Best Practices - SAP On Nutanix

Running SAP on
Nutanix
Nutanix Best Practices
Version 1.0 • September 2017 • BP-2025

Running SAP on Nutanix
Copyright
Copyright 2017 Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual
property laws.
Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Copyright | 2
Contents
1. Executive Summary................................................................................ 4
2. Introduction..............................................................................................5
2.1. Audience........................................................................................................................ 5
2.2. Purpose..........................................................................................................................5
3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview.......................................6

3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Overview...........................................................................................6
3.2. Distributed Storage Fabric.............................................................................................7
3.3. App Mobility Fabric........................................................................................................7
3.4. AHV................................................................................................................................8
3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors................................................................................................. 8
3.6. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture...................................................................................... 8
3.7. Compression................................................................................................................ 10
3.8. Erasure Coding............................................................................................................11
4. Solution Overview................................................................................. 15
4.1. Invisible Infrastructure..................................................................................................15
4.2. Support for Running SAP on Nutanix......................................................................... 16
4.3. Why Run SAP on AHV?............................................................................................. 16
5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist.......................................... 19

5.1. Best Practices for SAP on Nutanix............................................................................. 19
5.2. Databases.................................................................................................................... 24
Appendix......................................................................................................................... 28
References.......................................................................................................................... 28
About the Authors............................................................................................................... 28
About Nutanix......................................................................................................................29
List of Figures................................................................................................................30
List of Tables................................................................................................................. 31
3
1. Executive Summary
The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform is a highly resilient hyperconverged platform that brings
the benefits of web-scale infrastructure to the enterprise. This document highlights why it is ideal
for virtualized instances of SAP systems and describes the best practices for getting the most
out of running SAP on Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V on Nutanix. For
business-critical transactional and analytical workloads, Nutanix, an SAP Global Technology
Partner, delivers the performance, scalability, and availability that your basis and database
administrators require, while reducing management and operational complexity. The Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud Platform offers SAP users a range of advantages, including:
• Localized I/O and flash for index and key database files, enabling low-latency operations.
• Infrastructure consolidation that eliminates underutilized application silos and consolidates
multiple workloads onto a single, dense platform, using up to 80 percent less space and 50
percent lower CapEx.
• Nondisruptive upgrades and scalability, including one-click node addition without system
downtime.
• Nutanix VM-level data protection and disaster recovery to automate backups.
• Unrivaled operational simplicity; no complicated configuration, provisioning, and mapping with
disks, RAID, and LUNs.
• Rapid one-click cloning of SAP VMs with no wasted storage capacity from the operation.
• One-click hypervisor conversion for greater flexibility and lower TCO.
1. Executive Summary | 4
2. Introduction
2.1. Audience
This best practices guide is part of the Nutanix Solutions Library. It is intended for architects,
basis administrators, database administrators, and system engineers responsible for designing,
managing, and supporting Nutanix infrastructures running SAP. Readers should already be
familiar with SAP Basis, database administration, and Nutanix.
2.2. Purpose
In this document, we cover the following subject areas:
• Overview of the Nutanix solution for delivering SAP on the Nutanix hypervisor, AHV, VMware
vSphere, and Microsoft Hyper-V.
• The benefits of SAP on Nutanix, and AHV in particular.
• Sizing guidance for scaling SAP deployments on Nutanix.
• Design and configuration considerations when architecting SAP on the Acropolis Distributed
Storage Fabric (DSF).
Table 1: Document Version History
Version
Published Notes
Number
1.0 September 2017 Original publication.
2. Introduction | 5
3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview
3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Overview

Nutanix delivers a hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for virtualization and
cloud environments. This solution brings the performance, availability, and economic benefits of
web-scale architecture to the enterprise through the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, which
is composed of two product families—Nutanix Acropolis operating system and Nutanix Prism
management interface.
Attributes of this solution include:
• Storage and compute resources delivered via hyperconverged infrastructure on x86 servers.
• System intelligence delivered via software-defined approach.
• Data, metadata, and operations fully distributed across entire cluster of x86 servers.
• Self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.
• API-based automation and rich analytics.
• Simplified one-click upgrade.
• Native file services for hosting user profiles.
• Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.
Nutanix Acropolis provides data services and can be broken down into three foundational
components: the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), the App Mobility Fabric (AMF), and the
hypervisor (AHV). Prism furnishes one-click infrastructure management for virtual environments
running on Acropolis, plus alerting, planning, and insights across your entire Nutanix deployment.
Acropolis is hypervisor-agnostic, supporting third-party hypervisors—ESXi, Hyper-V, and
XenServer—in addition to the native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.
3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 6

Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform
3.2. Distributed Storage Fabric

The Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) delivers enterprise data storage as an on-demand
service by employing a highly distributed software architecture. Nutanix eliminates the need for
traditional SAN and NAS solutions while delivering a rich set of VM-centric software-defined
services. Specifically, the DSF handles the data path of such features as snapshots, clones, high
availability, disaster recovery, deduplication, compression, replication, and erasure coding.
The DSF operates via an interconnected network of Controller VMs (CVMs) that form a Nutanix
cluster, and every node in the cluster has access to data from shared SSD, HDD, and cloud
resources. The hypervisors and the DSF communicate using the industry-standard NFS, iSCSI,
or SMB3 protocols, depending on the hypervisor in use.
3.3. App Mobility Fabric

The Acropolis App Mobility Fabric (AMF) collects powerful technologies that give IT professionals
the freedom to choose the best environment for their enterprise applications. The AMF
encompasses a broad range of capabilities for allowing applications and data to move freely
between runtime environments, including between Nutanix systems supporting different
hypervisors, and from Nutanix to public clouds. When VMs can migrate between hypervisors (for
example, between VMware ESXi and AHV), administrators can host production and development
or test environments concurrently on different hypervisors and shift workloads between them as
needed. AMF is implemented via a distributed, scale-out service that runs inside the CVM on
every node within a Nutanix cluster.

3.4. AHV
Nutanix ships with AHV, a built-in enterprise-ready hypervisor based on a hardened version of
proven open source technology. AHV is managed with the Prism interface, a robust REST API,
and an interactive command-line interface called aCLI (Acropolis CLI). These tools combine to
eliminate the management complexity typically associated with open source environments and
allow out-of-the-box virtualization on Nutanix—all without the licensing fees associated with other
hypervisors.
3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors

In addition to AHV, Nutanix Acropolis fully supports Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and
VMware vSphere. These options give administrators the flexibility to choose a hypervisor that
aligns with the existing skillset and hypervisor-specific toolset within their organization. Unlike
AHV, however, these hypervisors may require additional licensing and, by extension, incur
additional costs.
3.6. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Acropolis does not rely on traditional SAN or NAS storage or expensive storage network
interconnects. It combines highly dense storage and server compute (CPU and RAM) into a
single platform building block. Each building block is based on industry-standard Intel processor
technology and delivers a unified, scale-out, shared-nothing architecture with no single points of
failure.
The Nutanix solution has no LUNs to manage, no RAID groups to configure, and no complicated
storage multipathing to set up. All storage management is VM-centric, and the DSF optimizes I/
O at the VM virtual disk level. There is one shared pool of storage composed of either all-flash
or a combination of flash-based SSDs for high performance and HDDs for affordable capacity.
The file system automatically tiers data across different types of storage devices using intelligent
data placement algorithms. These algorithms make sure that the most frequently used data is
available in memory or in flash for optimal performance. Organizations can also choose flash-
only storage for the fastest possible storage performance. The following figure illustrates the data
I/O path for a write in a hybrid model (mix of SSD and HDD disks).

Figure 2: Information Life Cycle Management
The figure below shows an overview of the Nutanix architecture, including the hypervisor of
your choice (AHV, ESXi, Hyper-V, or XenServer), user VMs, the Nutanix storage CVM, and its
local disk devices. Each CVM connects directly to the local storage controller and its associated
disks. Using local storage controllers on each host localizes access to data through the DSF,
thereby reducing storage I/O latency. Moreover, having a local storage controller on each
node ensures that storage performance as well as storage capacity increase linearly with node
addition. The DSF replicates writes synchronously to at least one other Nutanix node in the
system, distributing data throughout the cluster for resiliency and availability. Replication factor
2 creates two identical data copies in the cluster, and replication factor 3 creates three identical
data copies.
Figure 3: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture

Local storage for each Nutanix node in the architecture appears to the hypervisor as one large
pool of shared storage. This allows the DSF to support all key virtualization features. Data
localization maintains performance and quality of service (QoS) on each host, minimizing the
effect noisy VMs have on their neighbors’ performance. This functionality allows for large, mixed-
workload clusters that are more efficient and more resilient to failure than traditional architectures
with standalone, shared, and dual-controller storage arrays.
When VMs move from one hypervisor to another, such as during live migration or a high
availability (HA) event, the now local CVM serves a newly migrated VM’s data. While all write I/
O occurs locally, when the local CVM reads old data stored on the now remote CVM, the local
CVM forwards the I/O request to the remote CVM. The DSF detects that I/O is occurring from a
different node and migrates the data to the local node in the background, ensuring that all read I/
O is served locally as well.
The next figure shows how data follows the VM as it moves between hypervisor nodes.
Figure 4: Data Locality and Live Migration
3.7. Compression
The Nutanix Capacity Optimization Engine (COE) transforms data to increase data efficiency on
disk, using compression as one of its key techniques. The DSF provides both inline and post-
process compression to suit the customer’s needs and the types of data involved.
Inline compression condenses sequential streams of data or large I/O sizes in memory before
writing them to disk, while post-process compression initially writes the data as usual (in an
uncompressed state), then uses the Nutanix MapReduce framework to compress the data
cluster-wide. When using inline compression with random I/O, the system writes data to the
oplog uncompressed, coalesces it, and then compresses it in memory before writing it to the
extent store. From the AOS 5.0 release onward, Nutanix has used LZ4 and LZ4HC for data
compression. Releases prior to AOS 5.0 use the Google Snappy compression library. Nutanix

data transformation provides good compression ratios with minimal computational overhead and
extremely fast compression and decompression rates.
The following figure shows an example of how inline compression interacts with the DSF write I/
O path.
Figure 5: ILM and Compression
3.8. Erasure Coding

The Nutanix platform relies on a replication factor for data protection and availability. This method
provides the highest degree of availability because it does not require reading from more than
one storage location or data recomputation on failure. However, because this feature requires
full copies, it does occupy additional storage resources. A system configured for replication factor
2 stores one additional copy of data; replication factor 3 stores two additional copies. The DSF
minimizes the required storage from this feature by encoding data using erasure codes (EC-X).
Similar to the concept of RAID (levels 4, 5, 6, and so on), EC-X encodes a strip of data blocks on
different nodes and calculates parity. In the event of a host or disk failure, the system can use the

parity to decode any missing data blocks. In the DSF, the data block is an extent group, and each
data block must be on a different node and belong to a different vDisk.
You can configure the number of data and parity blocks in a strip based on how many failures
you need to tolerate. In most cases, we can think of the configuration as the number of <data
blocks>/<number of parity blocks>.
EC-X is a post-process framework that does not affect the traditional write I/O path. The
encoding uses the Curator MapReduce framework for task distribution.
The figure below depicts a normal environment using replication factors.
Figure 6: Typical DSF Replication Factor Data Layout
In this scenario, we have a mix of both replication factor 2 and replication factor 3 data with
primary copies stored locally and replicas distributed to other nodes throughout the cluster. When
a Curator full scan runs, it finds eligible extent groups available for EC-X. Eligible extent groups
must be "write-cold," meaning that they haven't been written to for at least one hour.
The following figure shows an example 4/1 and 3/2 strip.

Figure 7: DSF Encoded Strip: Before Savings
Once the strips and parity have been successfully calculated, the system removes the replica
extent groups. The following figure shows the storage savings in the environment after EC-X has
run.

Figure 8: DSF Encoded Strip: After Savings

4. Solution Overview
4.1. Invisible Infrastructure

Invisible infrastructure means that enterprises get to focus on solving business problems
instead of on repetitive and tedious management and maintenance tasks that add no value.
The Enterprise Cloud Platform’s consumer-grade management interface, Prism, offers
uncompromising simplicity, with one-click infrastructure management, remediation, and
operational insights. Eliminating complexity frees your IT staff to innovate and create.
Figure 9: Nutanix Prism Overview
Deploy any application mix at any scale, all on a single platform. You can run both SAP
application servers and database VM workloads simultaneously, while isolating databases
on dedicated hosts for licensing purposes. Nutanix offers high IOPS and low latency, which
means that database computing and storage requirements drive deployment density, rather than
concerns about I/O or resource bottlenecks. The Acropolis DSF can easily handle the throughput
and transaction requirements of the most demanding transactional and analytical databases. Our
testing shows that it is better to increase the number of database VMs on the Nutanix platform, to
4. Solution Overview | 15
take full advantage of its performance capabilities, rather than scaling large numbers of database
instances or schemas within a single VM.
4.2. Support for Running SAP on Nutanix

Because most organizations use SAP software to deliver business-critical services to their
employees, partners, or customers, it is vital to run SAP software on supported platforms.
SAP has selected Nutanix as a Global Technology Partner and has certified both the Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud Platform and our native hypervisor, Nutanix AHV, for SAP NetWeaver
applications and relational databases. SAP has published Note 2428012, which includes general
support and configuration information for running SAP workloads on Nutanix, as well as Note
1122387, which discusses support for SAP on Linux in virtualized environments (you must have
SAP Service Marketplace login credentials to access SAP Notes). Nutanix also passed an SAP
SD Benchmark for Windows to become SAP hardware certified for Windows. You can visit the
Nutanix website for SAP-related information and documentation, including certified Nutanix and
OEM platforms from partners Lenovo and Dell.
4.3. Why Run SAP on AHV?

SAP Certification and Industry-Leading Support
Nutanix is the only hyperconverged platform certified for SAP end-to-end, which means our
support covers not only AHV, the Acropolis DSF, and hardware, but the entire infrastructure
stack: compute, storage, and virtualization are all fully certified and supported for SAP workloads.
Nutanix even provides support for business-critical applications such as Oracle, SQL, and
Exchange. Nutanix support boasts an industry-leading 90+ Net Promoter Score. We own
the problem, even if the issue arises from a third party. Nutanix SREs arrange and actively
participate in conference calls between vendors until the customer’s problem is resolved.
Simplicity
Nutanix AHV reflects the intersection of web-scale engineering and consumer-grade design.
Every Nutanix node includes Nutanix Prism, an elegant and intuitive management interface.
Built-in guidance and self-healing remove the burden of constantly tuning the environment.
With a few clicks, customers can upgrade their entire virtualization environment—including OS,
firmware, and hypervisor—regardless of geography.
Deploying SAP on AHV is easy and fast, saving countless hours otherwise wasted on
complicated performance management policies or storage and VM design. AHV is an enterprise-
grade hypervisor that is high performing, consistent, and simple to use.
Scalability
Standalone hypervisor management solutions mimic the three-tier environments for which they
were designed by requiring a scale-up architecture. Disparate scale-up management methods
also require considerable design effort to eliminate single points of failure and to minimize
downtime risk, while still allowing for maximum agility. This approach contrasts with the scale-out
capability that virtualization natively enables for the compute layer.
Nutanix consumer-grade design means that users can deploy applications within hours
of receiving Nutanix nodes. Adding nodes to the cluster is quick and intuitive as well, with
automated self-discovery and one-click automatic host configuration that uses existing policies.
Moreover, unlike other hypervisors, AHV has no cluster size limits from a compute or storage
perspective—you can start with as few as three nodes and then scale to thousands without ever
creating compute and storage silos.
Security
Conventional hypervisors must interact with hardware and software products from many
manufacturers, and security vulnerabilities emerge where the products intersect. In contrast,
we tuned, tested, and hardened AHV exclusively for Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure.
This approach yields a product with a dramatically reduced security area. The security baseline
covers the full stack, and comprehensive Nutanix analytics capabilities keep the entire platform
baseline compliant. With Nutanix, your SAP applications are fully protected under an industry-
leading secure platform ecosystem.
Resiliency
AHV virtualization, like the Nutanix hyperconverged data plane, is scale-out, self-healing,
and highly available out of the box. Because Prism is part of every node, the management
capabilities are highly redundant; they continue unabated even if a node fails. Because Nutanix
has a fully integrated stack, there are no incompatibility failures, which in turn reduces the risk of
downtime. Non-disruptive, rolling, one-click upgrades also ensure continuous uptime.
Analytics (Data-Driven Management)

AHV doesn’t require additional software licensing to extract analytics from the environment, and
there’s no need to load the data into a separate database. Analytics are built into Prism and
incorporate not only virtualization, but also storage and compute—providing visibility across the
entire stack.
Nutanix achieves data-driven efficiency with extensive automation and rich, system-wide
monitoring, combined with REST-based programmatic interfaces that integrate with datacenter
management tools. AHV feeds all system, audit, intrusion detection, and self-remediation logs
to the central log host, which allows real-time situational awareness during forensic support and
root cause analysis.
Economic Benefits
For most businesses, achieving optimal IT infrastructure is not a goal in and of itself—the
purpose of infrastructure is to enable the business. Nutanix invisible infrastructure, which
includes AHV, elevates IT staff from infrastructure work, enabling them to use their talents
and creativity to make the business more competitive, efficient, and profitable. AHV also
reduces legacy hypervisor costs, such as those associated with software licensing, ongoing
administration, business disruption, and hardware. To learn more about the economic benefits of
the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, visit www.nutanix.com/tco.
5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist

Following are the SAP on Nutanix best practices grouped according to category, such as CPU,
memory, storage, and databases. Note that the majority of best practice configurations and
optimizations occur at the database and operating system levels, rather than on the Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud Platform itself.
5.1. Best Practices for SAP on Nutanix

General Best Practices
• Follow the guidelines in the following SAP Notes:
⁃ 2428012: SAP on Nutanix
⁃ 1056052: Windows: VMware vSphere configuration guidelines.
⁃ 1122388: Linux: VMware vSphere configuration guidelines.
⁃ 1246467: Hyper-V Configuration guidelines
• Nutanix and SAP support various database vendors. Common vendors on the x86 platform
are Sybase ASE, SQL Server (VMware and Hyper-V only), Oracle, and IBM DB2.
• Nutanix and SAP provide integrated support. For SAP-related issues, open an SAP support
ticket. If SAP support determines that the problem is related to the hypervisor, they assign
the ticket to the respective vendor. You can also log a support call with Nutanix, VMware, or
Microsoft support for hypervisor issues.
• For VMware, you can open an SAP support ticket under the following categories:
⁃ BC-OP-NT-ESX (Windows on VMware ESX)
⁃ BC-OP-LNX-ESX (Linux on VMware ESX)
• To allow internal SAP monitoring processes to work correctly with Nutanix AHV, please follow
the guidelines in the Nutanix knowledge base article AHV Manage Hypervisor ID.
• Apply SAP Note 1409604: Virtualization on Windows: Enhanced monitoring or SAP Note
1102124: SAPOSCOL on Linux: Enhanced function. The guidance in these notes enables you
to view VMware performance counters in the following transactions: ST06: SAP NetWeaver
7.2 or later; OS07: SAP NetWeaver 7.01, 7.02, 7.1, and 7.11; OS07N: SAP NetWeaver
6.40 and 7.0. These actions are necessary to obtain SAP support, and they require VMware
configuration to perform the following operations:
⁃ Activate the host accessory functions on ESXi host (set Misc.GuestLibAllowHostInfo).
5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 19

⁃ Activate the accessory functions for the VM (set tools.guestlib.enableHostInfo).

• Use the latest processor generations, which include hardware features to assist virtualization
and improve performance. These features are hardware-assisted CPU virtualization, memory
management unit (MMU) virtualization, and I/O MMU virtualization. Intel Turbo Boost improves
performance for single-threaded applications and processes.
• After sizing VMs with the memory and virtual CPUs required for the workload, administer
SAP application instances within VMs in the same way that you would administer them with
physical infrastructure; the standard SAP administration tasks and procedures apply. Follow
parameter settings for SAP application servers as specified in SAP Notes on VMware as per
physical deployments.
• For performance best practices specific to vSphere, see Performance Best Practices for
VMware vSphere 6.0.
Guest Operating System Best Practices

• For AHV, only Linux operating systems that SAP lists on the Product Availability Matrix (PAM)
are supported. Windows OS is not supported on AHV.
• Install the latest version of VMware Tools in the guest operating system.
• Minimize VM time drift by following the guidelines in SAP Note 989963: Linux: VMware timing
problem and VMware KB article Timekeeping best practices for Linux guests (1006427).
• From Linux 2.6 onwards, set the Linux kernel I/O scheduler to NOOP.
• You can continue to use the Linux OS LVM (Logical Volume Manager) to manage disks
for convenience and flexibility. Be sure to use the correct extent and stripe based on your
database requirements.
• Disable read-ahead for database LVM logical volumes.
CPU Best Practices

• Enable hyperthreading if it is available.
Note: Hyperthreading might provide a reduced benefit for CPU-intensive batch jobs
compared to OLTP workloads. For more information on this topic, refer to SAP Note
1612283: Hardware Configuration Standards and Guidance.
• Be sure to assign a minimum of 8 GB per provisioned vCPU, 100 percent reserved. This
minimum assignment applies to both database and application servers. However, database
servers typically need more RAM, depending on requirements and testing results.
• Configure virtual NUMA (vNUMA) sockets for wide VMs that must cross NUMA nodes (for
example, database VMs). A VM is “wide” when it has more vCPUs than the NUMA node.

• If workload monitoring shows that the SAP application is not utilizing all the virtual CPUs, the
extra vCPUs may cause scheduling constraints, especially under high workload. Accordingly,
minimize the number of vCPUs in the VM.
• It is usually not critical to set CPU reservations. SAP tests on vCPU overcommit show graceful
degradation in performance, which can be overcome by rebalancing the workloads across an
ESXi cluster (using VMware vSphere vMotion). This solution assumes spare CPU capacity in
the cluster.
• Consider NUMA boundaries before hot adding vCPUs, as this action can disable vNUMA. For
more information, see the VMware KB article vNUMA is disabled if VCPU hotplug is enabled.
⁃ The effect of hot adding vCPUs is particularly relevant to database VMs, which can be
NUMA-wide. Generally, databases are sized using vCPUs capable of handling peak
workloads with an additional buffer, so hot add might not be an urgent use case. However,
if you need to hot add vCPUs beyond a NUMA boundary, the loss in vNUMA benefits
depends on the workload and NUMA optimization algorithms specific to the database
vendor and version of VMware vSphere. VMware recommends determining the NUMA
optimization benefits based on your own workload before setting the hot add vCPU function
—this analysis allows you to decide if the performance tradeoff is warranted.
Memory Best Practices

• For production systems under strict performance SLAs, set memory reservations equal to the
VM size (VMware and Hyper-V only).
• Nutanix AHV does not allow memory over-commitment, as it is purpose-built for enterprise
workloads.
• Use large memory pages for databases. Large page support is enabled by default on VMware
vSphere and is supported in Linux and Windows. Using large pages can potentially increase
TLB access efficiency and improve program performance.
Note: Large pages can cause memory to be allocated to a VM more quickly.
• Follow SAP guidelines for using large pages. Some SAP applications do not support large
pages, whether those applications are running inside a VM or natively.
⁃ Not supported for the ABAP stack (see SAP Note 1312995: Enabling Large Page Support
for the View Memory Model).
⁃ Supported for NetWeaver Java on Linux (see SAP Note 1681501: Configure a SAP JVM to
use large pages on Linux).
⁃ Not supported for Java in Business Objects.

• Follow the same SAP Notes as you would for a physical deployment to configure the size of
the OS swap space inside the VM. This guideline is independent of VMware. SAP or SAP
Support should address recommendations on OS swap sizing for SAP.
• If you do not set memory reservations, VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler
(DRS) load balancing recommendations could be suboptimal for SAP systems with large
memory requirements.
Storage Best Practices

• Nutanix supports common storage protocols, such as NFS and iSCSI. Each of these storage
protocols achieves acceptable performance. Use iSCSI In-Guest Storage where Windows
Failover Clustering is required.
• Nutanix recommends using standard VMDK on a standard container or datastore for VMware.
• Spread database files across multiple vDisks. Separate logs from data in separate vDisks. We
recommend assigning the DB log vDisk to a separate PVSCSI adapter.
• With AHV, there is no need to worry about multiple PVSCSI adapters, as Nutanix AHV is built
for high-performance VMs from the ground up.
It is not necessary to create multiple storage pools or containers in a Nutanix environment, as
such separation does not affect performance. A single storage container is sufficient for your
environment and any additional containers are only required for management purposes.
• Use thin disks. It is not necessary to use eager-zeroed thick disks unless running Oracle RAC,
where it is a requirement to enable Clusterware features. There is no performance advantage
to using eager-zeroed thick disks over thin in a Nutanix environment.
• You can enable inline compression (delay=0) in a Nutanix storage container for improved
performance and space savings.
• Disable deduplication and erasure coding for SAP environments.
• For I/O-intensive SAP workloads in VMware, you can increase the queue depth to increase
performance.
• In VMware, disable Storage I/O Control and Storage DRS, as they offer no benefit in a
Nutanix environment. Nutanix has built-in noisy neighbor prevention due to the web-scale
design and storage controller on each Nutanix node.
• Use Nutanix snapshots to create crash-consistent, point-in-time copies of systems to avoid
VM stun or pause behavior in the hypervisor.
Note: Local snapshots are not backups.
• When deleting a VMware snapshot (for example, during backup operations for a VM running
a database in a three-tier setup), the VM may be stunned for a period. The stun can cause

application server disconnections, but SAP application servers are configured to automatically
reconnect.
⁃ See SAP Note 98051: Database Reconnect: Architecture and function. VMware
recommends not performing a VMware snapshot delete operation while a batch job is
running. The delete operation could cause the batch job to cancel.
• Use a single Nutanix container, which is represented as a VMware datastore.
• Choose the hardware model based on compute, storage, and licensing requirements.
⁃ Ideally, keep the working set in SSD and the database size within node capacity.
⁃ Select a model that can fit all of the database on a single node. For databases too large to
fit on a single node, ensure that there is ample bandwidth between nodes.
⁃ Use higher-memory node models for I/O-heavy workloads.
⁃ Use a node twice the memory size of the largest single VM.
⁃ Use a node that fits your organization’s licensing constraints.
• Nutanix CVMs should always be in the vSphere Cluster Root and not in a child resource pool.
• Consider using a Nutanix all-flash node for your DB workloads if requirements make the data-
tiering model unsuitable.
Network
• On VMware, use the VMXNET family of paravirtualized network adapters. The paravirtualized
network adapters in the VMXNET family implement an optimized network interface that
passes network traffic between the VMe and the physical network interface cards with minimal
overhead.
• On Windows, enable RSS (Receive Side Scaling) if available.
• On VMware, use E1000E for legacy SAP applications on older operating systems only.
Sizing and Architecture

• As with physical deployments, obtain the SAPS (SAP Application Performance Standard)
rating of the SAP system. The SAPS rating for a VM depends on the core on which the
vCPUs are scheduled. The SAPS rating per core, in turn, depends on the server and CPU
specifications. Contact Nutanix for assistance with SAP sizing after obtaining the SAPS rating.
• Scale-out application servers in VMs that fit within a NUMA node (see the CPU section on
NUMA guidelines).
• It is better to have multiple smaller application servers than one large application server. (See
SAP Note 9942.) This best practice reduces CPU context switching between work processes

and generates less overhead. It is also preferable to have one VM per application server to
manage workload distribution and resiliency.
• Add an extra 16 percent to the SAPS calculations for virtualization and hypervisor overhead.
This buffer ensures that there is room available for compute resources to compensate for any
virtualization overhead.
• Contact Nutanix or your hardware OEM for support with sizing services.
5.2. Databases
General Database Licensing
Database VMs can be wide, depending on the sizing requirements.
• If the SAP user license covers the database license at runtime, you can run application server
and database server machines in the same cluster without any database licensing impact.
• If the database license is obtained separately from the database vendor (OEM), depending
on the database vendor virtual licensing policies, you can maximize ROI on database
licensing costs with a dedicated cluster for database VMs, or you can restrict database VMs to
dedicated hosts using anti-affinity policies. Contact your Nutanix account manager for further
details on how to utilize effective database licensing using Nutanix.
• If the database license is purchased from the vendor (such as Oracle), all cores of hosts
running Oracle must be licensed, after which you can run an unlimited number of Oracle VMs
on those hosts. Oracle does not support partially licensed hosts. A best practice is to have a
separate cluster dedicated to Oracle for licensing and workload segregation, depending on the
size of your Oracle database environment.
Sybase ASE
• See SAP Note 170680: SYB: Sybase ASE released for virtual systems.
• Follow the guidelines in SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise on VMware vSphere:
Essential Deployment Tips. Also refer to the guidelines for Sybase ASE in Architectural
Guidelines and Best Practices for Deployments of SAP HANA on VMware vSphere.
Oracle on SAP
• Nutanix supports Oracle Database. See SAP Note 1173954: Support of Oracle for VMware.
For an overview of Oracle support and licensing on VMware, see Understanding Oracle
Certification, Support and Licensing for VMware Environments.
• The VMware Oracle Support Policy states that “VMware Support will accept accountability
for any Oracle-related issue reported by a customer. By being accountable, VMware Support

will drive the issue to resolution regardless of which vendor (VMware, Oracle, or others) is
responsible for the resolution.”
• See SAP Note 793113: FAQ: Oracle I/O configuration for recommendations concerning
maximizing I/O performance, which also apply to virtual environments.
• SAP supports Oracle Data Guard. See SAP Note 105047: Support for Oracle functions in the
SAP environment.
• For information on Oracle performance on SAP, see SAP Note 618868: FAQ: Oracle
performance. If you suspect slow I/O performance, check the vSphere I/O latency metrics.
• Set huge pages, following the guidelines from SAP Note 1672954.
• SAP supports Oracle RAC. See SAP Note 527843: Oracle RAC support in the SAP
environment. RAC configurations are also supported on VMware. See the Virtualizing Oracle
Databases on Nutanix Best Practice Guide.
• For a consistent online backup of the Oracle database, the following options are available:
⁃ Use Oracle utility RMAN (this option does not require a storage-based snapshot).
⁃ Place the Oracle database in backup mode, then take a snapshot (VMware or storage
array level).
• For Oracle on Windows, you can use Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to
perform online database backup, which is database consistent. See Performing Database
Backup and Recovery with VSS. This process is not supported with Oracle ASM (Automatic
Storage Management).
SAP on MS SQL Server

• SQL Server is supported on VMware with four options:
⁃ Microsoft Premier contract.
⁃ Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (Windows Server 2008 and later).
⁃ Server OEM.
⁃ VMware Global Support Services (GSS) and TSANet.
• See the guidelines on Microsoft clustering with vSphere for supported configurations.
⁃ For Nutanix, Microsoft clustering with iSCSI support with persistent SCSI reservation
requires AOS 4.5 and later.
• SAP supports databases protected by SQL Server AlwaysOn. See SAP Note 1772688: SQL
Server AlwaysOn and SAP applications.

⁃ AlwaysOn minimizes RTO and RPO in case of primary SQL Server failure. For more
information, see Running SAP Applications on the Microsoft Platform. The process for
configuring AlwaysOn in VMs is comparable to the process for physical deployments.
• Place data and log files in separate vDisks, preferably connected through separate SCSI
adapters.
⁃ See SAP with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005: Best Practices for High
Availability, Maximum Performance, and Scalability.
• For SQL Server configuration parameters, follow the SAP Notes as per physical instances:
1237682: Configuration Parameters for SQL Server 2008 and 1702408: Configuration
Parameters for SQL Server 2012.
⁃ These notes indicate how much extra memory the OS requires beyond SQL Server. For
memory sizing, treat the VM as if it were a physical server and calculate memory allocation
within the VM accordingly.
• To investigate SQL Server I/O performance within the guest OS, see SAP Note 987961: FAQ:
SQL Server I/O performance.
• If you suspect slow I/O performance, check the vSphere I/O latency metrics.
• Backup considerations for SAP SQL Server databases are described in SAP Note 1878886:
Backup Strategies for SQL Server. SIMPLE recovery mode is not acceptable for SAP
databases.
• We recommend Nutanix solutions that integrate with Microsoft VSS (for database consistency)
for environments requiring high restore SLAs—these solutions work on VMware much like
they do on physical infrastructure.
• Also refer to the Nutanix best practices guide for Microsoft SQL Server.
SAP on DB2
• IBM supports DB2 on VMware. See also SAP Note 1130801: DB6: Virtualization of IBM DB2
for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.
• IBM supports subcapacity licensing on VMware. For details, see IBM’s subcapacity licensing
FAQs, item 13.
• IBM uses the PVU metric for licensing. For VMware, the IBM policy is: “Each vCPU is equal
to one processor core for PVU licensing. We license to the lower of the sum of vCPUs or full
(physical) capacity of the server.” Here are some licensing examples:
⁃ 1x 8 vCPU VM running a DB2 on a 16-core ESXi host: 8 cores for PVU licensing.
⁃ 3x 8 vCPUs VMs or 1x 32 vCPU VM on a 16-core ESXi host (that is, vCPU overcommit):
16 cores for PVU licensing.

⁃ 1x 16 vCPU VM (running DB2) on an ESXi cluster with 2x 16 core ESXi hosts (extra host
added for vSphere High Availability failover): 16 cores for PVU licensing.
Figure 10: Virtualization-Centric Availability Scenario

Appendix
References
Nutanix AHV References
1. AHV Best Practices Guide
2. Oracle on AHV Best Practices Guide
3. AHV: Manage Hypervisor ID
VMware vSphere References

1. Architecture Guidelines and Best Practices for Deployments of SAP HANA on VMware
vSphere
2. Monitoring Business Critical Applications with VMware vCenter Operations Manager
3. Oracle Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide
4. Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere: 6.0
5. SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise on VMware vSphere Essential Deployment Tips
6. Architecting Microsoft SQL Server on VMware vSphere
7. The CPU Scheduler in VMware vSphere 5.1 Performance Study
8. VMware vSphere Resource Management Guide
9. SAP on VMware Sizing & Design Example
10. The Case for SAP Central Services and VMware Fault Tolerance
Microsoft Hyper-V References

1. SAP on Microsoft Hyper-V
2. Hyper-V Getting Started Guide
3. Windows Server 2012 Performance Tuning Guidelines
4. Step-by-Step Guide for Testing Hyper-V and Failover Clustering
5. Quick Migration with Hyper-V
6. Microsoft Virtualization Blog
7. SAP on Windows Community
About the Authors

Kasim Hansia is a Senior Solutions and Performance Engineer in Nutanix with over 15 years of
professional experience. He specializes in SAP and database technologies and has provided
Appendix | 28
technical leadership for organizations and mentored teams. He has extensive experience with
analysis, design, and development of Enterprise systems; he has been a part of and lead
Enterprise Architecture teams and knows how to articulate solutions based on a customer’s
strategic business or technical requirements.
Prior to working in Nutanix, Kasim was a Solution Architect in VMware's Center of Excellence
APJ for Business Critical apps where he worked closely with Technical Marketing, Alliances,
and PSO to create service offerings and GTM strategies. He also handled the technical portfolio
from the vBCA perspective, delivering complex projects on SAP and Oracle and growing the
business, where COE APJ turned from a value and support center to a profit center. Prior to that,
he was a Senior Manager in Accenture, performing a role of SAP Practice Lead and managing
the technical team where he has led and delivered award-winning SAP projects on VMware.
Alexander Thoma is an experienced Enterprise Infrastructure Architect and a Senior Solutions
and Performance Engineer in Nutanix. At VMware PSO, he focused on driving sound enterprise
architectures based on customer requirements and constraints. For the last 2.5 years, he
focused on presales with the Global Center of Excellence, where he was responsible for
designing, creating, and running highly technical enablement classes for the complete SDDC
portfolio of VMware.
At Nutanix, Alexander’s main focus is on Business Critical Applications with SAP, Microsoft SQL,
and Oracle DB.
When it comes to Infrastructure design and implementation, he has done a large variety of
projects across all sorts of industries, including large-scale file and print solutions for top-five
chemical companies, virtualization and consolidation solutions for large consumer banks, and
enterprise Public and Private cloud solutions for SAP Cloud itself.
During his tenure at VMware, Alexander played an instrumental part in the VMware Certified
Design Expert program by advising the program manager and providing content, such as design
and troubleshooting scenarios. One of his main functions was his role as an active panel member
during the defense sessions (attending more than 100 panels); he has seen more than half of all
successful VMware Certified Design Expert holders in the world as a panelist.
About Nutanix
Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that
power their business. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform leverages web-scale engineering
and consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization, and storage into
a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable
performance, cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and seamless application
mobility for a broad range of enterprise applications. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow up
on Twitter @nutanix.
Appendix | 29
List of Figures
Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.....................................................................7
Figure 2: Information Life Cycle Management.................................................................. 9
Figure 3: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture................................................................ 9
Figure 4: Data Locality and Live Migration......................................................................10
Figure 5: ILM and Compression......................................................................................11
Figure 6: Typical DSF Replication Factor Data Layout................................................... 12
Figure 7: DSF Encoded Strip: Before Savings................................................................13
Figure 8: DSF Encoded Strip: After Savings...................................................................14
Figure 9: Nutanix Prism Overview...................................................................................15
Figure 10: Virtualization-Centric Availability Scenario..................................................... 27
30
List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History.................................................................................. 5
31

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Version 1.0 • September 2017 • BP-2025

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview.......................................6

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist.......................................... 19

Table 1: Document Version History

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview

3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Overview

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 6

Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform

3.2. Distributed Storage Fabric

3.3. App Mobility Fabric

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 7

3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors

3.6. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 8

Figure 2: Information Life Cycle Management

Figure 3: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 9

Figure 4: Data Locality and Live Migration

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 10

Figure 5: ILM and Compression

3.8. Erasure Coding

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 11

Figure 6: Typical DSF Replication Factor Data Layout

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 12

Figure 7: DSF Encoded Strip: Before Savings

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 13

Figure 8: DSF Encoded Strip: After Savings

3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview | 14

4.1. Invisible Infrastructure

Figure 9: Nutanix Prism Overview

4.2. Support for Running SAP on Nutanix

4.3. Why Run SAP on AHV?

Analytics (Data-Driven Management)

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist

5.1. Best Practices for SAP on Nutanix

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 19

⁃ Activate the accessory functions for the VM (set tools.guestlib.enableHostInfo).

Guest Operating System Best Practices

CPU Best Practices

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 20

Memory Best Practices

Note: Large pages can cause memory to be allocated to a VM more quickly.

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 21

Storage Best Practices

Note: Local snapshots are not backups.

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 22

Sizing and Architecture

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 23

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 24

SAP on MS SQL Server

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 25

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 26

Figure 10: Virtualization-Centric Availability Scenario

5. SAP on Nutanix Best Practices Checklist | 27

VMware vSphere References

Microsoft Hyper-V References

About the Authors

Figure 2: Information Life Cycle Management.................................................................. 9

Figure 3: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture................................................................ 9

Figure 4: Data Locality and Live Migration......................................................................10

Figure 5: ILM and Compression......................................................................................11

Figure 6: Typical DSF Replication Factor Data Layout................................................... 12