily
support of R/3 customers. They are technical
consultants rather than teachers, which means
they have experience in handling the types of
problems that customers encounter. Customers
can profit from their experience gained at
other customer sites.
The workshops have been well-received by
many customers worldwide. References in
Europe and US are available upon request.
The workshop contents can be tailored to suit
customer needs.
The workshop is designed to be 5 days in
length. The following agenda is an example that
can be modified for each individual customer.
A typical group of workshop participants con-
sists of 2-6 administrators who have already
gained some experience on their own systems.
The course is structured to reinforce lessons
already learned. The workshop can be adapted
to specific customer requirements; the topics to
be covered are discussed with the customer in
advance and an agenda is created.
The workshop is usually held at the customer’s
site so that examples can be discussed and
described within the customer’s own environ-
ment. The workshop includes discussion of
error recognition and troubleshooting for
business-critical systems.
Participants receive an extensive documentation
packet in English on the topics covered. It can
be used as a reference in daily work or as a
troubleshooting guide for any problems that
might arise.
The fundamentals of the Oracle database and
SAP R/3 system are covered, with particular
emphasis on interaction of the two systems, and
it includes backup/restore/recovery concepts.
Sample agenda for a five-day workshop
Day 1
Oracle startup
Background: Process architecture
Physical Structure of the DB
Logical structure of the DB
Day 2
Review of topics covered
Basics of the DB and SAP R/3
How does Oracle process a transaction?
Special SAP areas
Day 3
Review of discussed topics
Rollback segments
Archiving online redo log files
Security of a SAP R/3 System
TSP layout for Oracle/SAP databases
Reorganizations
Day 4
Review of topics covered
Tuning of a SAP R/3 system
Day 5
Review of topics covered
Backup/Restore/Recovery CONCEPTS
Error handling

CONNECTING SAP TO YOUR ENTERPRISE
A N D B E Y O N D W I T H O R A C L E I N T E G R AT I O N
Oracle Integration is leading the industry
with native support for standards. Discover
how SAP customers can integrate to other
packaged applications, legacy systems and
trading partners easily and effectively.
Staying competitive in today’s ever-changing
environment is key to the success of any busin-
ess. Maintaining a competitive advantage
requires constant innovation. Traditionally,
organizations focused their innovation on new
products or service offerings. More recently,
they have begun to innovate the way existing
products or services, are done by developing
unique business processes. As companies turn
to technology to manage business processes,
and as they integrate disparate systems with
these processes, the ability of their IT infra-
structure to quickly adapt becomes critical.
Organizations need an IT infrastructure that
works seamlessly to deliver a nimble, efficient,
and highly adaptive set of services, so that
business processes can be created, deployed,
and optimized with little investment and
minimal time to value.
The emergence of service-oriented architectu-
res promises to hasten the time required to
integrate disparate systems and to quickly
deploy services through rapid development and
component reuse. The ability to capture, corre-
late, and aggregate events from many event
sources in a highly integrated environment
ensures that your organization will be able to
predict, and respond quickly to, changing
business conditions. Business process optimiza-
tion closes the loop on developing, deploying,
and improving business processes, enabling
your enterprise to improve its business with
minimal overhead.
Oracle Integration 51
Oracle Integration
The products that make up the Oracle inte-
gration:
Oracle BPEL Process Manager makes 100%
business process portability a reality
Oracle’s latest product offering, the Oracle
BPEL Process Manager, lets companies orche-
strate and execute Web services and business
processes. Oracle BPEL Process Manager is
the first product to deliver native support for
the critical Service-Oriented Architecture
process standard, which reduces the cost and
complexity of integration projects while
increasing their strategic value. Oracle BPEL
Process Manager, based on the Business
Process Execution Language for Web Services
standard, is a result of Oracle's acquisition of
Collaxa Inc.
Ensuring 100 percent portability and reuse
of processes, Oracle BPEL Process Manager
delivers a production-level, deployment proven
solution for implementing the BPEL standard.
This proven process standard not only speeds
the deployment of integration projects while
reducing costs, but enables rapid redeployment
of best practices. Without a standard process
technology, merging or redeploying processes
52
Moving to a Service-Oriented Architecture
The BPEL standard, managed by OASIS, is
the cornerstone of process orchestration and
execution within a Service-Oriented Archi-
tecture (SOA). As many leading organizations
adopt SOAs to reduce development time and
costs, BPEL will provide core process orches-
tration capabilities. Together, SOA and BPEL
deliver a modular, efficient, and effective way
for IT departments to save time and reduce
costs in the deployment of new solutions,
decrease maintenance costs, and quickly adapt
to changing business requirements.
Draeger sees massive ROI and lightning
speed implementation of their global
Integration initiative with Oracle AS
Integration
Draeger, a $1.3B company with 9,000 em-
ployees, is the world’s top supplier of Safety
and Medical gear represented in over 30
countries. By the mid 1990s, acquisitions
created a tremendous challenge for Draeger’s
global supply chain. Disparate data warehouses
and ERP systems were affecting profit margin
and customer satisfaction. To improve on-
time delivery and lower inventory costs,
Draeger launched an ambitious logistics
initiative.
Draeger chose option b, which it implemen-
ted using Oracle AS Integration and Oracle
RAC, a technology combination that gua-
rantees a uniquely high, availability solution.
According to an IDC Return on Investment
study, this approach saves Draeger about
$6M on IT-related and implementation costs.
In addition, the time to integrate newly
acquired companies into the supply chain is
greatly reduced. Altogether, Draeger accom-
plished a 193% ROI through this supply
chain integration project. IDC analyzed that
the payback period for Draeger’s investment
in Oracle AS Integration, RAC and PointOut
technology was barely half a year.
For more Information
http://otn.oracle.com/bpel
http://www.oracle.com/solutions/integration/
index.html
54

USEFUL LINKS ORACLE FOR SAP

www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap SAP OSS Note 23875:

Supported database and operating system
www.sap.com/partners/directories/technology/epx
releases for SAP Kernel version 3.1I^
http://service.sap.com/dbaora-BC-DB-ORA-RAC
SAP OSS Note 720886:
http://service/sap/com-PAM Oracle 10g – Integration in the SAP Environment
SAP OSS Note 581312:
SAP on RAC in general, please see
Licensing
http://service.sap.com/dbaora -> Media Library -> Oracle RAC
SAP OSS Note 740897:
SAP OSS Note 828268: Licensing
Oracle 10g features SAP OSS Note 5740897:
SAP OSS Note 527843: Licensing
10g and RAC for more details SAP OSS Note 581320:
SAP OSS Note 156548: FAQ Oracle RAC for SAP
Supported database and operating system SAP OSS Note 524816:
releases for SAP Kernel version 4.6x Enqueue Service for RAC SAP-Enqueue-Service
SAP OSS Note 85838: SAP OSS Note 705608:
Supported database and operating system SAP RAC specific monitors
releases for SAP Kernel versions 4.5x and 4.0x
SAP OSS note 830982:
SAP OSS Note 407314: HW fine tuning for SAP on RAC environment
Supported database and operating system
releases for SAP Web Application Server 6.x SAP OSS Note 105047:
Partitioning and Oracle Functionality
SAP OSS Note 23875: supported by SAP
Supported database and operating system
releases for SAP Kernel version 3.1I^ SAP OSS Note 701235:
Compressed Data Segments

Oracle Corporation

World Headquarters
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores,
CA 94065
U.S.A.

Published by
Oracle Corporation,
Oracle for SAP Global
Technology Center
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Tel. ++49 (0) 6227-8398 - 0
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