Designing, planning and executing the delivery of a SAP infrastructure from scratch can be a daunting task; resembling the coordination and planning of a highly complex and elaborate circus. This article demonstrates some key areas to consider, and how to maneuver in each successfully, so as to produce a sound and executable infrastructure design that will make any circus conductor proud. Bear in mind that this success is also highly dependent on the ideal blend of subject matter experts, business stakeholders and technical architecture resources, combined with some good old common sense and creative thinking!
Hardware
As conveyed in a recent What is the best SAP hardware platform and why aren't you on it?, selecting the right hardware comes down to:
> Mission Critical
Realistically, how mission critical is your SAP implementation? Do you have a consensus between the business, vendors and IT on this topic? Meticulously analyzing the needs of your end user landscape, combined with some measurements on usage hours, number of transactions etc., and some preliminary feedback from your Right-Sizing Your Hardware exercise, will significantly support your decision on how extensive your Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Resiliency planning should be.
> Windows vs. UNIX
A classic and long-time point of contention between competing Operating System "camps" is which OS to use... Drawing from some common sense, and generally known facts about the industry, Sun/IBM/HP UNIX systems have often been leveraged for highly scalable instances, whereas Windows systems for much lower scale systems. Referencing some points from the aforementioned article, UNIX systems scale to about 200,000 SAPS (enough for approximately 40,000 concurrent SD users), and Windows systems scale to 60,000 SAPS (enough for approximately 10,000 concurrent SD users). Some other important factors to consider are: internal expertise/competency, operating system and database strategies, SLAs with the business etc.
> Virtualization
A very interesting and exciting topic in the SAP space as of the past 2-3 years, and one to seriously consider as of late with the growing business adoption rates and proven case studies. Going with VMWare has significant benefits that the industry has already taken advantage of for various solutions. As of late, SAP has backed their support of VMWare and selecting this option for your implementation should be openly discussed and seriously considered. An added benefit of leveraging VMWare is to provide VMWare View (VDI) for users outside of your network that have no VPN access and require access to a ready-to-run desktop environment with the SAP GUI installed. Going with mixed landscapes of virtualized Dev/QA environments, and physical hardware for your Production environment, can be an option; however consider the challenges of replicating OS/DB configurations/settings/etc. across each landscape effectively, "snapshots" of servers, and the increased support/costs incurred with physical equipment.
Databases
As of late, with the acquisition of Sybase, database selection can be a touchy subject. Given the market forces that SAP has nurtured through their partnerships and database strategy with Sybase, products such as Oracle can be a tough sell.
Database selections comes down to some key variables including:
> Internal Competency: does your IT staff, and in particular Database Architect, possess the knowledge and experience to support the database of choice
> Alignment with SAP Strategy: considering the recent acquisition of Sybase and the push for in-memory databases
> Findings and Requirements from your SAP Sizing Effort
> Licensing Costs
Identity Management and Single Sign-On
SAP IDM / CUA (Identity Management and Central User Administration) is the standard platform for managing SAP security and the administration of user accounts for SAP back-end systems (ECC and BI). IDM provisions user accounts and authorization access to the SAP back-end systems (ECC and BI). Security Administrators can manage SAP role assignments centrally through IDM; implementing and supporting IDM depends primarily on the following factors:
> Aligning the IDM implementation with key business drivers and organizational objectives
> Creating a Governance and Support Model that aligns smoothly with existing organizations and processes
> Achieving and sustaining high quality identity data as the foundation of the IAM solution
> Integrating with an organization's existing technology infrastructure and adapting to changes over time
Monitoring
In the "monitoring space", there are several options, all of which enrich and expand the basic monitoring services provided by Solution Manager (listed below):
> Integrated SAP product
> Manage all systems centrally
> Preconfigured view and logical collection of administration tasks
> Daily system administration and monitoring (automatic and manual)
> Daily/weekly/monthly reporting through Early Watch
> Monitor SAP and non-SAP Systems
One such options is Tidal Horizon which compliments the performance monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager by providing out-of-the-box best practices and procedures for automating the analysis and management of SAP operations.
> Automate complex and routine tasks
> Optimize resources required for system-sustaining efforts
> Reduce the complexity of managing a large SAP installation
> Automatically collect and organize detailed performance data
> Proactive action basis staff and other high value added resources
> Consistent analysis of problems in real-time using best practices across the entire SAP infrastructure
> Traceability of all problems to the technical layer in which they occurred (J2EE layer, ABAP layer, database layer, or network / OS layer)
Tidal Horizon is an ideal solution for Windows-based platforms as it is an add-on product for Microsoft Operations Manager Server (MOM) that provides rich, deep, scalable operations for SAP.
Furthermore, SAPs Computing Center Management System (CCMS) allows you to monitor, control, and configure your SAP System. CCMS provides some basic functionality that can be supplemental to a tool such as Tidal, some of which are listed below:
> Starting and stopping SAP services
> Unattended 24 hour system management using instances and operation modes
> System monitoring and automatic reporting of alerts
> Processing and controlling background jobs, scheduling database backups
Sizing
One of the most important exercises to conduct during the early stages in planning your SAP deployment, and one that is NOT to be underestimated. Usually, the classic/quick SAP Sizing exercise can be sufficient (especially if it is done right), yet in some instances requires some intelligent usage of the tool and extrapolating more significant information from it in very close collaboration with your hardware vendor.
Summarized below are the two types of sizing exercises you will likely engage in:
> Formal Sizing (Quick Sizing)
- Breakdown of the number of users by application module
- Determination of user type – high, medium or low volume users
- Transaction volume by process area
- Customization (custom programs)
- End-user delivery methods (SAP GUI, Web GUI or Portal)
- Number of interfaces, volume and frequency
- Batch processes and frequency
- Printing and reporting
- High availability
- Data retention
- Archiving
> Informal Sizing (best practices rule of thumb, benchmarked against similar SAP projects)
- SAP application modules to be deployed
- Number of licensed users
- Deployment method (single global instance or distributed)
- Percentage of custom programs
- End-user delivery methods (SAPGUI, WebGUI or Portal)
- Batch processes and interfaces
- The type of infrastructure to be deployed to support the application
- High availability
- Data retention
- Archiving
Printing
Your SAP printing strategy can often be a challenging exercise, particularly with a global deployment across multiple offices that may have mixed print devices, drivers, connections etc. Below are some key areas to focus on when designing your print strategy and how best to address each.
> What are the printing requirements?
- Consider the type of printed output your offices will most likely produce (e.g. invoices, reports etc.), and determine the printing needs of each office > Where are the printers located?
- Work with your infrastructure and networking team to produce a visual map of your print landscape, along with an inventory of IP addresses, drivers, versions, models, connectivity type etc.
> Is there a printing strategy in place from the business?
- Work closely with each office and your business units to determine their printing needs; and then try to converge those needs into a homogeneous solution that works for everyone and can be more easily deployed than targeted/custom solutions
> Are print servers currently used?
- This will help in determining how you leverage SAP PAL
Will there be a need for special forms printing?
- Special printing like barcodes, for example, require solutioning on SAP custom forms; consider these and account for them as part of your custom development efforts and whether your printers will support their output
> What are the batch printing requirements and how will they be addressed?
- Some other points to consider with batch printing is how the batch job will be delivered to either internal printers or external printing services
Supplemental to this effort, SAP provides tools and resources such as the Output Management to establish your printing infrastructure and design. Below are key benefits with PAL:
> Configure printers centrally
> Distribute printer configuration to other systems
> Keep printing jobs in each system as before
> Group printers and target systems for customized organization
> Get printer status such as paper jam, empty tray, off-line, etc.
Interfaces
In most instances, the starting point of your interface landscape is from your Component Business Model (CBM); put forth by IBM a few years ago, it helps create a "heat map" of your functional/technical/geographic units and processes. From these CBM maps you can derive your:
> Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture design
> SAP integration/interface design
> Legacy-to-SAP interface strategy and "legacy system retirement" planning
> External systems integration (e.g. EDI, banking, warehouses etc.)
Implementing this design is where SAP Netweaver Process Integration (PI) steps in; a component of "the Netweaver product group used to facilitate the exchange of information among a company's internal software and systems and those of external parties". PI offers a variety of standard adapters to interface with file-based formats, XML etc., however in some instances requires the addition of 3rd party tools/adapters to support SFTP, EDI and other more-complex formats. Companies such as Seeburger and Advantco are typically your most common vendors on the market, and also provide great "central monitoring" tools to keep your interfaces running in shape and closely controlled.
Look for a more detailed article on Netweaver PI in my future posts; including best practices, communication techniques etc.
Beyond some of these key areas to consider when designing and deploying your SAP infrastructure, topics such as backup and recovery, high availability, disaster recovery, networking and security (e.g. ports, VPN etc.), end-user access (e.g. SAP GUI, Portal, AccAD etc.) are just some of the many topics to consider to get your SAP infrastructure done right... Best of luck, and remember that you can only be as successful as your design!
Hardware
As conveyed in a recent What is the best SAP hardware platform and why aren't you on it?, selecting the right hardware comes down to:
> Mission Critical
Realistically, how mission critical is your SAP implementation? Do you have a consensus between the business, vendors and IT on this topic? Meticulously analyzing the needs of your end user landscape, combined with some measurements on usage hours, number of transactions etc., and some preliminary feedback from your Right-Sizing Your Hardware exercise, will significantly support your decision on how extensive your Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Resiliency planning should be.
> Windows vs. UNIX
A classic and long-time point of contention between competing Operating System "camps" is which OS to use... Drawing from some common sense, and generally known facts about the industry, Sun/IBM/HP UNIX systems have often been leveraged for highly scalable instances, whereas Windows systems for much lower scale systems. Referencing some points from the aforementioned article, UNIX systems scale to about 200,000 SAPS (enough for approximately 40,000 concurrent SD users), and Windows systems scale to 60,000 SAPS (enough for approximately 10,000 concurrent SD users). Some other important factors to consider are: internal expertise/competency, operating system and database strategies, SLAs with the business etc.
> Virtualization
A very interesting and exciting topic in the SAP space as of the past 2-3 years, and one to seriously consider as of late with the growing business adoption rates and proven case studies. Going with VMWare has significant benefits that the industry has already taken advantage of for various solutions. As of late, SAP has backed their support of VMWare and selecting this option for your implementation should be openly discussed and seriously considered. An added benefit of leveraging VMWare is to provide VMWare View (VDI) for users outside of your network that have no VPN access and require access to a ready-to-run desktop environment with the SAP GUI installed. Going with mixed landscapes of virtualized Dev/QA environments, and physical hardware for your Production environment, can be an option; however consider the challenges of replicating OS/DB configurations/settings/etc. across each landscape effectively, "snapshots" of servers, and the increased support/costs incurred with physical equipment.
Databases
As of late, with the acquisition of Sybase, database selection can be a touchy subject. Given the market forces that SAP has nurtured through their partnerships and database strategy with Sybase, products such as Oracle can be a tough sell.
Database selections comes down to some key variables including:
> Internal Competency: does your IT staff, and in particular Database Architect, possess the knowledge and experience to support the database of choice
> Alignment with SAP Strategy: considering the recent acquisition of Sybase and the push for in-memory databases
> Findings and Requirements from your SAP Sizing Effort
> Licensing Costs
Identity Management and Single Sign-On
SAP IDM / CUA (Identity Management and Central User Administration) is the standard platform for managing SAP security and the administration of user accounts for SAP back-end systems (ECC and BI). IDM provisions user accounts and authorization access to the SAP back-end systems (ECC and BI). Security Administrators can manage SAP role assignments centrally through IDM; implementing and supporting IDM depends primarily on the following factors:
> Aligning the IDM implementation with key business drivers and organizational objectives
> Creating a Governance and Support Model that aligns smoothly with existing organizations and processes
> Achieving and sustaining high quality identity data as the foundation of the IAM solution
> Integrating with an organization's existing technology infrastructure and adapting to changes over time
Monitoring
In the "monitoring space", there are several options, all of which enrich and expand the basic monitoring services provided by Solution Manager (listed below):
> Integrated SAP product
> Manage all systems centrally
> Preconfigured view and logical collection of administration tasks
> Daily system administration and monitoring (automatic and manual)
> Daily/weekly/monthly reporting through Early Watch
> Monitor SAP and non-SAP Systems
One such options is Tidal Horizon which compliments the performance monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager by providing out-of-the-box best practices and procedures for automating the analysis and management of SAP operations.
> Automate complex and routine tasks
> Optimize resources required for system-sustaining efforts
> Reduce the complexity of managing a large SAP installation
> Automatically collect and organize detailed performance data
> Proactive action basis staff and other high value added resources
> Consistent analysis of problems in real-time using best practices across the entire SAP infrastructure
> Traceability of all problems to the technical layer in which they occurred (J2EE layer, ABAP layer, database layer, or network / OS layer)
Tidal Horizon is an ideal solution for Windows-based platforms as it is an add-on product for Microsoft Operations Manager Server (MOM) that provides rich, deep, scalable operations for SAP.
Furthermore, SAPs Computing Center Management System (CCMS) allows you to monitor, control, and configure your SAP System. CCMS provides some basic functionality that can be supplemental to a tool such as Tidal, some of which are listed below:
> Starting and stopping SAP services
> Unattended 24 hour system management using instances and operation modes
> System monitoring and automatic reporting of alerts
> Processing and controlling background jobs, scheduling database backups
Sizing
One of the most important exercises to conduct during the early stages in planning your SAP deployment, and one that is NOT to be underestimated. Usually, the classic/quick SAP Sizing exercise can be sufficient (especially if it is done right), yet in some instances requires some intelligent usage of the tool and extrapolating more significant information from it in very close collaboration with your hardware vendor.
Summarized below are the two types of sizing exercises you will likely engage in:
> Formal Sizing (Quick Sizing)
- Breakdown of the number of users by application module
- Determination of user type – high, medium or low volume users
- Transaction volume by process area
- Customization (custom programs)
- End-user delivery methods (SAP GUI, Web GUI or Portal)
- Number of interfaces, volume and frequency
- Batch processes and frequency
- Printing and reporting
- High availability
- Data retention
- Archiving
> Informal Sizing (best practices rule of thumb, benchmarked against similar SAP projects)
- SAP application modules to be deployed
- Number of licensed users
- Deployment method (single global instance or distributed)
- Percentage of custom programs
- End-user delivery methods (SAPGUI, WebGUI or Portal)
- Batch processes and interfaces
- The type of infrastructure to be deployed to support the application
- High availability
- Data retention
- Archiving
Printing
Your SAP printing strategy can often be a challenging exercise, particularly with a global deployment across multiple offices that may have mixed print devices, drivers, connections etc. Below are some key areas to focus on when designing your print strategy and how best to address each.
> What are the printing requirements?
- Consider the type of printed output your offices will most likely produce (e.g. invoices, reports etc.), and determine the printing needs of each office > Where are the printers located?
- Work with your infrastructure and networking team to produce a visual map of your print landscape, along with an inventory of IP addresses, drivers, versions, models, connectivity type etc.
> Is there a printing strategy in place from the business?
- Work closely with each office and your business units to determine their printing needs; and then try to converge those needs into a homogeneous solution that works for everyone and can be more easily deployed than targeted/custom solutions
> Are print servers currently used?
- This will help in determining how you leverage SAP PAL
Will there be a need for special forms printing?
- Special printing like barcodes, for example, require solutioning on SAP custom forms; consider these and account for them as part of your custom development efforts and whether your printers will support their output
> What are the batch printing requirements and how will they be addressed?
- Some other points to consider with batch printing is how the batch job will be delivered to either internal printers or external printing services
Supplemental to this effort, SAP provides tools and resources such as the Output Management to establish your printing infrastructure and design. Below are key benefits with PAL:
> Configure printers centrally
> Distribute printer configuration to other systems
> Keep printing jobs in each system as before
> Group printers and target systems for customized organization
> Get printer status such as paper jam, empty tray, off-line, etc.
Interfaces
In most instances, the starting point of your interface landscape is from your Component Business Model (CBM); put forth by IBM a few years ago, it helps create a "heat map" of your functional/technical/geographic units and processes. From these CBM maps you can derive your:
> Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture design
> SAP integration/interface design
> Legacy-to-SAP interface strategy and "legacy system retirement" planning
> External systems integration (e.g. EDI, banking, warehouses etc.)
Implementing this design is where SAP Netweaver Process Integration (PI) steps in; a component of "the Netweaver product group used to facilitate the exchange of information among a company's internal software and systems and those of external parties". PI offers a variety of standard adapters to interface with file-based formats, XML etc., however in some instances requires the addition of 3rd party tools/adapters to support SFTP, EDI and other more-complex formats. Companies such as Seeburger and Advantco are typically your most common vendors on the market, and also provide great "central monitoring" tools to keep your interfaces running in shape and closely controlled.
Look for a more detailed article on Netweaver PI in my future posts; including best practices, communication techniques etc.
Beyond some of these key areas to consider when designing and deploying your SAP infrastructure, topics such as backup and recovery, high availability, disaster recovery, networking and security (e.g. ports, VPN etc.), end-user access (e.g. SAP GUI, Portal, AccAD etc.) are just some of the many topics to consider to get your SAP infrastructure done right... Best of luck, and remember that you can only be as successful as your design!
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