new database oracle index compression for sap customers · active, it helps sap customers to meet...

11gD A T A B A S E

Oracle SAPfor ®®

No. 18 Oracle for SAP, May 2009

www.oracle.com/sap

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

N E WOracle Index Compression for SAP Customers

Oracle database for SAP

is safe, reliable and scalable

– the Grid enabled platform

3 Editorial

4 Oracle 11g outlook and 10g supported features for SAP

10 Manageability of VLDB, Oracle Index Comression

24 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at NSW Fire Brigades

26 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Kuwait Oil, Q8

28 Oracle RAC for SAP at National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago

31 Certified SAP on RAC Configurations for Windows and Linux

32 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Gottwald Port Technology GmbH

36 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at German Telekom, “Computerwoche”

38 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Indian Express

42 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at ASE Taiwan

46 Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Diehl Informatik

48 Oracle Index Key Compression at Bauerfeind

52 Oracle Table Compression at CAPCOM, Japan

56 SGI and SAP on Oracle database at MTU

60 Oracle 10g for SAP at Chevron

64 All4IT France, SAP on Oracle database Consulting

65 Delta Consulting

66 IOUG SAP Special Interest Group (SAP SIG)

67 SAP Press: SAP Database administration with Oracle

68 Advanced Customer Services for SAP customers

73 IS4IT, SAP on RAC Implementation Partner

74 Useful links Oracle database for SAP customers

76 Imprint

C O N T E N T S

11gD A T A B A S E

D E A R S A P C U S T O M E R ,

Oracle Corporation and SAP AG have an ongoing commitment to our joint customers and have long-standingreseller and customer support agreements in place, which provide enhanced access to Oracle databasetechnology and improved customer support.

For 20 years Oracle has been the safe, reliable, and scalable database of choice for SAP customers.The Oracle database is constantly optimized for SAP applications and around the world more than twothirds of all mid-size to high-end SAP customers in every industry, entrust their application deploymentsto Oracle databases. Customers are running SAP applications with Oracle databases on all majoroperating systems.

In this edition, we focus on the most important technologies that uniquely benefit SAP on Oracle databasecustomers. Only the Oracle database provides SAP customers the following advantages:

Best Performance & Scalability, Superior Locking & Concurrency, Real Application Clusters (RAC)

Oracle has world record SAP SD benchmark results, with exceptional scaling across SMP and Cluster environments. Multi-version Read Consistency means that readers don’t block writers and writers don’t block readers, a key component for the highestpossible database performance. Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) provides a flexible way to achieve near linear scalability of SAPapplications. Now with RAC, customers have a choice to either scale up or scale out the database server layer. Since all RAC nodes areactive, it helps SAP customers to meet the demands of production workload requirements. Widely adopted by customers, Oracle RAC isthe only generally available clustered database solution certified for all SAP products.

Best Deployment Flexibility

Widest range of supported platforms; Unix – Linux – Windows – “Oracle is Oracle is Oracle”. The same code base across all operatingsystems means, Oracle has the same features, tools and functionality on all hardware platforms and operating systems, so our customerscan choose the most cost effective platform for their implementations. Should customers require a change in operating systems, Oracleoffers fast and efficient Oracle-to-Oracle (O2O) migration services. An automatic “Fast Start” install of Oracle database technology forSAP Business All-in-One is currently implemented with Hewlett Packard for all major platforms.

Best Availability & Reliability, Real Application Clusters (RAC), Data Guard (DG)

RAC for SAP removes the database server as a single point of failure and delivers enhanced performance & scalability adopted acrossplatforms by many customers in various industries. Oracle Data Guard (DG) complements Oracle RAC and Flashback technologies as thepreferred disaster recovery solution it’s used by SAP customers around the world. Together RAC and Data Guard ensure your SAP datawill be safe from hardware failures and data center disasters.

Best Support for Very Large Databases

The Oracle database is well known for providing the most efficient use of disk space. This is extremely important to SAP customers as thesize of their databases continue to grow dramatically. Unicode is now required by new SAP products and Unicode migrations require acomplete unload and load of data. Oracle optimizations result in the fastest SAP Unicode Migrations, with up to 1 terabyte/hour data transferrates and it’s fully integrated in SAP products. Even the largest multi terabyte databases have been migrated in one weekend. SAP customersusing Oracle databases also take advantage of Index Key Compression to save disk space at no additional costs. Huge and increasingamounts of data continue to stress system performance, Oracle offers a rich collection of partitioning strategies to reduce I/O and improveperformance. Hewlett Packard Oracle Exadata Storage Server deployment under SAP will be evaluated after the official shipment of Oracle11g Release 2 by SAP.

Best Database Security

Compliance and security are more important now than ever before. Oracle’s Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) makesencryption of sensitive data simple by transparently encrypting data when it is written to disk. Oracle database Vault helps customersmeet regulatory compliance requirements by enforcing separation of duties (please see Edition 17).

Best Database Manageability & Self-Management for SAP

SAP DBA Cockpit, SAP BR*Tools for Oracle uses the Oracle Automatic Workload Repository (AWR). AWR automatically stores workloadand performance statistics so administrators and support engineers can analyze and quickly resolve performance issues, whether theroot cause happened hours or days before.

In this edition, you will learn more about these features and selected customer success stories. Please see also more about the OracleAdvanced Customer Services (ACS) for SAP customers, including: database migrations, performance tuning, health check and internaltraining work shops. For more information or to see current and previous editions go to: www.oracle.com/sap. We welcome your com-ments and questions, please contact us at: [email protected]

Sincerely

Gerhard Kuppler Senior Director Corporate SAP Account, Oracle Corporation

3Oracle Database for SAP – The #1 Database safe, re l iable, scalable, optimized for SAP customers

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O U T L O O K O R A C L E D A T A B A S E 1 1 g

F O R S A P C U S T O M E R S

Oracle database Release 11g is currently being testedby SAP.As with previous certifications, SAP will certify Oracledatabase 11g Release 2 with their products. There arefeatures of Oracle 11g which will greatly benefit SAPcustomers. Below you find a list of features which arecurrently planned by SAP to be used once 11g getscertified by SAP or shortly thereafter:

• Secure Files

Secure Files implement a new architecture forstoring unstructured data and will replace the LOBdatatypes of previous database versions. Secure Filesdeliver improved performance and scalability overLOBs and offers reduplicaton functionality to savedisk space.

• Optimizer Enhancements and Statistics Maintenance

The 11g Optimizer provides performance enhance-ments for complex SAP BI queries and betterrecognizes value changes in R/3 sql statements.Statistics maintenance especially for partitionedobjects is improved and calculation of statisticsis more accurate and faster compared to previousdatabase versions.

• Automatic Interval Partitioning

Maintenance of partitioned objects is now fullyautomatic as the database server will manage parti-tions on the fly.

• OLTP Table Compression

As part of the Advanced Compressed Option table,data may be compressed reducing disk space andimproving query performance. In combinationwith index key compression and Secure File com-pression every type of data in the Oracle databasecan be stored in a compressed way.

• Secure File Compression

In addition to relational table data, unstructureddata may also be compressed in the Oracle database.Secure File compression is part of the AdvancedCompression Option. Oracle 11g is the only database which is able to compress every type ofdata used by SAP named tables, indexes andunstructured data stored in Secure Files.

• Online Patching

This unique and patented technology of Oracleallows single and bundle patches to be appliedwhile the database is running reducing downtimesdramatically. Online Patching is available forSingle Instance and RAC installations, even withshared Oracle Homes required by SAP.

• Dictionary Only Add Column

Within the SAP application new columns may haveto be added. Prior to 11g, an add column activitywould rquire significant and time intensive updatestatements to be generated for each row of the table.With Oracle 11g this is not the case anymore.The data for the new column is only populated ifthe row is accessed by the application. So any addcolumn from the SAP application will be executedwithin seconds and not minutes or hours that arerequired prior to Oracle 11g.

Oracle 11g outlook and 10g supported features for SAP 5

11gD A T A B A S E

• No Segment Allocation for empty Objects

Before Oracle 11g an initial extent was always allo-cated for each object (index, table, partition) evenif the object did not contain any data. With Oracle11g an extent is allocated if data is being insertedinto the object. Empty objects will not have anyextent allocated. This is very beneficial for a SAPinstallation as many objects are empty after theinstallation. This feature will make the SAP instal-lation faster and reduce substantially the initialdisk space requirements.

• Direct NFS

Oracle 11g includes functionality to directly mountNFS filesystems from certified NAS systems intothe database kernel. Through this optimizationthe traditional overhead of NFS clients is avoideddelivering better throughput of the Oracle databaseon certified NAS systems.

• Tablespace Encryption

Included within the Advanced Security Option isthe technology to encrypt all data in a tablespace.Especially for SAP systems it is now very easy toencrypt sensitive data.

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

Oracle database 10g is the first database designed forEnterprise Grid Computing to lower hardware costsby leveraging low cost components and by greatlyincreasing resource utilization levels, therefore com-plementing the Advanced Computing Infrastructureconcept of SAP. Oracle database 10g Release 2 is avai-lable to SAP customers and it is being adopted rapidlyby SAP customers. Oracle 10g RAC is general availableas of January 2009 on all platforms for SAP versions4.6C moving forward.

The following provides a list of important featuresavailable to SAP customers today.

Multiple Oracle Patch (MOPatch) Utility

The Maintenance of single patches for databases onUnix and Linux platforms can be a time-consumingand complex job when dealing with many SAPinstallations. Also the experience from many supportcalls especially in the area of database performanceshows that many databases are not always at a recom-mended patch level. To help database administratorsin these areas a new patch utility MOPatch was deve-loped to guarentee that an Oracle database for theSAP application always uses the most current set ofpatches certified by SAP. SAP note 1027012 provi-des more details on how to use MOPatch.

ROWID Splitting

An SAP Unicode Migration requires a complete exportand import of the whole database through R3load.Typically the time for doing an export or import isdominated by a few single large tables like RFBLG,COEP or GLPCA as these table are substantially bigger than any other table in the database. To reducethe export and import times is possible to breakthese tables into smaller portions and have oneR3load job work per table portion. Without ROWIDsplitting is very time consuming and resource inten-sive to calculate the ranges for each portion.

U P D A T E O N O R A C L E D A T A B A S E F U N C T I O N A L I T Y W I T H

S A P P R O D U C T S

Calculation of a start and end point for the WHEREclause of each table portion is very expensive as youneed to scan either the whole table or to scan a com-plete index. The R3load export using the WHEREclause with column values again is very expensive as you need to access both index and table data.The unique rowid splitting technology of Oracleavoids any index access and generates rowid ranges so that data can be physically read from disk. Rowidsplitting provides two important advantages. First,ranges can be calculated in a few seconds by usingthe physical structure information of the table storedin the Oracle Data Dictionary compared to minutesor hours using WHERE clauses on columns. Second,the actual R3load export is dramatically faster as itreads data in physical order from disk and not usingan index. Customer experiences show that R3loadexports using rowid ranges are between 10-20 timesfaster using less CPU, memory and IO resources.A Unicode migration using rowid splitting hasachived export and import rates up to data per hour.

Index Key Compression

This feature allows B*Tree Indexes to be stored moreefficiently on disk and in main memory reducingdisk space and improving query performance. Up to70% of space for indexes can be saved on disk andquery performance may improve by up to 30%. SAP Note 1109743 provides more details on how theindex compression feature should be used in SAPenvironments.

Instant Client

Instant Client allows you to run your applicationswithout installing the standard Oracle client orhaving an ORACLE_HOME. OCI-based applicationslike SAP work without modification, while usingsignificantly less disk space than before.With the release of new SAP kernels 4.6D_EX2 and6.40_EX2 the Instant Client is now available to allSAP versions starting from 4.6C on. Please refer toSAP Notes 1086956 and 1058988 for more details.

10D A T A B A S E

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CONCLUSION

Oracle 10g Database provides the necessary infra-structure for making the SAP landscape more respon-sive to the changing business environment. Oracle 10gDatabase gives you the flexibility you need to imple-ment Enterprise Grid Computing, even using lowcost servers and disks. The design of Enterprise GridComputing complements the Adaptive ComputingInfrastructure concepts of SAP. Oracle 10g Databaseprovides the benefit of lowering risks with lowermanageability costs, greater scalability and predicta-bility and the highest levels of availability.

Oracle 11g outlook and 10g supported features for SAP

Advanced Security Network Encryption

Oracle Advanced Security Network Encryption pro-vides an easy-to-deploy and comprehensive solutionfor protecting bidirectional communication to andfrom the Oracle database using both standards basednetwork encryption, and robust native encryption/-integrity algorithms.Network Encryption between ABAP and JavaApplication Servers and the Oracle database isavailable for all SAP products based on NW2004s.

Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption

(TDE)

Makes encryption of sensitive data simple by trans-parently encrypting data when it is written to disk.

Rename Tablespace

You can now rename a tablespace. You no longerhave to create a new tablespace, copy the contentsfrom the old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace.This feature makes it easier, for example, to convert adictionary-managed tablespace to a locally managedtablespace, or to add a tablespace to a database thatalready contains a tablespace with the same name,an operation being used in a MCOD environment.

Online Segment Shrink

This feature shrinks segments of tables and indexesonline and in-place that have free space, therebyenhancing efficiency of space utilization.

End-to-End Application Tracing

The feature simplifies the debugging of performanceproblems in multi-tier environments. It will only beavailable for new versions of the SAP software andnot for existing versions.

Online LONG to LOB Migration

In this release tables with LONG and LONG RAWdata, still used by many SAP applications, can nowbe migrated online to LOB data from within theBR*SPACE utility of SAP.

Automatic Optimizer Statistics Collection

This feature automates the collection of optimizerstatistics for objects. Objects with stale or no statisticsare automatically analyzed, so administrators no longerneed to keep track of what does and what does notneed to be analyzed, nor to perform analysis manually.

Change-Aware Incremental Backup

By using a new type of log file to track blocks thathave changed in the database, RMAN avoids scanningthe entire datafile during an incremental backup.Instead, the amount of data scanned is proportionalto the amount of data changed.

Flashback Database

The Flashback Database feature provides a way toquickly revert the entire Oracle database to the stateit was in at a past point in time. Also possible bringa single table back in time. SAP Note 1125923 provides more detail on the usage of this feature inSAP environments.

Data Pump Export and Import Utilities

The Data Pump Export and Import utilities providevery high-speed bulk movement of data and meta-data from one database to another. These utilities offerseveral significant advantages over the original Exportand Import utilities, including: The ability to com-pletely restart export and import jobs; the ability todetach from and reattach to long-running jobs; theability to estimate how much space an export jobwould consume; support for export and import ope-rations over the network; and support for fine-grainedobject selection, based upon objects and objects types.This feature will initially not be integrated withinthe SAP administration tools.The new Data Pump Export and Import utilities caneach be run in parallel, resulting in better performancein loading and unloading data and metadata.

Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespaces

The transportable tablespace feature now enablestablespaces to be transported across different plat-forms, therefore, making a platform migration fora SAP customer much faster.

Full Database Begin Backup Command

It is no longer necessary to issue a separate commandto place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You cannow use the ALTER DATABASE statement to placeall tablespaces in backup mode. Also, the BEGINBACKUP command now runs faster than before.

8

SAP BW users will benefit most from the newfeatures described in this section. These features areimmediately available to all SAP BI customers.

Faster Drop and Truncate Table

These two operations perform substantially faster byusing improved algorithms in accessing the databasebuffer cache. In particular small tables, often used bySAP BW, benefit the most.

IN MEMORY UNDO

Block changes by short transactions are now managedbetter by the database server resulting in less CPUcycles.

Improved Scalability for Partitioned Objects

Dropping partitioned tables and indexes is nowsubstantially faster by using a new algorithm foridentifying the blocks of a partitioned object in thebuffer cache and for cleaning these blocks in the buffer cache. The SAP BW application benefits themost, as dropping partitioned objects is a frequentlyused operation in SAP BW.Tests performed using a query on a table with 1,000partitions show that Oracle 10g’s new strategy ofsharing partitioning metadata results in less SQLmemory usage in the SGA (9.2.0.6: 52KB, 10.2:11KB – this means that every single query on thistable will use 5 times less memory).

ODM Connector 2.1

Oracle Data Mining Connector 2.1 leverages alladvanced Data Mining algorithms from Oracle data-base 10g Data Mining Option. Oracle Data MiningConnector 2.1 is fully integrated with the AnalysisProcess Designer providing a secure, scalable andindatabase analytics engine for both BW 3.5 andBI 7.0 customers.

10D A T A B A S E

gOracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) allows OracleDatabase to run any packaged or custom application,unchanged across a set of clustered servers. This provides the highest levels of availability and themost flexible scalability. To keep costs low, even thehighest end systems can be built out of standardized,commodity parts. Oracle 10g RAC provides a foun-dation for Oracle’s Enterprise Grid ComputingArchitecture.Oracle RAC technology enables a low-cost hardwareplatform to deliver the highest quality of service thatrivals and exceeds the levels of availability and scala-bility achieved by the most expensive, mainframeSMP computers. Oracle 10g RAC is available on allplatforms for SAP versions 4.6C and subsequentversions.

Integrated Clusterware

Oracle 10g RAC offers a complete clusterware manage-ment solution as an integral component of Oracle10g RAC available on all platforms Oracle 10gDatabase runs on. This clusterware functionalityincludes mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messa-ging and locking, cluster control and recovery, and aservices provisioning framework. No 3rd party clu-sterware management software need to be purchased.Oracle will, however, continue to support select 3rdparty clusterware products on specified platforms.With Oracle 10g Database Release 2, Oracle providesa High Availability API so that non-Oracle processescan be put under the control of the high availabilityframework within Oracle Clusterware.

N E W F U N C T I O N A L I T Y

W I T H S A P B I 7 . 0

O R A C L E 1 0 g R E A L

A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S

( R A C )

Oracle 11g outlook and 10g supported features for SAP 9

SAPCTL

Oracle Clusterware does provide high availabilityfor SAP resources just as it does for Oracle resources.Oracle has created an Oracle Clusterware tool, SAPControl (SAPCTL), to enable you to easily manageSAP high availability resources. SAPCTL providesan easy-to-use interface to administer the resources,scripts, and dependencies of Oracle Clusterware and SAP high availability components. SAPCTLconsolidates the functionality of the Oracle command-line tools by enabling you to easily manage the SAPEnqueue Service for ABAP and JAVA, the SAPReplication Service for ABAP and JAVA, and theadditional virtual IP addresses used by the SAPEnqueue Service for ABAP and/or JAVA. In Additionthe message server and the dialog instance are coveredby SAPCTL.With the introduction of SAPCTL, no 3rd partysoftware is needed to manage and control the criticalSAP services, from 6.40 based systems of SAP andupwards (as of today, available only for Linux andAIX).

Additional Support for EMC Celerra NFS Servers

In addition to the already SAP certified NetAppNFS servers for SAP/RAC deployments on Linuxplatforms now SAP customers can use EMC NASCelerra systems using NFS.

Single System Image Management

Oracle 10g Enterprise Manager has been significantlyenhanced to enable true single system image manage-ment of cluster database deployments. EnterpriseManager’s Cluster Database Page provides a singleview of system status across multiple nodes. It alsoenables direct drill down to individual instanceswhen needed.A new cluster configuration verification tool andimprovements in the diagnostic tools first introducedin the Oracle9i database release help users bothavoid problems and resolve problems more quicklyshould they occur.

Data Guard Integration for Disaster Recovery

With Oracle 10g Enterprise Manager, the manage-ment component of Oracle Data Guard, Data GuardBroker, is now completely integrated with RAC.Data Guard disaster recovery environments involvingOracle RAC databases can now be as easily managedas those employing single instance databases.

F E A T U R E S T O B E

R E L E A S E D S O O N B Y S A P

Database Vault

Database Vault provides strong internal controls forregulatory compliance and protection against insiderthreats. By implementing Database Vault a DBA isno longer able to view user data.Database Vault will be available to all SAP customersin the second half of 2009 with 10.2.0.4 running700 kernel based applications of SAP such as ECC6.0 or BI 7.0.

CONCLUSION

Oracle database 10g provides the necessary infrastruc-ture for making the SAP landscape more responsiveto the changing business environment. Oracle data-base 10g gives you the flexibility needed to implementEnterprise Grid Computing, even using low costservers and disks. The design of Enterprise GridComputing complements the Adaptive ComputingInfrastructure concepts of SAP. Oracle database 10gprovides the benefit of lowering risks with lowermanageability costs, greater scalability and predicta-bility and the highest levels of availability.

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

Not too long ago, a phrase that could be heard andread frequently went like this: Only the top 10 databases worldwide have a size of one Terabyte ormore. True, a few scientists published papers in journals such as the Proceedings of the InternationalConference on Very Large Databases (VLDB), and everynow and then an article about Taming the Beastsappeared in the Internet, but almost nobody had ever seen giants and monsters in real life, so all thiswas supposed to be only a fairy tale.

Today, the world is full of giants and monsters. In theSAP world, a one Terabyte (1 TB) database is almostconsidered low end, with high-end customers currentlymanaging 20 to 50 TB databases, and some of themexpecting to reach the 100 TB range in the very nearfuture.

Recent developments also quashed the firm convictionthat Decision Support (DSS) databases are alwaysconsiderably larger than OLTP databases. The silentassumption was that in the unlikely event of one ofyour databases becoming a very large one, it wouldnecessarily – and could only – be the DSS database.And the obvious conclusion seemed to be that onlydesigners of DSS systems needed to worry abouttechnologies that can help handle large amounts ofdata, whereas for OLTP systems there is no problemat all.

Today, customers in many industries (e. g. Retail,Utilities) find that the database size of their SAP ERPsystems is equal to or even greater than the databasesize of their SAP BI systems. And they also find thattheir ERP systems are not as well prepared for hand-ling large amounts of data as their BI systems.

All this means that many SAP customers today facetwo closely related problems. The first problem is ageneral one: databases are growing faster than everbefore and there is an urgent need for technologiesand tools that help customers “taming the beasts.”

M A N A G E A B I L I T Y O F V E R Y L A R G E D A T A B A S E S

– Oracle Index Compression, SAP Partioning Engine, Backup Technologies

The second problem is a special one: the possible threatof large amounts of data was more or less neglectedby many designers of ERP systems, so the “beasts”tend to behave nastier in these environments. In otherwords: The monsters became real, and the nightmaresof database administrators became true.

Or did they?

G E N E R A L C O N S I D E R A T I O N S

Reasons for Database Growth

Why do databases grow that much and that fast?The question seems to be trivial. Everybody is familiarwith the main reasons:

• More and more detailed information is stored inOLTP systems. Retailers literally follow everysingle bottle of beer, transportation companiestrace the way of every single parcel. Web-basedcommerce requires that all details of a transactionare stored in the database.

• Another reason of database growth is consolidation.Previously independent, local or departmental sys-tems are consolidated in order to create a globalsystem as one single source of truth. Many companiesalso acquire other companies and need to consolidateold and new systems.

• Regulatory requirements force companies to keephistorical data in the database for many months oreven years.

• Customers need to store more and more unstructureddata such as emails or PDF files.

Nevertheless, it is important to ask the question“Why is my database growing that much?”, becausein most cases the answer already implies a hint atpossible solutions. If, e. g., it turns out that the amount of historical data is the main reason,database administrators should look for strategiesabout how to minimize the impact of historical data

Oracle Index Compression for SAP Customers 11

on daily operations. If, however, the main reason isthe acquisition of other companies, it can be helpfulto look for logical separation of the previously inde-pendent data even in the consolidated database.

Pain Points

If a database becomes a large database, which in turnbecomes a very large database, most companies willat some point in time begin to struggle with at leastthese three issues:

• An obvious issue is the increasing cost for diskspace and other hardware components. Sure, diskspace becomes cheaper and cheaper. But in theSAP world a productive database comes with adevelopment and a test system, a high availabilitysolution and the need for backup media. So formany customers a nominal database growth of 1Terabyte actually means that 8 or 10 Terabytesadditional disk space are needed. Moreover, it maybe necessary to add memory and CPU power to thedatabase server machine.

• The combination of an increasing amount of dataand increasingly complex applications will probablylead to performance degradations.

• Finally, database administrators will be confrontedwith what has been called the “manageability paradox”: A growing amount of data should resultin longer maintenance windows. The reality, however, is that maintenance windows are shrinkingdue to increasing availability requirements for globally used systems.

In this article we will focus on the manageabilityaspect. This does not mean that the TCO and perfor-mance aspects will not be mentioned at all. A featureor a strategy that helps shrink maintenance windowsoften also reduces cost and improves performance.However, the people we have in mind here are data-base administrators and their questions about how todeal with the manageability paradox.

We will also focus on Oracle database technologies.It is clear that this aspect cannot be completely isola-ted from other aspects (e. g. application or storagedesign). But it is useful nevertheless to ask, whichOracle technologies can help administrators deal withtoday’s databases.

General Strategies

Before we look into individual technologies, it maybe helpful to discuss the general ideas about how tohandle database growth, i.e. the principles that governthe selection of technologies.

The most common approach can be summarized inthree words: Buy more Hardware. Despite all com-plaints about increasing cost, this is still the preferredapproach, because it is (or seems to be) simple: Noapplication or database redesign is required. It’s justa matter of adding a few hardware components of afamiliar type.

Within certain limits, nothing is wrong with thisapproach. A database needs disk space, and a data-base server needs memory and CPUs. However, thisapproach can be dangerous, if it is the only one, i.e.if only the hardware layer is considered. If your database is heavily fragmented or if your applicationscans too much data in order to find a few simpleresults, you can throw a lot of money at the problem,but you will see only very limited improvements.

The second approach relies on the idea that it shouldbe beneficial to Shrink the Database. This approachcomes in two main flavors. One of them is Archiving.Periodically, historical data (i.e. data accessed rarelyor not at all) are moved from the database to anarchive. This operation frees up database disk space,makes sure that the period of time covered by the data-base remains constant, and thus slows down databasegrowth. The second approach is Compression. Itsbasic idea is to reduce the database size by storing atleast part of the data in a more compact format.

These strategies are certainly helpful, but they havetheir dark sides too. Not much needs to be said hereabout archiving, as in the SAP world the algorithmsand tools are provided by SAP. However, there aresome limitations, in particular legal ones. Most com-panies cannot decide themselves, when they wouldlike to archive data, but have to comply with regula-tory requirements. And there are side effects, whichneed to be (and will be) discussed in the OracleTechnologies section. The most prominent anddangerous one is database fragmentation due to dataarchiving.

12

The same is true for compression. Oracle is proud tooffer the most comprehensive set of compression features. If, however, other database vendors want tomake people believe that compression is the one andonly thing that can be done about growing databases,that simply compressing the whole database is asophisticated space management strategy, and that, ifyou just keep squeezing the giants, somehow – whoknows? – they might become small, we need to say:Stop Dreaming! Compression has a price. If appliedappropriately, it comes with a small performanceoverhead; if you apply it inappropriately, it will letyou know via a real performance penalty.Furthermore, compression does not stop databasegrowth, it only slows it down. The problem will beright back after 2 or 3 years, and that time it will beworse, if the compression mythology prevented youfrom looking for additional strategies.

These additional strategies can be summarized in thefamous words: Divide and Conquer. The crucialfactor is that you stop thinking about the entitiesyou manage as simple and indivisible units. Instead,you should look for, implement and use logical structures. A database, a table, an index – and evenan application – are not indivisible blocks. Eitherthey already provide internal structures, if only youlook carefully, or at least they provide the opportunityto implement a structure. The benefit of such a struc-ture is that it gives you smaller pieces which can behandled independently. Should you compress a data-base (a table, an index) or rather leave it uncompressed?Should you store your data on cheaper or more ex-pensive disks? Should you backup your data every day?– The common characteristic of all these (and manymore) questions is that there cannot be a convincinganswer, because the question itself is flawed. Most probably you get better answers by asking que-stions like: Which part of the database (the table, theindex) should be compressed? Which part of the datacan be stored on cheaper disks or should be stored onmore expensive disks? Which part of my databaseshould be backed up every day?

The point at stake is particularly clear in the case of adatabase that became a very large one as the result ofa consolidation project (see Figure 1). When isolatedinformation islands are consolidated and when a global

database is created, the main benefit for the users, inparticular for the management of the company, is:because there is one single source of truth, the systemcan provide meaningful answers to important questi-ons. Database administrators, of course, will imme-diately find that there is also a downside, which we already mentioned: the manageability paradox.However, it is easy to see that the giant is a threat,that the database size is a challenge for administra-tors only as long as the successful consolidation is thefinal step of the project and that “single source oftruth” also means “single, unstructured and indivisibleblock”. The manageability paradox disappears, if thedatabase is structured, thus establishing virtual units,which can be managed separately and independently.For this goal, it does not matter at all, whether thevirtual structure is the same as the previous physicalstructure or a completely new one.

Structuring the database is the mother of all weaponsagainst explosive database growth, the manageabilityparadox and administrators nightmares. However, bystructuring the database we do not mean that physicaldatabase pieces should be created. We do not talkabout shared-nothing architectures. We talk about theimplementation of a virtual structure, or even a com-bination of several virtual structures within a databasethat remains undivided. Structuring the database isnot a technology or a feature, but a concept, which inturn is the basis of several technologies and featuresprovided by the Oracle database. The most prominentone is probably table and index partitioning. That iswhy we will start our discussion of Oracle technologiesthat help handle very large databases with this feature.

Figure 1 EVOLUTION OF A DATABASE

Uncoordinated local databases

Unstructured consolidated database

Structured consolidated database

1.

2.

3.


T A B L E A N D I N D E X

P A R T I T I O N I N G

Partitioning – How Does it Work?

The basic idea of partitioning is very simple: group rows of a “table” based on the value(s) in one (or more) column(s) and store the distinct groups as“sub-tables.”

This definition requires three additional remarks:

• We have used quotation marks, because Oracle notonly supports table partitioning, but also indexpartitioning. So database designers can group therows in a table (now without quotation marks) orthe entries in index (leaf) blocks and store theresults as virtual subsets called “partitions.”Nevertheless, the table or the index can still beaccesses as one single object, if this is necessary.

• Depending on application needs, an index on atable can be partitioned (“local index”), but can as well remain unpartitioned (“global index”). If multiple indexes on a table exist– a situationwhich is rather normal in SAP systems–, some ofthem can be local, some global.

• That rows can be grouped “based on the value(s)”in one or more column(s) is a very generic statement.Oracle provides many possible strategies to do exactly that. The strategies which are mostimportant in SAP environments are called list andrange partitioning. In order to implement list partitioning, a list of values has to be establishedwhich explicitly mentions every single value(example: countries, locations). In order to implement range partitioning, it is sufficient todefine ranges by stating a start and end (example:January 1-31, February 1-28, etc.).

Benefits of Oracle Partitioning

Partitioning provides benefits for users as well as foradministrators.

The main benefit for users is improved performance(which, in turn, is a benefit for administrators,because users are happy). The technical reason forthis performance improvement is called “partitionpruning”. Let us suppose a table partitioned by monthand an application that wants to generate a monthlyreport based on this table. Receiving the request, theOracle database will immediately realize that all partitons which need to be considered are located inone single partition, and therefore it will scan thispartition only. This reduces I /O, memory usage andCPU workload dramatically, and therefore customersalmost always see a performance improvement by afactor of 5, 10, or even more. Even if a weekly reportneeds to be generated, the table partition in combi-nation with a local (i.e. partitioned) index leads tosimilar results, as the index partition which needs tobe scanned is much smaller than a non-partitionedindex.

The main benefit for administrators is the fact thatpartitions can be managed individually and independently.If a table consists of 90% historical and 10% activedata and if partitioning was used to separate historicaland active data, it is rather likely that administrativeprocedures such as daily backup or reorganization canbe restricted to the partitions containing active data.This reduces unnecessary workload as well as the timeneeded for these jobs. Moreover, partitions can becreated, dropped, or merged independently andonline, so no additional maintenance downtime isrequired.

The main benefit for the whole company is costreduction. If, again, active and historical data havebeen separated, it is evident that historical data –accessed rarely or not at all – can be moved to slowerand therefore less expensive disks. Once this goal isaccomplished, additional technologies such as com-pression may be used to further reduce the amount of disk space needed (see Figure 2). Now – and onlynow – compression can be used selectively in order toachieve optimal results: historical partitions can becompressed, which reduces disk space, whereas theactive partitions remain uncompressed, which avoidsCPU overhead.

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Figure 2 D A T A B A S E S P A C E M A N A G E M E N T

Step 1: Objects as Unstructured Units Step 2: Analyze Data

Step 3: Implement Range Partitioning

Step 5: Compress Historical Partitions

Step 4: Use Different Types of Disks

Oracle Partitioning for SAP Products

Many years ago, SAP realized the benefits, and inparticular the performance improvements providedby table and index partitioning. Therefore, OraclePartitioning is supported by SAP for SAP BI systemsas well as OLTP systems such as SAP ERP.

However, there is a difference. For SAP BI, OraclePartitioning is not only supported, but also imple-mented. This means that the questions as to whichtables should be partitioned and how, are alreadyanswered by SAP, that Partitioning is implementedduring the installation and configuration process,


and that partition management tools are providedby SAP. This can be done, because the answer to thequestion, which tables should be partitioned andhow, is the same for all SAP BI systems. In contrast,Oracle Partitioning for SAP ERP is supported, butthere is no default implementation provided by SAP.It is easy now, to guess the reason: the answer to thequestion which tables should be partitioned and howis not the same for all customers and all systems.

However, with SAP ERP databases reaching a size of10, 20 or 30 Terabytes (in some cases even more) and90% of the data located in a handful of giant tables,there was an urgent need for a solution. This solution,which was developed over the past 2 years, consistsof 2 parts: a partitioning method provided by Oracleand a management interface provided by SAP.

An Oracle Partitioning Method for SAP ERP

The implementation of Oracle Partitioning in data-bases that are part of SAP ERP systems requiresanswers to two questions: Which tables (and indexes)benefit most from partitioning? And how shouldthese tables/indexes be partitioned?

The first part is comparatively easy. Generally spea-king, the largest tables and the indexes defined onthese tables will benefit most. So nothing but asimple analysis of table sizes is required. Besides,experience from implementation projects in the pastshows that it is not necessary to consider tens ofthousands of tables, but that there is a rather limitedset of candidates (30-40 tables).

The real challenge for the implementation of OraclePartitioning in SAP ERP systems consists in findingsuitable partitioning keys. In almost all cases rangepartitioning requires the existence of a time-basedcolumn, which can be used for the definition of ranges(for details see the Oracle White Paper “Partitioningfor SAP R/3. A Guide for Planning and Setup ofOracle Partitioning in SAP R/3 Systems”). A fewtables among the candidates contain such a column,however most of them do not.

In order to overcome this limitation, it is necessaryto look for some other time-related information,which can be used. Fortunately, this kind of informa-tion is available. To comply with legal requirements,it must be guaranteed for a couple of document types that they are numbered in ascending order with nogap between the numbers. To ensure this, SAP uses aspecial table, called NRIV, which manages the num-bers that are available. This table is the key to thesolution. All tables that are candidates for partitio-ning and do not contain a time stamp column atleast contain a material, purchase order or, generallyspeaking, a document number, which was provided bythe NRIV-based number generator. And as we can besure that number n+1 was generated after number n,we have indirect time information at our disposal.This is step 1.

Of course, there is still a difference. The NRIV-basednumber generator generates a continuous andunstructured stream of numbers, whereas the streamof real time stamps comes with predefined sub-unitssuch as years and months. And this difference isimportant, as the predefined sub-units are used aspartitioning criteria (table partitioned by year, bymonth, etc.). So, as step 2, we need to analyze forevery table that we want to partition the usage itmakes of NRIV. If, e.g., we want to partition a tableby month and it turns out that, on average, for thisparticular table 100,000 distinct NRIV-based num-bers are generated every month, we simply imple-ment a partitioning scheme with 100,000 recordsper partition – et voilà, we have a table partitioned“by month.”

The SAP Partitioning Engine

Sounds difficult? It may be complex, but the goodnews is, that the complex analysis and maintenancejobs can be automated. Therefore, Oracle, in theinitial phase of the project, had developed a set oftools that was based on Oracle’s own technologies,mainly PL/SQL procedures. Although this workedfine for a couple of installations, it was a consulting-based solution, which is useful for non-standard SAPrequirements, but should not be necessary for stan-dard environments. To make the innovative methoddescribed above available to more customers, SAPhas developed their own solution, based on the con-cept provided by Oracle.

Using the SAP Partitioning Engine allows SAP custo-mers to make use of the Oracle partitioning techno-logy, without the need to be familiar with Oracleprogramming. The predefinition of the most com-mon tables that are candidates for partitioning allowsless experienced Oracle users to benefit from thisinnovative approach.

Storage Efficiency

When asked, how explosive database growth can bemanaged, several database vendors will immediatelytalk about compression techniques. We already dis-cussed, why this should not be your primary concernand that you should start with implementing a struc-tured database. However, even if this is consideredcomplete and you want to know which additionaltechnologies are available that can help you make themost efficient use of your disk space, you should notimmediately jump into topics such as compressiontechniques and compression ratios. Instead, youshould try to get an overall idea of storage efficiency.

In current discussions about compression techniques,“compression” is always understood as somethingthat needs administrator intervention: administratorsneed to decide, whether or not – and if yes, for whichobjects – to use it, and then they need to implementit. If we accept this definition, the main differencebetween storage efficiency and compression consistsin the fact that a database system may or may not

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T A B L E A N D I N D E X

C O M P R E S S I O N

The SAP solution name is SAP Partitioning Engine,and it is fully integrated in the SAP system. It hasthree main parts:

• The first part is a transaction, which is used toinitially transform non-partitioned tables intopartitioned ones. This transaction has built-infunctionality, which includes a list of well-knownSAP tables, their partitioning key as well as anautomatic adjustment for partition sizes. The listcovers most of the SAP standard tables and sometables having the tendency to grow to very largesizes. For special purposes, enhanced expert functio-nality is available to adjust the partitioning pro-perties to the users needs. In this first step thetable is analyzed based on a set of predefined rulesand a DDL-statement is prepared, to create theappropriate partitioning layout for this table aswell as the correct index definitions. To finallytransform the table, the brspace utility can be used.With a new command line option, brspace is capableto fetch the prepared DDL statements from thedatabase to transform the existing table into a par-titioned one by executing an online reorganization.brspace also takes care of the correct statistics onthe new partitioned table.

• Once the table is partitioned, new partitions mustbe created on demand to keep up with the newlycreated rows. This is automated in the second part.This SAP transaction will compare the current fil-ling level of the table with current status of thetable partitioning. If needed, new empty partitionswill be created online to store the new table data.This operation is very fast and can be executed anytime, without any impact on the running SAPsystem.

• If the table is archived, the number of rows storedin the oldest partitions will decrease. The trans-action of the SAP Partitioning Engine is responsiblefor freeing up the space no longer used in thesepartitions. The space is freed by executing a mergeoperation on the oldest partitions. The result is one small partition containing the remaining rows anda lot of free space within the tablespace, which canbe used for creating new partitions. This transactioncan also be executed while SAP is up and running.


offer technologies which could be called “implicitcompression”: technologies which make sure that theleast possible amount of disk space is used to storedata, but which are switched on by default and the-refore simply do their job.

A simple example can help clarify the difference. Letus assume that exactly the same data are loaded intotwo databases D1 (based on the software provided byvendor X) and D2 (based on the software providedby vendor Y). Due to different “implicit compres-sion” features, 1,000 GB disk space are needed tostore the data in D1, whereas 1,500 GB are neededto store them in D2. Let us now assume that afterthe initial load compression is used to decrease theamount of disk space needed, and that it is possibleto shrink D1 by a factor of 2.5 (60%), whereas it ispossible to shrink D2 by a factor of 3.0 (67%).

In that case D1 would have a final size of 400 GB,D2 a final size of 500 GB. Which means: D2’s com-pression ratio would be higher, but D1 would providethe best overall storage efficiency.

Oracle 10g already comes with the most comprehen-sive set of “implicit compression” features, and everynew version adds new features. Among the mostimportant ones are• variable length representation of number values

(instead of fixed length),

• most efficient representation of variable lengthcharacter strings,

• variable length Unicode representation (UTF-8instead of UTF-16),

• highly compressed bitmap indexes.

As a consequence, customers find that Oracle needsup to 40% less disk space for the same data thanother databases even without (explicit) compression.Sure, this fact does not really help administratorswho see their Oracle database growing rapidly. But it tells them: it could be worse, much worse.

Setting Realistic Expectations

There is a second topic that should be consideredbefore looking into the details of the compressiontechniques provided by Oracle (or by other databases,for that matter). As “compression” is currently abuzzword, it is safe to assume that at least some sta-tements about what can be achieved by compressingdata are a little bit exaggerated. A glance at the rea-lity, therefore, can be useful to set realistic expectati-ons.

First, it is important to be aware of the fact thatcompression is activated on the object level (i.e. forindividual tables or indexes), not on the databaselevel. Therefore, if you are told that by compressingan object you can achieve x percent disk space savings,it is necessary to ask: on the object level or on thedatabase level?

Second, in many production compression test cases asimple copy of the database was used. But everybodyis aware of the fact that during its life time a data-base becomes less and less efficient in terms of diskspace usage (mainly due to delete operations) andthat 20-30% of disk space can be saved by a simpledatabase reorganization. This is something we shouldkeep in mind, when we are told that 40 or 50% ofdisk space were saved by compressing “the wholedatabase.”

Third, nobody wants to compress the whole database.Not only is it too much work to compress tens ofthousands of tables, it is a useless effort, too, becausethe overwhelming majority of all tables and indexesis very small and cannot be compressed efficiently.Most customers compress the 10, 20, 50 or 100largest tables and the indexes defined on them.

Last, but not least, there is no way to compress “thedatabase”, as it is no homogeneous mass of data.Broadly speaking, it consists of index data and tabledata, and table data, in turn, are divided into struc-tured data (numbers, character strings) and unstruc-tured data (LONGs, LOBs). As of today, all databaseshave different compression algorithms (if they havethem at all) for these three different types of data,and the different algorithms provide different results.

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As a rough estimate, in an Oracle database that ispart of an SAP ERP system, 33% of the allocateddisk space is used for index data, 55% for structuredand 12% for unstructured table data. If we assume(unrealistically) that all objects are compressed andthat an average compression rate of 70% is achievedon the object level, we find that on the database levelat most 23% can be saved by compressing indexdata, 39% by compressing structured table data, and8% by compressing unstructured table data. If weassume (more in line with real life) that only thelargest objects (or 80% of the allocated disk space)are compressed and that an average compression rateof 60% is achieved, a realistic goal is: 15% for indexdata, 25% for structured, and 5% for unstructuredtable data.

Index Key Compression

Oracles Index Key Compression allows repeatingvalues in the leaf blocks of a B*Tree index (i.e. notin a bitmap index) to be replaced by shorter tokens.

The creation of a compressed index is trivial, if theindex is defined on one single column of the basetable, as there can be no doubt about what “repeatingvalues” means. If, however, the index is defined onmultiple columns, the situation is less clear. Consideran index defined on five columns (C1, C2, C3, C4, C5)of a table T. We can search for repeating values in C1only, in C1+C2, in C1+C2+C3, in C1+C2+C3+C4,or in C1+C2+C3+C4+C5. It is probably obviousthat the disk space savings which can be achieved arenot the same for these five alternatives. Even worse:There is no guarantee that the more columns we con-sider the more disk space is saved. Experience showsthat the optimum tends to be somewhere in themiddle (see Figure 3, which, for simplicity’s sake,assumes that all values have the same length).

This means: Not only do database administrators needto find the indexes that are good candidates for com-pression. If the index is defined on multiple columns(which is a very common case in SAP environments),they also need to determine how to split the columnvalues into a leading part (called the prefix), whichwill be searched for repeating values, and the remain-der (called the suffix), which will be left uncompressed.

In order to make this job easier, Oracle provides a tool(called IND_COMP), that calculates the prefix/suffixratio which achieves most disk space savings.

If you want to compress an Oracle database in yourSAP environment, Index Key Compression is a verygood feature to start with. Not only is it easy andefficient. There is also no major change in the algo-rithm or the internal storage structures, when youupgrade from Oracle 10g to Oracle 11g, so no effortis lost.

Data Compression

Compression of structured data (number values,character strings) in table columns requires threesteps:

• Find repeating values, i.e. candidate values forcompression.

• Build a list of these candidate values and attach anumber to each of them (i.e. build a symbol table).

• Replace each occurrence of the repeating valuesby the appropriate number.

As the number is considerably shorter than theoriginal value, this approach can result in disk spacesavings of 70% or more.

This is a common, almost a standard approach. Theunique aspect of the Oracle implementation is the factthat the symbol table is built for and stored in everysingle block. Or (to put it more precisely): there is not one symbol table per table (segment), there aremany small and different symbol tables, each of thembuilt from the data in a single block and stored inthat particular block. Or (yet another version): Oracledoes not use a global symbol table, but many localsymbol tables – divide and conquer (see Figure 4 onpage 21).

There are several advantages of this approach over theglobal symbol table approach:

• All symbol tables consist of a few entries only.Therefore the numbers used as pointers to theuncompressed values are very small. Furthermore,there is no need to restrict the overall number ofvalues that can be compressed.


Figure 3 O R A C L E I N D E X K E Y C O M P R E S S I O N

Step 1: Uncompressed Index Step 2: Compressed Index (Prefix = 1)

Step 3: Compressed Index (Prefix = 2)




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• If a user wants to read a record, the compressedvalues must be decompressed (pointers replaced byoriginal values). Oracle’s implementation makessure that all data needed for this operation arelocated in one single block, whereas, if a globalsymbol table is used, at least 2 blocks are needed.Therefore, Oracle’s approach reduces I /O andimproves performance.

• A global symbol table is static. Once it is created,it does not change. However, the values insertedinto the table can change. Suppose that the symboltable was created end of March. So “January”,“February” and “March” are in the symbol tableand can be compressed. But “April” and “May” arenot, cannot be compressed, and therefore the com-pression ratio will deteriorate over time …

• … unless the database administrator rebuilds thesymbol table. But here again the Oracle advantageis obvious: As a local compression dictionary isbuilt for every individual block, Oracle will simplyinclude the value “April” in the symbol table of allblocks that are created in April. No administratorintervention is required. Oracle, therefore, haschosen the approach that offers more flexibility andless management effort.

It might seem that a disadvantage of many localsymbol tables is the fact that more disk space isneeded. However, customer experience shows thatthis is more than compensated for by the ability ofOracle’s data compression algorithm to automaticallyadapt to changing values.

Oracle 10g data compression was originally designedfor historical data in DSS systems. Data compression,therefore, works for batch loads, but not for insertsand updates of single records. As a result, Oracle 10gdata compression can only be used in SAP BI systems,not in OLTP systems such as SAP ERP. Oracle 11gtherefore comes with a completely new algorithm:Data are inserted by users in uncompressed format.Later on, background processes compress the data,and these processes do not care whether the data wereinserted via single row inserts or batch loads. Oracle11g also supports compression of unstructured data.

These new features, however, do not invalidate thegeneral rules which we discussed in the first sectionof this article. Just because you can compress all tablesin all kinds of systems, once you have upgraded toOracle 11g, it does not follow that it is a good ideaor best practice to do so. The power of Oracle 11g isnot that it can handle larger unorganized masses ofdata, the power of Oracle 11g is that it helps establishsmart space and data management strategies.

B A C K U P & R E C O V E R Y

Key Database Protection Requirements

The key VLDB backup and recovery questions whichneed to be addressed are:

• How to backup/recover in a satisfactory time-frame?

• How to recover at an application or businessobject level?

• How to protect data in a 24 x7 environment?

• How to manage software, infrastructure, andoperational costs for data protection/disasterrecovery?

Backup and recovery are not database-only topics.An optimal overall solution requires the right choiceof database storage and backup media as well.Nevertheless, it is important to also select the mostefficient Oracle backup and recovery features.

Oracle Recovery Manager

Recovery Manager (RMAN) is an Oracle databaseclient, which performs backup and recovery tasksand automates administration of backup strategies.It greatly simplifies the backing up, restoration,and recovery of database files. RMAN handles allunderlying database procedures before and afterbackup or restoration in order to reduce the possiblerisk of data being lost. It provides a common inter-face for backup tasks across different host operatingsystems and offers features not available throughuser-managed methods, such as parallelization ofbackup/recovery data streams, a backup files reten-tion policy, and a detailed history of all backups.

Symbol Table Data Block Data Block Data Block

Figure 4 C O M P R E S S I O N O F S T R U C T U R E D T A B L E D A T A

Implementation option 1: One global symbol table per data segment (table), stored in dedicated blocks

Implementation option 2: Many local symbol tables, each of them built from data in a single block,and stored in that particular block

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Symbol Tables


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RMAN is integrated with the database managementtools provided by SAP, such as BRBACKUP, BRARCHIVE, BRRESTORE, and BRRECOVER.Depending on the BR*Tools version and its patchlevel, new RMAN functionality is integrated toprovide enhanced security, flexibility, and safety.

Since Oracle Recovery Manager is designed specifi-cally for Oracle database, it is integrated with theRDBMS. Therefore the RMAN offers the followingadvantages over other restoration/recovery manage-ment tools:

• Detection of physical and logical databasecorruption: Compared with other backup tools,one of the advantages users experience when using RMAN is that data files are checked for corruptionduring backup. Logical and physical errors in data-base blocks are recognized automatically.

• Incremental backups: RMAN backups of datafiles can be either full backups or incrementalbackups. A full backup is a backup that includesevery used block in the file. If a full data file back-up is created as an image copy, the entire file con-tents are reproduced exactly. An incremental backupof a data file captures images of blocks that havebeen changed since a specific point in time, usuallywhen a previous full backup or incremental backupwas undertaken.

• Fast incremental backup using block changetracking: Incremental backup has been supportedsince Oracle 8. However, as with every incrementalsolution, the key is how to find “what has beenchanged”. In previous versions, all data files had tobe checked to determine, if a block had been modi-fied or not. With Oracle 10g, block change trackingis now available. RMAN’s block change trackingfeature for incremental backups uses the recordedchanged blocks in the Block Change Tracking File(BCTF). This file is very small (only a bitmaprepresentation of block addresses) and its size isproportional to the size of the database and thenumber of enabled redo threads. If change trackingis enabled, RMAN uses the BCTF to identifychanged blocks for an incremental backup, thusavoiding the need to scan every block in the datafile for changes.

• Reduction in backup size: Any unformatteddatabase blocks that have never been changed willnot be included in the backup created by RMAN.This reduces the size of backup files compared toa pure data file copy. This form of compression isknown as unused block compression.

• Reduction in redo log information: TheBEGIN/END BACKUP commands are not neededwhen running an online backup using RMAN.RMAN reads data blocks from the data files likeall other Oracle shadow processes, which eliminatesthe need for data block copies to be placed into aredo log buffer.

• Compression of archive logs and backups:RMAN can write backup sets in a format that usesbinary compression to reduce the backup set size.Using compressed backup sets saves storage spaceas well as network bandwidth when backing upacross a network (see SAP Notes 968507 and1101530).

• Backup verification: Given the amount of timespent backing up the database, you may be surpri-sed to learn that sometimes the backup itself is notfree of errors (network, tape device, backup softwarebugs, etc.). In order to make sure that the backup isa valid backup and can be used for restoration pur-poses, backups should be verified from time to time.RMAN can run verification checks on backupsusing the BACKUP VALIDATE command.

Oracle Flashback Technologies

Many studies show that 40% of application outagesare caused by operator or user errors. Making mistakesis just part of being human. But these errors are ex-tremely difficult to avoid and can be very difficult torecover from without advance planning and the righttechnology. Such errors can result in “logical” datacorruption or cause one or more components of the ITinfrastructure to cease operating. While it is relativelysimple to rectify the failure of an individual compo-nent, detection of and repairs to logical data corrup-tion, such as accidental deletion of valuable data, is atime-consuming operation that results in a huge lossin business productivity. Typical user errors may in-clude accidental deletion of valuable data, deleting thewrong data, and dropping the wrong table.


Flashback Database quickly rewinds an Oracle databaseto a previous point in time to correct any problemscaused by logical data corruptions or user errors.Flashback Database is like a ‘rewind button’ for yourdatabase. It provides database point-in-time recoverywithout the user first having to restore a backup ofthe database. When you eliminate the time it takesto restore a database backup from tape, database point-in-time recovery is fast. The Flashback Database capa-bility, accessible from both RMAN and SQL*Plususing the FLASHBACK DATABASE command, issimilar to conventional point-in-time recovery in itseffects: it allows you to return a database to its stateat a time in the recent past.

Enabling Flashback Database functionality providesthe following benefits:

• Eliminate the time required to restore a backup:When a database is down because it runs into acatastrophic problem, millions of dollars in revenueis lost because a company can no longer operate.

• Eliminate redo apply delay on standby database:Flashback Database is seamlessly integrated withData Guard. A standby database can be quicklyand easily flashed back to any point in time, sothere is no delay due to redo apply.

For more information see SAP Notes 937492, 966073,966117, and 1125923.

Oracle Data Guard

Oracle Data Guard is software available with the data-base, that creates, maintains, and monitors one or morestandby databases to protect enterprise data from fai-lures, disasters, errors, and corruptions. Data Guardmaintains these standby databases as synchronizedcopies of the production database. These standby data-bases can be located at remote disaster recovery sitesthousands of miles away from the production datacenter, or they may be located in the same city, samecampus, or even in the same building. If the produc-tion database becomes unavailable because of a plannedor an unplanned outage, Data Guard can switch anystandby database to the production role, thus mini-mizing the downtime associated with the outage,and preventing any data loss.

Data Guard for SAP can be used at least in two criticalcircumstances:

• When only the primary database crashes and allother components – e.g. SAP application instances– are still alive: In this case you can easily switchyour SAP application servers to be connected to theopened standby database and, depending on theprotection mode, you may not need to wait for anyapply of database changes. Failover of the SAPinstances happens in a smooth way by using specificand already prepared SAP profiles or even better byusing virtual IP address for the database server.

• When the database and SAP applications are notonline any more, e.g. outage of the whole data cen-ter: In this case you can start an already preparedSAP system including the standby database afterhaving synchronized the standby database, if thishas not already happened.

A standby database can also act as a read/write databasefor testing, training, or reporting by using FlashbackDatabase after completion of the desired task to rewindthe standby database to its initial state and to serveas potential disaster recovery site as before.

Like RMAN and Flashback Database, Oracle’s StandbyDatabase functionality is integrated with the admini-stration tools provided by SAP:

• In the standby database scenario, you can use theSAP tool BRARCHIVE to control the transfer ofthe offline redo log files from the primary to thestandby instance.

• The main advantage of the standby database is thatyou do not have to perform backups in the primary(that is, production) database system. Instead, astandby database enables you to back up the datafiles of the standby database. Therefore, databasebackups do not increase the load on the host of theprimary database instance in any way. Since produc-tion operation does not occur on the standby data-base, all host resources can be made available forthe database backup. The SAP tool BRBACKUPcan support you when backing up the data in thestandby database.

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The New South Wales Fire Brigades(NSWFB), which employs around 3,900full-time and 3,300 part-time firefightersand supports 5,500 volunteer members,is the largest organization of its kind inAustralia, and uses SAP on Oracle RealApplication Clusters (RAC). The databasecluster technology from Oracle providesthe NSWFB with several crucial benefits.

The state of New South Wales is situated onAustralia’s southeast coast and covers a totalarea of 800,640 square kilometers. That’s threetimes the size of Great Britain. New SouthWales is also Australia’s most economicallyimportant state. The coastal city of Sydney isone of the area’s key industrial centers andis also home to the head administrative officeof the New South Wales Fire Brigades, whichoperates 340 fire stations throughout the state.The NSWFB depends on its thousands of full-time and part-time firefighters to respond toincidents such as fires, rescues and hazardousmaterials emergencies, and works with othergovernment agencies to combat the consequen-ces of bushfires, flood disasters, earth-quakesor other serious incidents such as terroristattacks.

In the NSWFB organization, an agency of thestate of New South Wales, which operates 24hours a day, technology – including informa-tion technology – plays a decisive role. This

applies to communication and the sharing ofinformation in an emergency in order to savelives; maintenance management of the closeto 700 firefighting vehicles and the deploy-ment of personnel; and also administration,including finance and human resources.

Cornerstone of enterprise content

Since 2008 the New South Wales Fire Brigadeshas been engaged in implementing a new ITdirection fit for the future. Between early 2009and the end of 2010, new IT systems andsolutions will gradually come on stream; ITmodernization has already made tremendousprogress. “Parts of our IT environment andinfrastructure dated from the 1990s and nolonger satisfied our changed requirements.In some areas we are already making good useof new IT solutions,” explains Ross Barratt,Business Intelligence Manager for the NSWFB.

A number of key milestones have already beenachieved in administrative services, which areprovided by the organization’s OperationalSupport department. This includes the imple-mentation of SAP ERP application systemswith Financials (FI), Human Capital Manage-ment (HR), and SAP Netweaver BusinessWarehouse together with Oracle databases orOracle RAC. Within its IT strategy, the NewSouth Wales Fire Brigades plans to use Oraclefor its Enterprise Content Management system.

O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S ( R A C )

F O R S A P : E S S E N T I A L A N D R E L I A B L E C O R N E R S T O N E

F O R T H E N S W F I R E B R I G A D E S

High stability, performance boost and minimized TCO for SAP

“Oracle RAC enabled us to fully implement our requirements. This puts us in a very comfortable

and secure situation.“

– R O S S B A R R A T T ,

Business Intelligence Manager for NSWFB

Oracle Products & Services:

• Oracle RAC 10.2.04 EE• Oracle Database 10g• Oracle Clusterware

(OCFS /shared oracle home)• Oracle Data Guard• Oracle RMAN• Oracle Support

New South Wales Fire

Brigades

Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at NSW Fire Br igades 25

Smooth RAC implementation

“It goes without saying that the database playsa key role in the use of SAP. At the end ofthe day it’s a critical component of any SAPsystem,” emphasizes Barratt. The key issuesof concern at the concept planning stage werethe stability, security and cost efficiency ofthe database used with SAP. These were theprimary reasons for choosing Oracle RAC.

In view of what has been achieved with theOracle database cluster technology, it’s safe tosay that the NSWFB's decision was spot on:“Oracle RAC enabled us to fully implementour requirements.” The first application thatthe NSWFB used in conjunction with OracleRAC were the SAP solutions Finance (FI) andNetweaver Business Warehouse (BI).

Oracle RAC (10.2.04 EE) was implementedon a 3-node cluster on Dell R900 servers(two-way servers with 4-core CPU) in con-junction with EMC Clariion storage systemsand the operating system Suse Linux Enter-prise Server (SLES10) from Novell. As Barrettexplains, “The Oracle RAC installation wentvery smoothly and only took six weeks.”

Added value – with no ifs or buts

Using Oracle Real Application Cluster meantseveral benefits in one package, resulting inreal added value.

Firstly, staff were very satisfied with thesystem’s extremely high stability with SAP.If a node in the database cluster should failfor any reason, its job is taken over by anothernode without any system interruption. In ad-dition to Oracle RAC, the NSWFB also usesOracle Data Guard for disaster and recoverymanagement. This allows the organization toeffectively back up its stored data, for examplein the event of a failure in the primary systemenvironment. For recovery management theorganization relies on the Oracle solutionRMAN.

Barratt is also pleased about the fact that:“Oracle RAC helped us to considerably speedup our payroll process. Payroll used to takehours, but now it only takes minutes.”

He also mentions another benefit: the factthat Oracle RAC minimizes the SAP IT infra-structure costs, which results in a lower totalcost of ownership (TCO). Barratt comments,“Our infrastructure costs are very low comparedwith other approaches. For example, if wewant to enlarge the overall system we don’thave to replace servers. We can simply use ourRAC environment to flexibly and securelyextend the environment.” Here, the NSWFB also benefits from theoption of setting up and using EnterpriseGrids with Oracle RAC. The organizationhas set up what is known in grid computingas a mixed workload. The SAP, BI and otherdatabases run in the same cluster.

Fixed plans to continue using RAC

With Oracle RAC, the NSWFB is extremelywell equipped to rise to the challenges oftoday and tomorrow. They sum up what hasbeen achieved in these words: “With OracleRAC we are well positioned.”

According to the IT strategy, in the futureOracle Real Application Clusters is the prefer-red databases platform for the NSWFB. Thisis primarily intended to ensure very highstability and optimum system performanceat all times.

“The Oracle RAC

installation went very

smoothly and only took

six weeks.”

– Ross Barratt,

Business IntelligenceManager for NSWFB.

K U W A I T P E T R O L E U M Q 8 C O M B I N E S S A P E R P

U P G R A D E W I T H U S E O F O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C A T I O N

C L U S T E R S ( R A C )

“It had been decided for some time that we would use Oracle RAC in conjunction with SAP.

The SAP ERP upgrade and a new IT infrastructure provided the opportunity we needed to

turn the plan into reality. With Oracle RAC we are more flexible and we can cut down costs,

improve our performance and optimize SAP high availability.”

– F A U S T O C A P E L L E T T I ,

Direction IT & Innovations – IT Operations, SAP CCC

Technical Coordinator, Kuwait Petroleum Q8, Italia SpA

Far-reaching IT modernization

If you’ve ever driven through Italy, the Q8logo with the two interlocking multi-coloredsails is sure to be a familiar sight. KuwaitPetroleum Italia (Kupit) is the Italian sub-sidiary of Kuwait Petroleum International(KPI), the international company which witha workforce of 4700 employees coordinatesthe downstream activities of Kuwait PetroleumCorporation outside Kuwait. Kupit, whichoperates more than 2750 fueling stationsunder the Q8 brand and employs over 650people, performs an extremely important jobwithin the international group of companies.It is responsible for SAP deployment,including some legacy applications, usedthroughout the corporation. A more recent keyelement is SAP ERP 6.0 (with IS Oil) andSAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence 7.0.

For the team and SAP CCC technicalcoordinator Fausto Capelletti, 2007 was animportant milestone in the corporation’s IThistory. A total of three new IT orientationswere taken in hand and successfully imple-mented. All three must be viewed in thecontext of the SAP system and mean variousadvantageous optimizations for the company:firstly the replacement of the Unix systemlandscape with a Linux system, based onstandard servers (Dell) and the Linux Red Hatoperating system, and secondly the migration

of SAP R/3 to SAP ERP 6.0 and SAP BW 3.1to SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence 7.0.In addition, the company is now using OracleReal Application Clusters together with thenew SAP applications.

As Fausto Capelletti explains, “Using up-to-date versions and technologies means constantimprovements, which can take many differentforms. We introduce innovations and furtherdevelopments at an early stage to extract thebenefits early on. In an SAP environment youhave to take account of all the relevant compo-nents or elements and stay focused on a con-tinuous improvement process.”

Excellent experience with Oracle RAC

It’s no accident that Kuwait Petroleum optedfor Oracle RAC in combination with the SAPERP 6.0 upgrade. The company already hadvery positive experience of working withOracle Real Application Clusters with itsnon-SAP legacy applications, for example CRMor data warehouse based on Oracle database.“We wanted to still have the benefits of OracleRAC when using SAP. The obvious answerwas to use Oracle RAC with the SAP ERPupgrade,” recalls IT expert Capelletti. Oraclehas also been a strategic IT partner of KuwaitPetroleum ever since the changeover of theSAP database Informix some years ago.

Industry:

Downsteam (refining and

marketing) activities outside

KUWAIT Petroleum S.p.A.

Workforce:

Approx. 4700 (entire company)


• Oracle Database 10g

• Oracle Real Application

Clusters (RAC) 10.2

• Oracle Clusterware

SAPCTL/Control Utility

• Oracle Support

Key Benefits:

• More flexibility and

scalability in use of SAP

• Greater SAP stability / high

availability

• Enhanced performance

• Base for extensive experience

with new technologies

26

2727Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Kuwait Petroleum

The introduction of Oracle RAC, includingtesting, only took around three months. To-gether with SAP and Oracle partner TechEdge,based in Milan (Italy), and with the help ofOracle’s Global Technology Center for SAPin Walldorf (Germany), the project wasimplemented within the planned timescale.At Kuwait Petroleum the Dell hardware with2X4 AMD Opteron CPUs (each with 32 GBRAM) runs in a 2-node RAC cluster (OracleClusterware SAPCTL based on Oracle Cluster-ware to make SAP high available). The storagesystems are supplied by NetApp.

Both systems, SAP ERP (ECC 6.0 with theindustry solution IS Oil) and SAP NetWeaverBusiness Intelligence 7.0 run on Oracle RAC.The databases (Oracle 10.2) are over 1 TB insize each. In total there are more than 1100SAP users. The applications are used in severallanguages. Since November, Oracle RAC hasbeen running in conjunction with the R/3 andBW successors at Kuwait Petroleum.

Stable, future-proof foundation

By implementing Oracle RAC, the companyis now in a position to achieve a whole rangeof improvements. “Not only can we furtherincrease the availability of SAP applications,which we are now using together with standardservers and the Linux operating system. If oneof the two database instances fails, the othertakes over its tasks. Converting to Oracle RealApplication Clusters also resulted in moreflexibility and scalability, better performanceand the use of a future-oriented technology,”says IT coordinator Capelletti, adding:“Oracle RAC also brings cost benefits andreduces the total cost of ownership.” In themedium term, the company plans to useOracle RAC in conjunction with other SAPapplications.

All in all, Kuwait Petroleum did a veryimpressive job with the ambitious three-stepchange–a new hardware landscape, SAP ERPupgrade and Oracle RAC. The new IT environ-ment provides them with a stable, future-prooffoundation that can be expanded wheneverrequired. The company can also utilize thelatest functions and technologies that canbenefit them in the global oil business.

“We wanted to still

have the benefits of

Oracle RAC when using

SAP. The obvious

answer was to use

Oracle RAC with the

SAP ERP upgrade.”

– Fausto Capelletti,

Direction IT &Innovations – ITOperations, SAP CCC.

28

Each year, petroleum and natural gas extractedfrom the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago’ssignificant petroleum reserves contribute over34% to the nation’s GDP, which in 2007 stoodat US$27 billion. In 1975, the Governmentof Trinidad and Tobago founded The NationalGas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited(NGC), charging it with the responsibility topurchase, transport and sell the country’s natu-ral gas resources for the benefit of the nationas a whole.

After 30 years of operations, in 2005, NGCbegan to experience the effects of inefficientsoftware applications and an ad hoc approachto adding processing power. It therefore decidedto upgrade its core Enterprise ResourcePlanning (ERP) applications for a closer lookat its data infrastructure, with an eye towardsimproving its IT capability with greater simplicity, reliability, and scalability.

“We wanted higher availability and a scalableenvironment,” said Andre Edwards, “we alsowanted it to be scalable, and we didn’t want to add more processing power unless we needed it.”

One governing principle guided the proposedIT infrastructure changes: simplicity. At thesame time, there was no fast, easy templatefor implementing a system with the compo-nents NGC wanted: an open source Linuxoperating system, an Oracle database, and anew SAP suite of ERP applications. The solu-tion was to set up an environment based onOracle Real Application Clusters (RAC).

Nodes, Not Hardware

Like all energy providers, NGC has had tograpple with the cyclical expansions and contractions of the market. In addition, NGChas expanded considerably from its originalfunctions of gas purchase, sale and transmissionof natural gas. NGC is today a diversifiedgroup of companies with operations and stra-tegic investments in gas pipelines, industrialsites, gas production, port and marine infra-structure, Natural Gas Liquids and liquefiednatural gas (LNG).

Industry:

Natural Gas

Annual Revenue:

US$1.74 billion

Employees:

750


• Oracle Database


Clusters

Key Benefits:

• Created a highly reliable,

scalable, and flexible IT

environment

• Enabled reliable perfor-

manceof SAP applications

running on Linux

• Ensured instantaneous

and full failover

• Reduced hardware and

maintenance costs

National Gas Company of

Trinidad and Tobago Limited

Point Lisas Industrial Estate,

Couva, Republic of Trinidad

and Tobago.

www.ngc.co.tt

T H E N A T I O N A L G A S C O M P A N Y O F T R I N I D A D

A N D T O B A G O L I M I T E D ( N G C ) S I M P L I F I E S I T

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E W H I L E I M P R O V I N G R E L I A B I L I T Y

A N D S C A L A B I L I T Y

“One of the main reasons we selected Oracle Real Application Clusters is because we were

familiar with the Oracle platform and we knew from experience how reliably it works.”

– A N D R E E D W A R D S ,

Manager, Information Management Services,

The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited

29

NGC has coped with these fluctuations andgrowth by purchasing more computingequipment, which created a very complex ITenvironment. The company therefore decidedin 2006 to streamline its IT operations on theenterprise grid computing technology of OracleRAC. An option to Oracle database, OracleRAC is a cluster database with shared cachetechnology that overcomes the limitations oftraditional shared-disk approaches.

“The alternative to Oracle RAC would havebeen to manage three separate databases,maintain backups, backup schedules, and anykind of patching performance metrics for threeseparate databases,” Edwards said. ”There isno comparison to what we have now–which isbasically just one database across five nodes.”

A Better Disaster Plan

Tropical storms are the wild card every businessin the Caribbean archipelago faces. For NGC,systems failure can mean disruption of gastransmission services, discomfort for citizensand businesses, and huge financial losses.Failover capabilities were an important factorfor NGC in evaluating solutions. “As we werelooking into it, we realized there are somefeatures within Oracle that can assist us interms of disaster recovery,” Edwards said.

Oracle RAC’s failure detection and recoverysystem, which relies on load-sharing amongnodes, eliminates a single point of failure.With no single point of failure, the failure ofone node does not affect another node’s abilityto process transactions. The database remainsavailable on any surviving instance–therebyaverting losses and downtime.

NGC also hoped to leverage the load-sharingcapabilities during routine service shutdowns.“You always worry about shutting down aproduction database when it’s in use,” Edwardssaid. “But since we have five nodes on ourOracle RAC, we tried it, and it didn’t give usany problems. Oracle and SAP just continuedrunning without any issues. The ability to takedown nodes without affecting availability iscritical for us,” he added.

Why Oracle?

NGC’s project was a complicated one. On a technical level, NGC wanted to build anarchitecture that combined applications andsystems from multiple vendors–including new SAP applications the company wanted to install. On a higher level, it wanted anarchitecture that would reduce, not create,complexity going forward–something simple,stable, standardized, and scalable. OracleRAC was the only solution that could fulfillall objectives, according to Edwards.

“Our idea was to create a standardized envi-ronment by leveraging Oracle database for allmission-critical applications,” said Edwards.“Some of those critical applications would beSAP. Bear in mind that the applications weregoing to be used throughout our entire orga-nization. Therefore, we needed to make certainthat they were available and reliable.”

Finally, NGC didn’t want to have to go backto the drawing board–or systems manufactu-rer–every time it experienced a growth spurt.“We wanted a solution that would provideredundancy, high availability, and a reliableenvironment. We also wanted it be scalable sothat, in the future, if we needed more proces-sing power, we could always add on, quicklyand affordably.”

"With Oracle’s Real

Application Clusters,

we can scale as the

need arises. Instead of

buying a lot of extra

capacity up front, we

can simply purchase

additional capacity

when we need it.”

– Andre Edwards,

Manager, InformationManagement Services.

Oracle RAC for SAP at National Gas Company

30

Implementation Process

NGC’s Oracle RAC implementation, whichhas five nodes, began in January 2006 andwas completed by mid-summer. The environ-ment, which serves approximately 600 users,includes Dell OptiPlex desktops and DellPowerEdge Servers running Microsoft Windowsfor SAP applications and Red Hat Linux forthe database.

Since there is no Oracle-SAP-Dell-Linux con-figuration available for general release, NGCrelied on the collaboration of all parties tosuccessfully implement the solution. “Oracleworked with us extensively, as well as SAP, in terms of certifying processes and the environ-ment,” Edwards said. “There was some concerninitially, but in working with the partners, wewere able to overcome all the issues of concern.”

While NGC admits the first implementationwas tricky, a subsequent implementation of anadditional Oracle RAC–a two-node mirrorsystem–took only two weeks “Basically, weknow what to do, so it was easy,” Edwards said.

With Oracle RAC in place, NGC has achievedits objective of simplifying its architecture,according to Edwards. “Basically what we havenow is one database across five computingnodes,” he said. “I think the management ofour existing environment is much simplerwith Oracle RAC.”

Advice from The National Gas Company of

Trinidad and Tobago Limited

• Before investing in a new system, see if newtechnologies such as grid computing tech-nology can be adapted to your businessneeds. Such technologies can eliminate theneed to purchase a lot of unnecessarily hardware down the road;

• Rather than buying excess technology thatsits idle, invest in an infrastructure that canscale as need demands;

• Don’t think that because a configuration isn’tavailable that it can’t be done. Our experienceproves we can have the products we wantedand that they could work together.

The government of Trinidad and Tobago created theNational Gas Company of Trinidad and TobagoLimited (NGC) in August 1975. Today, NGC isa diversified group of companies with operationsand strategic investment in gas pipelines, port andmarine structures, industrial estates, oil and gasproduction, LNG and natural gas liquids.

“I think the manage

ment of our existing

environment is much

simpler with Oracle RAC.”

– Andre Edwards,

Manager, InformationManagement Services.

31Cert i f ied SAP on RAC Configurat ions for Windows and Linux

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 A T I O N S

F O R W I N D O W S A N D L I N U X

We have separate scenarios for Windows and Linux, see also SAP Note 527843

Oracle RAC 10.2 on Windows x86, x86_64 and IA64

• Oracle 10.2.0.4

• OCFS 10.2.0.4 (embedded in Oracle Clusterware Software)

• Windows 2003 Release 2 EE, Service Pack 2

• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Microsoft Cluster Services(SAP Central Instance can be co-located with RAC instance)

• iSCSI only supported up to 4 nodes

Not supported:

– crossover cables for interconnect (only Gigabit Ethernet,minimum two cards)

– Infiniband – ASM – raw devices

Oracle RAC 10.2 on Linux x86, x86_64, IA64 and Power

for RHEL4, RHEL5, SLES9 and SLES10

• Oracle 10.2.0.4

• OCFS2 1.2.3 or higher for database, Oracle software and SAP software

• OCFS2 1.4.x as of SLES 10 Support Package 2 or RHEL 5.2

• EMC Celerra NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software

• NetAppliance NFS for database, Oracle software and SAP software

• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by Oracle Clusterware (2 nodeconfiguration, co-location of SAP Central Instance with RAC Instance)

• SAP Enqueue Replication covered by HP ServiceGuard or Red HatCluster (minimum 4 nodes are required, SAP central instance cannotbe co-located with RAC instance on same node)

Not supported:

– iSCSI – Firewire – crossover cables for interconnect (only GigabitEthernet, minimum two cards) – Infiniband – Red Hat GFS

– Veritas CFS, ASM, raw devices

– IBM GPFS

General Availability on Microsoft Windows General Availability on Red Hat and SuSE Linux

32

Serving the global market with a spirit

of invention

Gottwald Port Technology GmbH, based inDüsseldorf (Germany), a subsidiary of DemagCranes AG, is a supplier of harbor cranes andport automation technologies. The company–which invented the mobile harbor crane andsets the pace in the automation of containerhandling–serves customers in over 90 coun-tries. In the 2007/2008 business year it gene-rated a turnover of close to € 325.5 millionwith a workforce of around 800 employees.

With almost 1300 mobile harbor crane unitsinstalled around the globe, the company is theworld market leader in this specialty marketsegment. As well as mobile harbor cranes, theportal cranes and floating cranes that developedout of them, Gottwald’s product portfolio inclu-des automated guided vehicles (AGVs) forhorizontal container transport, automatedstacking cranes (ASCs) and wide span gantries.

Systematic approaches at all levels

The company has made a name for itself inthe global market as a system supplier coveringthe full range of port automation activities,including planning, simulation, commissioningand control of everyday processes.

At the IT level this includes system solutionswith appropriately adapted hardware andsoftware as well as individually adaptednavigation and management softwaresolutions that ensure smooth automatedoperation of port facilities. The product rangeis rounded off by state-of-the-art simulationand emulation technologies for terminalplanning, design and capacity evaluation.

These provide a realistic picture of futureterminal structures and performance prior toany planned investments being made,providing validation for investment decisions.

As well as developing logistics solutions formachinery and large-scale projects in sea andinland ports–the company’s main field ofactivity– Gottwald Port Technology alsoattaches the necessary importance to businessmanagement issues and the way they arelogically interconnected by cutting-edgesoftware solutions. The high standards oftechnical design, performance and reliabilitythat the company places on its own productsare also reflected in its in-house ERP system.A combination of Oracle database and SAPexpertise based on a reliable HP hardware plat-form provided sustainability from a businessmanagement point of view.

S A P O N O R A C L E 1 0 g R A C A T G O T T W A L D P O R T

T E C H N O L O G Y

Headquarters:

Düsseldorf

Industry sector:

Port and intermodal handling

technologies, hardware and

software

Turnover:

€325.5 million

Workforce:

800

Gottwald

Port Technology GmbH

Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Gottwald 33

Flexible and future-proof thanks to scalabilitys

For ERP purposes, Gottwald Port Technologyhas a typical three-level system landscape con-sisting of a development system, a consolida-tion system, and a productive system designedas a cluster. Since 1996 the company has beenworking in an HP Unix environment, runningSAP on Oracle database. Although obsoletehardware was replaced by new generation hard-ware on an ongoing basis, the company wasnot able to satisfactorily fulfill its objectiveof achieving high availability of the databasewith a conventional cluster. It was a situationthat often caused sluggishness of the system–a potential source of risk, particularly whenit came to producing the monthly statementsfor Demag Cranes AG.

Prompted by the fact that the hardware main-tenance contracts were about to expire, inspring 2007 the IT team headed by AndreasRogge carried out a situation analysis. Thisrevealed that the best way to move towardsa fully failsafe system landscape with a high-availability database on SAP was with OracleRAC.

“It wasn’t until we sat down to discuss thesituation in detail with Oracle that we realizedhow much room for improvement there wasin terms of batch job runtimes, unacceptableresponse times for dialog processes and lotsof other things too”, says Andreas Rogge, ITManager for SAP Basis, Information Techno-logy, describing the situation in 2007.

The analysis not only impacted on the choiceof software but also resulted in a modifiedhardware strategy. In the general structure ofthe system landscape, more and more Intel-based LINUX systems were being incorporatedin planning. A comprehensive cost/benefitanalysis revealed substantial benefits fromcombining Oracle RAC with DELL PowerEdge2950 processors. After careful consideration,solutions involving HP-UX and RAC or HP-UX and an SG cluster were thrown out becauseof the associated costs and complexity.

“We understood then

that cluster technology

doesn’t just mean

high availability, but

scalability too. As far as

we’re concerned that’s

the great advantage of

RAC for our system

landscape."

– Andreas Rogge,

IT Manager forSAP Basis.

System landscape: initial situation in 2007

Combining expertise with partnership

At the beginning of 2008, Andreas Roggefound the expert project partner he was lookingfor to implement the general objectives and,in particular, the migration of the SAP ERPsystem. He and his team had an expert partnerwith the necessary knowledge of Oracle RACand SAP ERP environments on NetAppSwitched Metro Cluster, in the shape ofMunich-based IS4IT, which had alreadysuccessfully implemented a similar projectat Munich’s clinical center.

After the DELL hardware was delivered tocertified partner IS4IT in early May 2008,the project began to take shape. Things gotunderway in mid-June as the developmentsystem was migrated and a test phase wassuccessfully completed. Before the consolidationsystem was actually migrated, it was copiedso as to estimate the complexity of the projectfor the productive system.

The first two weekends in August 2008 wereselected far in advance as the optimum datefor migration of the productive system. Thischoice was necessitated by the fact that theservice contracts for the SAP systems weredue to expire. In addition, Demag Cranes AGrequires monthly business statements, so nosystem downtime could be tolerated.

Pleasantly surprised

In December 2008, the results of the migra-tion could not yet be finally quantified. ButAndreas Rogge believes an analysis of theresults achieved so far speaks for itself:

“We were amazed at what the hardware couldsuddenly do. We currently have much morehardware operating than we could ever haverun in the HP-UX environment, or shouldhave run given the sluggishness of the system.In terms of CPU load, our systems are moreunderloaded than overloaded at the presenttime.”

And there were other indicators that the ITdepartment had made the right strategicdecision. The dialog response time, whichused to be two or three seconds, was reducedby 90% and is now less than 300 microseconds.The runtimes for backups have also beenreduced by as much as 90% in some cases,although the total time required to performbackups remains about the same. No errorshave occurred in terms of the high availabilityof the database, as is confirmed by failovertests. Overall, the new flexibility, reliabilityand performance of the IT landscape exceededall expectations–and at significantly reducedcosts.

34

System landscape: target situation in 2008

Source:

http://www.computerwoche.de/knowledge_center/open_source/1871078/

36

Deutsche Telekom transfers core applications

to Linux

The telecoms giant based in Bonn (Germany)has migrated its revenue management system- one of the world’s largest SAP installations -to an Intel server running on the Linux opensource operating system.

Deutsche Telekom is making more use of Linuxplatforms for its business-critical applicationsthrough its own in-house IT service providerT-Systems. “We are pursuing the strategy ofautomating and industrializing as many partsof our processes as possible,” explains ChristophBöhm, who is responsible for the operationand technical infrastructure of accountingsystems. “Linux puts us in a much betterposition to achieve this goal as it makes uscompletely manufacturer-independent.”

Intel servers run on SUSE Linux

Deutsche Telekom reached a milestone in itsstrategy by migrating its revenue managementto the open source operating system. To thisend the company uses the SAP software RM-CA (SAP Revenue Management – ContractAccounting). The server platforms are providedby x86 computers from Fujitsu-SiemensComputers running SUSE Linux and the Oracle10g RAC database. The revenue managementand almost all corporate customers are billedby the telecoms provider in Germany. Theonly exceptions are major corporate accountswith special cost center structures, which weremapped in separate systems. The accountingsystem processes around 500 million paymenttransactions a year for about 40 million custo-mer accounts.

Linux migrations plan in 2005

In 2005, Deutsche Telekom started by drawingup an overall concept for all its accountingapplication systems. For the IT strategists,the key questions were: Which systems can bemigrated to Linux and when? Which systemsmust keep running on a Unix derivativebecause their manufacturers do not yet supportLinux? “It became clear that about a third ofthe systems we currently use are not yetLinux-capable,” says Böhm. This was mainlytrue of special applications (see also “HowLinux is pushing out the Unix system”).

S A P O N O R A C L E 1 0 g R A C A T G E R M A N T E L E K O M Translation of Computerwoche (IDG)

– B Y W O L F R A M H E R R M A N N

A U G U S T 1 8 , 2 0 0 8

37

All other applications were migrated to theopen source operating system, a process whichis still underway. One of the biggest migrationprojects was revenue management. Between2001 and 2004 the IT team consolidated 15previously regional systems on a single plat-form. As part of the process, the companyreplaced 15 Unix-based hardware platformswith a high-performance cluster of 130SPARC 4+ processors from Sun Microsystems.Böhm explains, “Since this platform was crea-ting enormous amortization costs, T-Systemsdeveloped a dynamic usage-based hostingconcept that we switched to after the amor-tization period for the old Unix environmentcame to an end.”

In this case, dynamic means that the IT serviceprovider charges for processing power andmemory based on actual usage. DeutscheTelekom says that this results in cost savings.The company also states that T-Systems mana-ged to accelerate batch processing by 20%.

“The processing power available with Linuxallows us to process revenue managementsteps between 20% and 40% faster,”says Böhm.“For our 5,000 concurrent SAP users, weachieve average response times of just overtwo seconds.”

Major step from Unix to Linux

The migration project was not wholly withoutproblems, as the IT manager admits. “When ahosting provider migrates an application thesize of the Deutsche Telekom revenue manage-ment system to a Linux platform, it inevitablyexperiences a learning curve. After all, it isoperating in new territory compared withfamiliar Unix systems and even smaller Linuxsystems.” T-Systems completed the learningphase quickly, and the in-house IT serviceprovider says it now operates over 60% of its‘Dynamic Services’ on Linux systems.

However, even Deutsche Telekom's technicalexperts had to rethink at one point. In early2007 they put the business process logic to thetest. Böhm explains, “We used the scheduledsystem changeover to improve a large numberof process steps. Today the business processdemands only about 40% of the resources weneeded before the optimization.”

IT history of Deutsche Telekom

The formerly peripheral SAP installations arethe result of Deutsche Telekom’s IT history.In the early 1990s the company built a networkof 15 SAP accounting systems running IBM'sUnix derivative AIX, each of which covered adifferent region in Germany. Those in chargeof IT explain that this was because, at the time,the hardware did not offer enough scalability.However, data integration frequently resultedin unacceptably high costs, for example whencustomers moved or relocated. The numerouschanges required over the years also increasedmaintenance costs.

Computerwoche ( IDG) art ic le SAP on RAC at German Telekom

38

“Our top priority was to ensure uniformity, standardization, and compatibility of operations,

while building the IT foundation for us to accelerate quickly in the future without any limits —

either imposed by technology or the vendor.”

– T R I D I B B O R D O L O I ,

CIO, Indian Express Group.

S A P O N O R A C L E 1 0 g R A C : I N D I A N E X P R E S S C H O O S E S

R E D H A T S O L U T I O N S T O T R A N S F O R M I T S L E G A C Y

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E I N T O A F U T U R E - R E A D Y P L A T F O R M

Background

The Indian Express group is one of India’smost well-known media firms, with severalpopular publications to its credit. The groupowns The Indian Express, which continuesto push the boundaries of excellence in investi-gative journalism and uses the slogan “Journa-lism of Courage.” The group also owns othernewspapers in India including the FinancialExpress, a business newspaper focused on theIndian economy; Marathi language dailyLoksatta; Hindi language daily Jansatta; andScreen, a tabloid focused on the Indianentertainment industry.

Challenge

The India media industry is extremely com-petitive, and is constantly adapting to cater tochanging consumer demands and technologicaldevelopments. In late 2004, even as the IndianExpress group was establishing new bench-marks in journalism, it was grappling to costeffectively scale up its IT infrastructure.

As a national-level newspaper, the Expressgroup operates across more than 19 locationsin the country, and needed a robust IT infra-structure that would give it the ability to

publish content quickly, without compromisingon quality. Over the years, to gain a competi-tive advantage, the group had deployed adiverse mix of software and hardware, leadingto a prevalence of islands of information,numerous point-to-point interfaces, andinconsistent business processes.

The group’s backbone LAN servers werepowered by Novell Netware 3.12 OS with thelimitation of client licenses; while for its mes-saging needs the group used .cc:Mail 8.2.These applications were impacting the group’sagility in an industry where speed is of criticalimportance, and were proving to be complexand expensive to maintain. It was clear tothe group that it needed to evaluate a solutionthat would not only meet existing needs cost-effectively, but give the group the reliabilityit needed for the future.

“Our top priority was to ensure uniformity,standardization, and compatibility of opera-tions, while building the IT foundation for usto accelerate quickly in the future without anylimits — either imposed by technology or thevendor,” said Tridib Bordoloi, CIO, IndianExpress Group.

Industry:

Media

Geography:

India

Challenge:

To transform existing legacy

infrastructure into a future-ready

solution, while protecting

existing investments, and

giving the group the foundation

to accelerate cost effectively

Migration Path:

Novell Netware 3.12 OS to

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Software:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

with Oracle 10g database and

Real Application Clusters

Hardware:

Dell PowerEdge 1900, 2800

and 2900 Server series,

64-bit Intel Xeon processors

Benefits:

The implementation of Red Hat

Enterprise Linux 5 has given

Indian Express a highly availab-

le, secure, and reliable platform

with freedom from vendor lock-

in, and the ability to scale cost-

effectively without sub-sequent

investments in hardware.

Indian Express Group

Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at Indian Express Group 39

Solution

While assessing the right infrastructure topower its future growth, four important con-siderations were made. “In the media industry,we cannot afford to have a downtime. Hence,high availability is a critical need. We alsoevaluated platforms with respect to the TCO,future readiness, and ability to scale,” saidBordoloi.

In the end, the decision was made quicklydue to the team’s familiarity with Red HatEnterprise Linux, having used the platformeffectively for running its file and printservers. In fact, almost every member of theIT team in the group is trained on using andimplementing Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The group planned a series of modernizationinitiatives with Linux at the heart. The groupimplemented SAP on Red Hat EnterpriseLinux 5 to streamline business processes,gain complete control, and achieve informa-tion transparency across the country. TheExpress group has deployed four SAP modu-les, which includes Material management,Media Advertisement Management, Financeand Control, and Media Sales and Distribution.

“The selection of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5was an obvious choice, as it fulfilled all therequirements we envisioned for building afuture-ready platform. We are all for openstandards, and did not want to be tied downto a single vendor. Red Hat gives us the flexi-bility to change to a different hardware plat-form, if necessary,” said Bordoloi.

Further, with SAP certifying Red Hat Enter-prise Linux 5, the Express Group is ensuredthat all the criteria necessary for full interopera-bility of Red Hat solutions with all modulesof SAP are in compliance.

Benefits

With ease of use, protecting existing invest-ments, and the ability to scale cost-effectivelywithout subsequent investments in hardware,Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has given theIndian Express group the ability to move for-ward with its business goals without anytechnology constraints. Like any other nationalnewspaper, the smooth transfer of stories andpages within the organization, across locationsis vital. Today, a complete workflow enablesthis while integrating agency feeds, and hasthe added ability to accommodate last-minutebreaking news without compromising on quality of printing.

“In addition to high availability and reliabi-lity, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 gives usaccess to features such as clustering and vituali-zation that would otherwise have been possiblethrough the purchase of additional third-partysolutions,” explained Bordoloi.

The group uses Oracle Real ApplicationClusters (RAC) 10g as the database, withRed Hat Enterprise Linux 5 as the plat-form. This combination provides the groupincreased flexibility and significantlyreduced operational costs. For example,the Express Group can now dynamicallyprovision nodes, storage, or CPUs to lowercosts and improve utilization.

“With the combination of cost, flexibility, andreliability, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 hastruly exceeded our expectations.When compa-red to contemporary solutions, the TCO is verylow. More importantly, Red Hat‘s security fea-tures enabled through the Security-EnhancedLinux (SELinux) functionality, has given uspeace of mind, vis-à-vis other platforms thatare facing new vulnerabilities and threatsalmost every day,” said Bordoloi.

“ With the Express Group

always upholding the

values of free dom of

media, it is like open source

meeting open minds.”

– Tridib Bordoloi, CIO,Indian Express Group.

40

What is also special about the Indian ExpressGroup is that the group is a trendsetter inusage of open source technologies in India.From mail servers, file servers, SAP, and eventhe company’s website, the group uses RedHat Enterprise Linux at the backend. The listof accolades doesn’t stop here. “The IndianExpress Group happens to be one of the ear-liest users of SAP on RAC in the region,”said Bordoloi.

“The Express Group has always been on theforefront of publishing high-quality articlesthat can positively change the society we livein. Hence, when it was revealed in a recentNetwork World test that Red Hat EnterpriseLinux was named the Greenest OperatingSystem, pulling as much as 12 percent lesspower than Windows 2008 on identicalhardware, we were overjoyed with our choiceand the small contribution we are making tomake the world a better place to live in,”said Bordoloi.

The Indian Express group has streamlinedits editorial operations, across all publicationspan India, by implementing NewsWrap edito-rial system developed by 4C Plus (breakingfrom the decade old foxpro/DOS legacy). Thisintegrated system is a complete workflow en-compassing all aspects of editorial operations.It captures feeds from all sources includingagencies, bureaus etc and flows them to therelevant QuarkXpress pages where, advertise-ment page-plan is already available to them towork on.

The advertisement page planning is doneusing Layout-X page planning system, alsofrom 4Cplus. Layout-X has been seamlesslyintegrated with SAP IS/MAM and NewsWrap.

Layout-X picks up the advts scheduled on agiven day for an edition and the ad dummy(page plan) is made on the fly. Manual overridesexist to finalize the page plan suggested byLayout-X. The page plans are available to theeditorial as per the page release deadlines. Incase of exigencies, if the page plan needs to bealtered, then online notifications are sent toeditorial users to update the page accordingly.The final advertisement placement positionsare picked up and updated to SAP IS/MAMfor ad invoicing.

Both these utilities mentioned above hasOracle 10g as database and RHEL 5x as theplatform.

Industry:

High Technology

Annual Revenue:

US$303 million

Employees:

13,000


Oracle database

Oracle Real Application Clusters

Key Benefits:

• Improved use of hardware

resources, including enhanced

return on secondary equip-

ment

• Gained ability to seamlessly

add new hardware nodes to

increase capacity without

affecting system availability

• Reduced IT management,

maintenance, and operational

workload through online

archiving and data reorganiza-

tion

42

The ASE Group is the world’s largest providerof independent semiconductor manufacturingtest and assembly services. The group’s soluti-ons include integrated circuit test programdesign, front-end engineering testing, waferprobe, wafer bump, substrate design and sup-ply, wafer level package, flip chip, system-inpackage, and final test and designmanufacturing services.

ASE Group’s global deployment capabilitiesprovide it with a significant advantage overits competitors. The organization’s flagshipcompany, ASE Kaohsiung, operates a plant inTaiwan’s second largest city that contributesmore than 60% of the group’s overall revenues.

In 2007, ASE Kaohsiung implemented a newdatabase based on Oracle database 10g withOracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) tosupport an enterprise resource planningdeployment and resolve a range of system problems. These included performancebottlenecks and difficulties in file archiving.The migration from a high availability hardware architecture to Oracle RAC hasenhanced performance and management capa-bilities and improved investment returns atthe plant.

An ASE Group spokesperson said: “Our newsystem architecture based on Oracle database10g and Oracle RAC combines performanceand reliability.”

“We have received positive feedback fromusers and have been able to enhance customerservice.”

Sales Growth Demands Improved

IT Performance

The ASE Group operates across a host of loca-tions worldwide. Taiwan facilities include theKaohsiung plant and an operation at ChungLi that provides comprehensive semiconductormanufacturing services.

The organization differentiates itself from itscompetitors by providing an integrated serviceacross a single supply chain. By providingfront-end testing and design, wafer probing,package design, substrate design and manu-facture, package service, product testing, andsystem assembly, ASE Group has helped custo-mers reduce processing periods and ensure highproduct yield and reliability. This performancehas prompted significant sales growth butincreased the complexity of shipping require-ments. Every lot produced by the ASE Groupis non-standard and requires different packingbased on the instructions and requirements ofindividual customers.

ASE Group

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

www.aseglobal.com

A S E T U R N S T O N E W S Y S T E M A R C H I T E C T U R E T O

E N H A N C E P E R F O R M A N C E A N D S E R V I C E Q U A L I T Y

“Our new system architecture based on Oracle database 10g and Oracle Real Application

Clusters combines performance and reliability. We have received positive feedback from

users and have been able to enhance customer service.”

– S P O K E S P E R S O N , A S E G R O U P

Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at ASE Taiwan 43

The ASE Kaohsiung plant ships product almost365 days every year. Each shipment triggers arange of processes in accounting and otherrelevant components of the plant’s enterpriseresource planning system. However, the volumeof data generated caused a range of problems,including deficiencies in the accuracy of data-archiving and frequent performance issuessparked by bottlenecks.

ASE Kaohsiung realized that expanding itsserver hardware to accommodate this surgingdemand would impose a heavy financial bur-den on the business. The plant had run itsenterprise resource planning system and data-base on a high availability architecture thatspanned production and backup servers. Thetwo node system operated as an active /passivecluster, with the backup server remainingonline but not providing applications or services to end users.

When first implementing the enterprise resource planning system in 2004, ASEKaohsiung deployed Oracle database to under-take system management. However, with theoriginal architecture unable to accommodatethe surge in data, ASE Kaohsiung opted toundertake a comprehensive upgrade spanningboth the database and the enterprise resourceplanning system.

After purchasing the required hardware, ASEKaohsiung installed the latest version of itsenterprise resource planning system and Oracledatabase 10g with Oracle RAC.

Strengthening Database Maintenance

and Operation

ASE Kaohsiung has started the performanceimprovement delivered by Oracle RAC as wellas the flexibility of the new technical frame-work and the features of Oracle database 10g.“The enhanced management and online fea-tures of the new database have reduced andsimplified the workload of our database admini-strators,” said the spokesperson.

Previously, ASE Kaohsiung’s informationtechnology staff had to undertake reorganiza-tion and filing tasks manually and offline soas not to interrupt production systems. A toolprovided with Oracle database 10g enablesonline file archiving, reducing staff workloads.

Users are among the most enthusiastic advo-cates of the system upgrade and architecturechange project, thanks to improved perfor-mance and response times.

“The new environment built with Oracledatabase 10g and Oracle RAC has success-fully accomplished this mission,” said thespokesperson.

Why Oracle?

ASE commenced the upgrade project inJanuary 2007. The project, spanning an enterprise resource planning system, a data-base upgrade, and implementation of OracleRAC, was completed by the end of July. The new system commenced operations on 1 August.

The organization selected Oracle database 10gdue to the status of Oracle database as a keyplatform for the business. Oracle database isalso the industry-leading brand with the hig-hest market share. These factors promptedASE to make its decision without evaluatingrival solutions.

“We selected Oracle RAC as it is a matureproduct and delivers a range of key features,”said the spokesperson.

At present, Oracle database 10g and OracleRAC are only deployed at ASE Kaohsiung,while other ASE business divisions have theirown systems. “Based on the excellent perfor-mance of Oracle RAC, we expect to duplicatethe environment at these businesses,” said thespokesperson.

“Our new system

architecture based on

Oracle database 10g

and Oracle RAC

combines performance

and reliability.”

– Spokesperson,

ASE Group.

44

Implementation Process

As part of the project, ASE Kaohsiung spentsix months undertaking proof of concept toidentify how to maximize system performance.With assistance from Oracle, the plant workedout how to maximize its return on investment.The new environment started operations onAugust 1, 2007. Oracle RAC successfullyreplaced the original high availability environ-ment and enabled the plant to better exploitits hardware resources.

“In the old high availability architecture, wehad bought two systems but used only one forproduction, leaving the other standing by as apassive server,” said the spokesperson. “Afterimplementing Oracle RAC, we can exploitthe potential of both systems because they run at the same time. More importantly, wehave enhanced performance.”

ASE Kaohsiung is also excited about thescalability of Oracle RAC as informationtechnology managers can add hardware nodesinto the cluster to increase capacity withoutcompromising system availability. The abilityof Oracle’s RAC software to support multiplehardware platforms also extends the optionsavailable to ASE Kaohsiung.

ASE Kaohsiung is the flagship operation of semiconductor manufacturing test and assembly specialist ASE Group. The ASE Kaohsiung planthouses the group’s R&D center and operates world-class assembly, wafer bumping, and test services.ASE Kaohsiung provides full turnkey services,including substrate design and manufacturingcapabilities.

Oracle 10g RAC for SAP at ASE Taiwan

46

Profile: DIEHL Informatik AG

As a consultancy and operating companyworking with information and communicationsystems, DIEHL Informatik provides assistanceto other companies within the Diehl group andexternal industrial, commercial and servicecompanies. DIEHL Informatik employs 85 staffmembers and works in the fields of corporateconsulting, management information systems,corporate systems (SAP®), e-business systems,electronic archiving systems, PC systems,Internet/Intranet services, system integration,system management and operation, telecom-munication, IT security, training and hardware-/software distribution. www.diehl-informatik.de

The Diehl group is based in Nuremberg. Theglobal technology firm is organized into thefour divisions of Metal, Controls, Defense andAerosystems. With a workforce of around11,000, it has an annual turnover of €2.2billion.

Facing challenges head on

Prompted by the substantial effort involved inupgrading and maintaining SAP systems bothinternally and externally, the company startedto look into how this administrative task couldbe efficiently optimized in the long term. The first attempt to cap administration complexityfor several SAP systems was the introduction

of SAP MCOD (Multiple Components in OneDatabase), which allows data for several SAPBasis systems to be stored in one physicalOracle database. However this approach bringswith it the risk of the several SAP systems nolonger being available should the databaseserver fail. So the company started to lookfor a way of making this MCOD architecturehighly available. The company also wanted to equip itself forfuture tasks and further enhance scalability,performance, and the general stability of itssystems. Traditional high-availability concepts usuallyrequire the number of servers to be doubledwhich makes administration work morecomplex and error-prone. The company didnot want to go down this path. Instead, as asatisfied Oracle database customer, it foundthe ideal solution for its requirements inOracle RAC (Real Application Clusters).To get straight to the point, with Oracle RACthe company achieved greater stability, whichwas easy to administer, and through loaddistribution over several database nodes,scalability was greatly enhanced. DiehlInformatik is now even able to manage moresystems than before with its existing adminteam. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Industry/business area:

Consultancy and operatingcompany working with infor-mation and communicationsystems, a member of theDiehl groupdd

Workforce:

85 at Diehl Informatik,

11,000 in the Diehl group

Oracle products:

• Oracle 10g RAC for SAP

• Oracle database 10.2.0.2

• MCOD on RAC

Benefits achieved:

• Greater stability

• Better scalability, fewer servers

• Less administration,

faster release update

• Improved system expandability

• Future-proof system

SAP:

• Business Suite (ECC6.0)

• SAP BI

• CRM

• NetWeaver 2004s

• MCOD

• Solution Manager

Infrastructure:

• FSC PRIMERGY BX620S4

(Intel Quad-Core)

• MS Windows Server 2003

• NetApp iSCSI cluster

DIEHL Informatik

S A P A N D O R A C L E R E A L A P P L I C A T I O N C L U S T E R S

( R A C ) O N W I N D O W S A T D I E H L I N F O R M A T I K

“After being implemented incredibly quickly, stability and scalability have improved and we

can upgrade SAP and releases much faster than before with less administration effort.

What a great overall result.”

– Z O R A N S T R L J I C ,

Project Manager and SAP Basis Team Leader at

Diehl Informatik GmbH.

Informatik

Oracle 10g RAC at DIEHL Informatik 47

Several birds with one stone

How was this special situation approached?The medium-sized SAP ERP system in theDefense division (ECC 6.0, 700 named users,Oracle 10g database, MS Windows Server2003) needed preparing for expansion to SAPBusiness Suite using Unicode with SAP BIand SAP CRM. Oracle RAC was intended tomake this SAP MCOD system more stable.However, it just so happened that the IT wasbeing moved to a new data center and theexisting old multi-server landscape was beingreplaced with new powerful PRIMERGYBX620S4 Intel quad-core blade servers fromFujitsu Siemens Computers. The storagelandscape was also being equipped withmodern NetApp FAS3070 clusters on iSCSIEthernet. Upgrading SAP, introducing Oracle RAC andrenewing the infrastructure – there were a lotof changes taking place at the same time. Butthe staff working with Zoran Strljic, TeamLeader and Project Manager for SAP Basis atDiehl Informatik was not at all worried. Through their thorough preparations and bytaking on a very experienced RAC/SAP im-plementation partner, Mr. Lenard Buday fromLNW-Soft GmbH, the team managed toimplement the SAP productive system with4 instances on 2 Oracle RAC database nodeswithin just 8 weeks. This also included SAPrelease updates on all test and productivesystems and moving the system to the newservers! A rather fast result all round.The admin team led by Mr. Fischer confirmsthat the system has now been running“smoothly and very stably” since July 2008.

Experience to date and benefits achieved

If we consider the time to implement justRAC (i.e. not including SAP release and hard-ware infrastructure server updates), this tookjust 6 weeks. This was shorter than expectedand there were no problems along the way.

In day-to-day operations, greatly improvedstability has been noted, as have the additionalbenefits of Oracle RAC. This includes anoutstanding level of scalability because otherdatabase nodes can be quickly and easily addedas load requirements increase. Flexibility inallocating SAP instances, MCOD areas andprocesses to particular Oracle RAC databasenodes has also improved. And last but notleast, less administration work is requiredcompared with traditional methods to increasestability. Faster upgrade times have alsoresulted from combining this system withnew hardware.Through the time that the admin team nowsaves, it can even support more SAP systems,which is a key cost and productivity factor.This means that new functions can be madeavailable to SAP end users even faster and morereliably than before.

As a result of these very positive experiences,the company is considering implementingother SAP applications such as SCM, APO(in this case the Oracle database without Life-cache) and PLM with its own engines in thenear future, again on Oracle RAC.

Improved sustainability

The Diehl Informatik SAP team have reportedthat all in all Oracle RAC results in improvedsustainability and allows the company torespond faster and more flexibly to newchallenges. The result is perfectly in line witha dynamic form of IT offering cost-efficient andreliable support for the company’s new goals.

“Oracle RAC has

far surpassed our

expectations!

It’s improving our

sustainability and

competitiveness

too.”

– Zoran Strljic,

Project Manager and SAPBasis Team Leader atDiehl Informatik GmbH.

Profile: Bauerfeind AG

Bauerfeind AG is one of the leading manu-facturers of medical aids such as compressionstockings, supports, orthoses, orthopaedicinsoles and prosthetic components. It also supplies the associated measuring systems.The midsize family business, founded inZeulenroda, Germany in 1929, employs around1800 people at three sites in Germany as wellas 15 subsidiaries in Europe, the Middle Eastand the U.S.

The company’s motto, “Motion is life”, alsoreveals its strong commitment to regional andinternational sports. Top athletes around theworld rely on the superb quality of Bauerfeindproducts. In 2008, Europe’s most successfulstair racer won the race to climb the 2,046steps of one of the world’s tallest buildings,Taipei 101, wearing medical compressionstockings. The company has been an officialsupplier to the German Olympic teams since2001, offering an accompanying orthopaedicservice that has been also taken to Beijing.The preferred choice of top athletes is availableto everyone, because Bauerfeind products areavailable from quality medical supplies retai-lers. www.bauerfeind.com

Tradition meets innovation

Innovation has a tradition at Bauerfeind. Theknowledge and experience the company hasacquired from working with patients and athletes in its Innovation Center, opened in1999, find direct practical application in theoptimization and development of newproducts. In keeping with the motto “ITdrives business”, the IT department plays amajor role in the market success of Bauerfeindproducts. After being confronted with the problem ofoperating multiple sites and different ITsystems as a result of continual growth, thecompany decided in 2002, when BauerfeindAG was being founded, to consolidate using astandard SAP ERP solution at the central sitein Zeulenroda. There are now over 40 systemswith almost all modules (including GTS,CRM Mobile Sales and BI). In addition to anIBM AIX infrastructure, the company wassoon convinced of the advantages of the Oracledatabase as the central company standard.

Managing growth

It goes without saying that an internationallyvery successful midsize company will experi-ence constant data growth. In early 2008 thecompany was faced with managing a datavolume of around 2 TB in what was one of thelargest local Oracle databases. In relative terms

“Oracle Index Key Compression is an amazing way of achieving tangible database optimization

with minimal effort. The professional support from the Oracle/SAP Global Technology Center

helped us to complete the project in a very short space of time and secure future growth.

Our expectations were satisfied in every way!”

– A L E X A N D E R K Ä F E R L E I N ,

Data Centre/SAP Basis Manager at Bauerfeind AG

” M O T I O N I S L I F E – O R A C L E I N D E X K E Y

C O M P R E S S I O N A T B A U E R F E I N D “

Industry:

Manufacturer of medical aids

(compression stockings sup-

ports orthoses, orthopedic

insoles and shoes, prosthetic

components and materials)

Workforce:

1800 worldwide

Oracle Products:

Oracle 10.2.0.2 database,

size 2TB before Index Key

Compression

Key Benefits:

significant database size

reduction by 15%, index

reduction 50%, high quality,

very fast implementation in

2 weeks, enabling future

growth, professional project

support by Oracle

SAP:

40 central Systems, ERP

(ECC6.0), Internet Sales 5.0,

CRM 4.0, NetWeaver 2004s,

BI 7.0, CO, GTS, all modules

activ

Infrastructure:

IBM Power 5 / JS22 Blade

Power6, AIX 5.3 TL7 / 6.1 SP2,

LPAR’s uncapped

Bauerfeind AG + Projekt

www.bauerfeind.com

48

this may not be huge (some companies manageup to 20 TB and the figure is constantlygrowing), but a growth of around 2 GB perweek, plus a marked increase in backup andrecovery times, prompted Alexander Käferlein,Data Centre /SAP Base Manager and his teamto start thinking about optimization. The teamalso wanted a leaner database to minimizeexport/ import times prior to a planned switchto Unicode.

A solution was soon found for the backup issue.By improving parallelization it was possible tocut backup times from 11 hours to 4.5 hours.It still remained to minimize the considerablerecovery time of almost 8 hours. With thehelp of SDN (SAP Developer Network) andsome useful contacts at the SAP/OracleTechnology Center in Walldorf, the answerwas soon found: Oracle Index Key Compression.

Oracle Index Key Compression – the way to

optimization

Oracle is the only database manufacturer tooffer not only database table optimizationbut also, since Oracle8, index key compressionon Linux/Unix/Windows operating systems.As the name suggests, the process involvesremoving duplicated values from the indexentries (index blocks) – an important methodfor saving disk space and improving perfor-mance (see page 13 this edition). The processis completely transparent with no maintenancerequirements.In an SAP environment, indexes usuallyaccount for around 50% to 60% of table sizeand 30% to 40% of the total database, so itis possible to reduce the total data size by20% to 30%. Within the index table,reductions can be up to 75% – a veryconsiderable factor. A database of 10 TB, forexample, could be reduced by up to 3 TB,with enormous benefits in terms of disk space,backup, update and recovery.

Rapid implementation and clear benefits

After consulting with SAP about the approvaland usability of Oracle Index Key Compression,a pilot project for the largest database in theERP, BI and CRM system got underway inFebruary 2008. For the first customers of a newfunction, SAP usually specifies the procedurefor the pilot project. As a result of the positiveexperience acquired with over 100 customers,SAP has since issued GA status (general availa-bility and approval).During the Bauerfeind pilot project the custo-mer was in direct contact (by phone and e-mail)with the Oracle /SAP development team inWalldorf. The team also provided predefinedscripts, which the customer could quicklyadapt to its own particular requirements andsystem landscape. Oracle helped with theoptimization and review of reports. However,no additional advice or services were neededon site. According to Alexander Käferlein, thesupport provided by Oracle was outstan-ding, with useful tips and very fast, almostreal-time responses.The project was successfully completed in justtwo weeks. All in all, the effort invested wasminimal in relation to the benefits gained.

What were the results?

Starting point in early 2008: Largest databasein SAP ERP–around 2 TB. 3-4 CPUs alloca-ted. Recovery time 8 hours.

“Oracle Index Key Com-

pression is an amazing

way of achieving tangible

database optimization

with minimal effort.“

– Alexander Käferlein,

Data Centre/SAP BasisManager at Bauerfeind AG.

Oracle Index Key Compression at Bauerfeind 49

After the selection of around 400 suitable“index candidates” and the launch of thescripts, it was possible to compress theindex range by an average of 40% to 50%!This had the effect of shrinking the databasefrom 2 TB to 1.7 TB, or by 300 GB = 15%(see chart).Tables such as DBTABLOG (120 GB) andCOEP (47 GB) are examples of good indexcompression. The index portion of DBTABLOGshrank from 23 GB/17 GB to 15 GB/6 GB,a reduction of 35% to 65%. In the case ofCOEP the index was actually pared downfrom 8 GB/6 GB to 2 GB/1 GB, a reductionof 75% to 84%!

In addition, the CPU load in the AIX LPARvirtualization was reduced by one half CPU.These significant results have had a positiveimpact on day-to-day operations, themaintainability of the entire system, responsetimes, space requirements, and backup andrecovery times. The primary benefactor is day-to-day international business in the offices andfactories connected to the system.

Future with Oracle

The very positive experience and rapidpractical benefits achieved with Oracle IndexKey Compression have encouraged AlexanderKäferlein’s team to make more extensive useof the technology, especially in SAP BI andthe upcoming SAP conversion to Unicode atthe end of 2008. In 2009 Bauerfeind is also planning tointroduce another innovative Oracle databaseoption to further improve the high availabilityof the entire system: Oracle RAC.With first-class Oracle database functionality,quality and support to hand, the plannedgo-live is sure to be a success.

Examples tab

SAP ERP Index before After Index reduction

DBTABLOG A 23GB 15GB 35%

B 17GB 6GB 65%

COEP A 8GB 2GB 75%

B 6GB 1GB 84%

50

52

Capcom uses table compression to solve the

problem of increased data due to the use of

SAP BI/BW system, and has reduced the cost

by approx. 40%.

Capcom Company is continuing to grow bydeveloping and selling home game software asits core operations. The company has adoptedthe SAP ERP as its mission-critical system,and it uses the SAP to analyze various typesof data and reflect them on the company’smanagement. Capcom has adopted the Oracledatabase to support those system operations.We spoke with Mr. Kazuhito Mizuno, Chief ofSystem Infrastructure Team of Capcom’s ITIntegration Information System Department,about the adoption of the Oracle database, themajor problems that will be faced, theirsolution, and future prospects.

Capcom adopted the Oracle database based

on its excellent reliability.

Capcom has adopted the SAP ERP as its mis-sion-critical system, and this system is runningon the Windows server with the Oracledatabase. Mr. Mizuno explains why Capcomuses the Oracle database for SAP ERP.

“I attach high value to the selection of the data-base myself. The database needs to have acertain level of performance if it is used fora system, like the mission-critical system, forwhich there is the highest demand for relia-bility. Although there are several options forselecting a database for SAP ERP, the Oracledatabase is the only choice with a higherreliability and fine tuning for the database.”

Mr. Kazuhito Mizuno

“It was because an opinion of easy systemmanagement arose in the company. However,Capcom considered the applications formission-critical systems and finally selectedthe Oracle database because it has the samelevel of reliability as the server.

People believe that the Oracle database isappropriate for a mission-critical system (onserver). Recently, however, the reliability andversatility of Windows servers have beenimproved, and it is common to construct amission-critical system using a Windows server.

Capcom attached a high value to the reliabilityof the database and decided to continue usingthe Oracle database because the company usesthe Windows server to run the SAP ERP, thatis, its mission-critical system.”

Capcom Co., Ltd.

http://www.capcom.co.jp/

C O S T R E D U C T I O N O F S T O R A G E T H R O U G H O R A C L E

T A B L E C O M P R E S S I O N

Capcom has selected the Oracle database based on its excellent reliability for SAP BI/BW

Mr. Kazuhito Mizuno

“Capcom attached a

high value to the

reliability of the

database and decided

to continue using the

Oracle database

because the company

uses the Windows

server to run the

SAP ERP, that is,

its missioncritical

system.”

– Kazuhito Mizuno,

Capcom Co., Ltd.

Oracle Table Compression at Capcom 53

Limited storage capacity is a problem

in SAP BI/BW operation.

Capcom adopted the SAP BI/BW as itsbusiness intelligence tool in 2003, and it ismainly used for management accounting andfor business administration. It is also used formarketing, including area-difference analysisof the company’s market share for their-popular products. This is also running on theWindows server and the Oracle database.However, a problem arises in the limitedstorage capacity of data. The company certainlyknows that the amount of analysis data in-creases and the storage capacity is exhausted if a business intelligence tool such as SAPBI/BW is used. When installing the system,Capcom determined to review the storagecapacity after a year, and assigned 250 giga-bytes of storage area to the SAP BW for thefirst year. After one year, the company studiedthe expansion of storage to deal with the in-creased data that occurred as expected. Within this time, however, Capcom did not decideto expand the storage. “Recently, the price ofstorage systems dropped and it is much easierfor us to install a storage system than before.However, we were suspicious about solving theproblem by simply expanding storage capacity.We needed to back up data as it is used onour mission-critical system. In fact, if thestorage capacity increases and the data amountincreases accordingly, our tasks surely increasein the system operation phase and our cost ofbackup tapes also increases. Although thesystem installation cost dropped, we concludedthat we should carefully expand our storagecapacity by taking a longterm view.”

Capcom use table compression function

to deal with the increase of data.

So how did Capcom solve the issue of dataincrease? Actually, when Capcom studied theissue of data increase, Oracle Japan proposed“table compression,” one of Oracle database’sfunctions. This is a solution to reduce databy compressing it and using storage moreefficiently. This approach is completely differentfrom the expansion of storage. At that time,Mr. Mizuno listened to this proposal withboth concerns and hopes: “Maybe, it was my fixed concept that the‘compression’ was advantageous for the issueof data capacity but it could also increase theCPU load and drop the response. But whenI heard the details, I found that data tablecompression was completed within the Oracledatabase and, therefore, did not increase theCPU load. Even the system response mightincrease in certain applications. As an engineer,I became curious about this proposal.”

Later, Capcom adopted the data compressionsolution and the data compression was actuallyused. A key point in table compression is thedetermination of data compression rate. Thesystem response varies depending on how wellthe compression rate is tuned. So, Oracle Japanverified the basic part of data compression.Oracle prepared three machines such as adevelopment server, an evaluation server, anda real operation server. Oracle tried data com-pression in different ratio patterns.

Also, Hewlett-Packard Japan, supported thisproject and the verification was made verysmoothly. Capcom could start the actualsystem operation after approximately onemonth.

54

The data was reduced to approx. 60% as

a result of data compression.

After conducting various types of verification,Capcom found that the data compression ofthe top five tables only is most effective inSAP BI/BW operation. As a result of datacompression, the entire data was reduced toapproximately 60%. A total of 40% ofstorage was released. Although some datacould be compressed much more, Capcomskipped the data compression if it wasmeaningless in system operation. Because fouryears have passed since the start of datacompression, the storage has increased to 400gigabytes today. However, when you considerthe flow of data increase and if Capcom didnot select the data compression, a terabyte-class capacity storage would be requiredtoday. Based on this result, Mr. Mizuno feelsthe introduction of data compression functionas follows: “We have expanded the storage accordingly,but the current storage is limited to 400gigabytes only. It means our data compressionis highly effective. Also, we are very satisfiedthat none of our customers have claimed adrop in system response.”

Both SAP and Oracle database plan an

upgrade.

Capcom is planning to upgrade the SAPERP System to SAP ECC and the SAPBW to SAP BI 7.0. At the same time, thecurrent Oracle9i database will be upgradedto Oracle database 10g. Their current criti-cal missions are smooth upgrading of thesesystems and continuation of data compres-sion after their upgrading. Aside from this,Capcom wishes to establish some kind ofdisaster recovery environment. For theefforts expected of Oracle Corp. Japan,Mr. Mizuno says the following:

“Yes, this data compression is a goodexample. An advantage of the Oracle data-base is the availability of the appropriatefunction to implement ‘something’ thatyou wish to perform. You can tune up thedatabase if you take an action. But I feelthose advantageous functions have not yetbeen introduced to the public. I do hopeOracle provides this information by pre-sentation and advertising. It is also good ifOracle provides detailed information thatexecutives can easily understand and if thisinformation shows a concrete figure ofmanagement cost reduction, rather thansimply saying that “management is madeeasier.”

System Environment

http://www.oracle.com/sap

55www.oracle.com/sap

Please visit our Website for more information about Oracle database for SAP customers.

http://www.oracle.com/sap oracle.com

S G I A N D S A P O N O R A C L E D A T A B A S E A T M T U

A E R O E N G I N E S O P T I M I Z E D I T I N F R A S T R U T U R E

M E E T S S H I F T I N G A N D G R O W I N G G L O B A L M A R K E T

R E Q U I R E M E N T S

“The SGI platforms had already proven to be the best platforms for our technical IT applications.

Even in extremely data-intensive environments, they run faster and are more stable than

proprietary platforms, and also give us the flexibility we need to satisfy the highly complex

requirements of our business areas.”

– N O R B E R T D I E H L ,

Head of IT Technology, MTU Aero Engines

For more than ten years, MTU Aero Engineshas relied on SGI® servers to drive its complextechnical IT operations. Recently the companymoved to further optimize its database en-vironment by migrating its SAP® componentfor production planning, SAP AdvancedPlanning & Optimization–SAP APO, to itsexisting Linux® OS-based SGI® Altix® serverplatform. The result is that MTU has cutoperating costs by more than 20 percentcompared to its previous architectures, whilestill fulfilling the high resource requirementsdemanded by SAP APO. To further leveragethe potential of SGI for the SAP solutions,MTU now plans to consolidate additionalSAP components on SGI Altix platforms.As database system, MTU uses Oracle 10g,mainly because of its stability and performanceespecially for BW requirements.

Meeting the Demands of the Enterprise

Market

Originally designed for high-performancecomputing in scientific applications, SGI Altixservers are now increasingly being deployed tomeet the needs of Enterprise customers suchas MTU.“As we expand internationally, SGI platformsenable us to adapt our IT infrastructures tomeet shifting and growing global marketrequirements,” said Norbert Diehl, IT managerof technology, MTU.

“Our IT systems have to be able to processmillions of transactions every day and have the power and scalability to handle complexmonitoring, reporting, and analysis tasks. SGI delivers the performance we need to meetthe demands of our worldwide enterprise.”

Step-by-Step Migration

MTU embarked on the SAP APO project inmid 2005. To manage the project, the companyassembled a team that leveraged the combinedexpertise of representatives from MTU ITTechnology, service provider T-Systems andSGI. Working together, the team was able todesign and implement the new system in justsix months.In the first stage of the project, the team up-graded three SGI® Altix® 3450 servers alreadyin use at MTU. To optimize the servers forthe new SAP application, they developed aconfiguration in which one server was usedfor live operation of the SAP APO component,another was converted for quality controland development and a third was deployedas a “hot standby” system which operated inparallel.

“By recycling these relatively new hardwareplatforms, we were able to prolong their operating life by four or five years,” saidNorbert Diehl. “This alone represents a costsavings of 15 to 30 percent.”

Industry:

Downsteam (refining and

marketing) activities outside

KUWAIT Petroleum S.p.A.

Workforce:

Approx. 4700 (entire company)


• Oracle Database 10g


Clusters (RAC) 10.2

• Oracle Clusterware

SAPCTL/Control Utility

• Oracle Support

Key Benefits:

• More flexibility and

scalability in use of SAP

• Greater SAP stability / high

availability

• Enhanced performance

• Base for extensive experience

with new technologies

MTU Aero Engines

56

SGI and SAP on Oracle at MTU Aero Engines

After Oracle database tests had been success-fully completed on the SGI Altix 3450 servers,the SAP APO component was installed, testedand put into operation in parallel with theproduction system. The team then set up andtested the system’s high-availability functionsand provided access to the new IT infrastructurefor a limited number of users. In November2006, the full range of SAP APO functionswas made available. Today, around 150 MTUemployees use SAP APO on SGI Altix 450servers.

Impressive Results in the Test Phase

The ability of SGI computer technology tomaximize both the performance and availa-bility of even very large SAP on Oracledatabase was immediately evident to MTUin the test phases.“The SGI platforms had already proven to bethe best platforms for our technical IT applications,” said Diehl. “Even in extremelydata-intensive environments, they run fasterand are more stable than proprietary platforms– and they give us the flexibility we need tosatisfy the highly complex requirements ofour business areas. The combination of SAPand SGI solutions provided impressive resultsright from the start.”

Driving Significantly Faster Data Transfer

SGI Altix servers combine the company’shigh-performance NUMAflex® connectionwith a global shared memory architecturerunning on Intel® Itanium® processors andopen-source Linux operating systems.

NUMAflex is uniquely designed to sharesystem memory globally, across nodes. As aresult, data records do not have to be split intosmaller fragments for handling by individualprocessors. Instead, all processors in the systemenvironment have one uniformly addressablememory space where they can jointly handledata. This means that data can be transferredup to 200 times faster than in traditional clusters, so that even highly complexcalculation problems can be solved in recordtime.

Through its global shared memory approach,the SGI Altix platform provides applicationswith a high level of performance, scalabilityand availability, enabling access to complexdata records in real time and making recordseasy to manage and maintain. Globally accessible memory also allows companies toreduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)and maximize their Return on Investment(ROI).Costs can be reduced further by combiningSGI technology with the highly scalable Linux operating system. Using the open-sourceLinux platform, companies can consolidate theirexisting IT resources more effectively,implement new technologies more easily andadjust their IT strategies flexibly to addressshifting business requirements.

Successful Partnership for SAP on Oracle

database

Like MTU, an increasing number of SAP enterprise customers worldwide are opting forSGI servers to satisfy the growing need fordynamically extendable computing platforms.Both SGI and SAP share the goal of providingusers with easily upgradeable, powerful andhighly available technologies. The twocompanies provide complementary technologythat makes it possible for customers to respondto shifts in market requirements while workingmore profitably, faster and systematically.

“Altix servers provide

enterprise customers

with powerful com-

puters that ensure the

performance, high

availability and stability

of SAP on Oracle data-

base systems, while also

allowing for dynamic

expansion.”

– Norbert Diehl,

Head of IT Technology,MTU Aero Engines.

57

SGI and SAP are both committed to open-source technology, which can bring aboutsignificant savings in both direct and indirectIT costs compared to closed operatingsystems. SGI is a long time member of theSAP LinuxLab, where SAP collaborates withselected partners to provide enterprisecustomers with the best Linux performanceand functionality.

With SAP certification, SGI Altix enterprisecustomers can leverage the benefits of theLinux OS-based server line to operate even the most advanced SAP system landscapes.

“SGI is an important hardware partner inthe SAP LinuxLab,” said Helge Deller,development manager at the SAP LinuxLab. “Altix servers provide enterprise customerswith powerful computers that ensure the performance, high availability and stability ofSAP systems, while also allowing for dynamicexpansion.”

MTU Opts for Linux

MTU plans to further leverage the benefits of open-source technology in the future. As a result of the successful migration of itstechnical applications, the company nowintends to convert other business IT systemsto Linux OS-based hardware platforms,

migrating additional SAP components to SGIAltix servers.

“Our first major SAP migration project hasshown us that Linux is ready for deploymentin the Enterprise market,” said Dr. FriedemannOst, head of IT Services and Technology (FIS)at MTU. “SGI enables us to consolidate andintegrate our SAP processes along the entirevalue chain using a standard platform onLinux,” added Norbert Diehl. “This makes itpossible for us to provide high-performancesystems in the Enterprise environment and con-solidate know-how between engineering andenterprise areas. By doing so, we can boost thequality of our system landscape considerably.”

MTU Aero Engines

MTU Aero Engines, headquartered in Munich,Germany, develops, produces, sells and main-tains commercial and military aircraft engines –in all thrust and power categories – as well asstationary industrial gas turbines. MTU alsoplays a major role in the military domain. Asthe lead industrial partner to the Bundeswehr,the unified armed forces of Germany, the com-pany is responsible for nearly every type of air-craft engine operated by the German defenseforce. MTU is represented internationally by subsidiaries in all key regions and markets,with 6,700 employees worldwide. www.mtu.de

Linux OS-based

SAP-APO

Architecture

58

60

G L O B A L E N E R G Y L E A D E R P U M P S U P E R P F O R

R A P I D G R O W T H

Second-largest energy company in U.S. triples performance and capacity of SAP platform running on

Oracle database – while reducing administrative costs

“Our biggest challenge is to keep up with the growth of our ERP data and systems. We needed to

improve performance, but we also needed to consolidate servers so that we wouldn’t blow out

the walls of our data centre. The HP Integrity platform running HP-UX 11i allowed us to do both –

without any large migrations or downtime to the business.”

– P A U L B R O D Y ,

System Analyst, Chevron Corporation

Big oil – big databases

Chevron Corporation (www.chevron.com) isthe second-largest integrated energy companyin the United States and one of the largestcorporations in the world. Headquartered inSan Ramon, California, Chevron employs morethan 59,000 people and conducts business in180 countries.

The rapidly growing energy leader, withglobal operations encompassing every sectorof the oil and natural gas industry, generatesvast amounts of data – both “up-stream” inChevron’s exploration and productionoperations and “downstream” in its refining,marketing and transportation operations.

“The oil industry is an IT-intensive endeavour”,says systems analyst Paul Brody of Chevron.Integrating all information throughout theChevron enterprise is a global ERP systembased on SAP R/3, several multiterabyteOracle databases, and a four-terabyte businesswarehouse. Backed by proactive support fromHP Services, the resilient infrastructuremaintains 99.999 percent availability andprovides thousands of users with instant,24x7 access to business-critical information.

Growing by terabytes

Global expansion and rapid business growthat Chevron – including mergers and acqui-sitions – have also meant rapid growth inapplications and users aswell as ever-largerstreams of data to analyse and manage, fromsources as varied as automated well monitors,seismic analyses and point-of-sale gas stationsystems.

“Each of our Oracle repositories is growing bymore than a terabyte a year”, says Brody, wholed efforts to scale up the ERP infrastructureto handle this growth – and to prepare forfuture growth.

Chevron wanted to achieve greater performanceand capacity in the least disruptive, most cost-effective way possible.

Industry:

Oil and Gasdd

Objective:

Keep pace with rapid global

expansion and mergers and

acquisitions by implementing

a more adaptable and cost-

effective ERPinfrastructure

Approach:

Consolidate 50 SAP instances

in multiple locations into one

data centre using HP Integrity

servers and the HP-UX 11i v2

platform on Oracle DB

IT improvements:

• New servers triple perform

ance and capacity of ERP

infrastructure

• New footprint takes 2/3 less

space

• Consistent 99.999% availability

exceeds SLAs

Business benefits:

• Faster applications and access

to business intelligence

improve productivity and

decisionmaking

• More scaleable yet stream-

lined platform supports

business growth and eases

integration of data from

mergers and acquisitions

• Server consolidation cuts

administrative, operating, and

floor-space costs, shifting

people and resources to more

strategic initiatives

Chevron Corporation

SAP on Oracle database and HP at Chevron

Consolidating global SAP instance

Working with HP, Chevron consolidated itsglobal ERP operations on HP Integrity serversrunning the HP-UX 11i v2 operating system.

“Integrity servers have allowed us to consolidatesystems physically hosted all around the worldinto a single data centre and common plat-form”, says Brody. The new platform hostsmulti-terabyte Oracle databases and more than50 SAP instances for ERP, as well as coreChevron functions such as finance, HR, deve-lopment and quality assurance.

Employing HP Mission Critical and ProactiveServices, the Chevron IT team consistentlyachieves five nines availability with the ERPinfrastructure.

Performance triples

“The Integrity platform immediately tripledperformance”, says Brody. “Jobs that used totake three hours run in one hour, sometimeseven less.”

The ability to find, share and use businessintelligence faster enables Chevron employeesworldwide to do more with their talents, theirtime, and the company’s assets. For example,accounting groups routinely worked until2:00 a.m. to complete the company’s monthlyfinancials. Now they close the books easily,within regular working hours, month aftermonth.

“It’s not just the speed of the processors that’simportant, but the whole package that HPdelivers with it, including fast bus and I / Ospeeds and low memory latency”, notes SteveWilson, Chevron’s technical architect for theERP project. “We’re running big databasesthat need big I /O pipes and fast buses. Oracleruns much faster on Integrity servers.

And HP continues to deliver even higherperformance and lower latency to memory”,Wilson continues. “Its Integrity servers withDual-Core Intel® Itanium® 2 processors willfit into our high end as our warehouse expandsto five terabytes.

Doing more – without spending more

Consolidating the number of servers and simplifying the platform have also madeadministering systems easier and less expensive.

“We’ve improved performance to the end users,improved reliability, supported a numberof additional systems, and at the same timenot really increased our costs”, says Brody.“We’ve been able to keep our support teamroughly the same in terms of numbers andcapital outlay.”

And, adds Wilson, ”Because the new Integrityservers fit in one-third of the footprint of theolder systems, it enables us to do more withour existing space.”

Bottom-line, says Brody, “We haven’t had toask the corporation for more money to runthis new IT infrastructure.”

“HP has been a great

partner over the years.

We have a close relation-

ship with HP Services.

We meet together monthly

to review changes in our

environment.”

– Steve Wilson,

Technical Architect,Chevron Corporation.

61

Moving to Integrity systems in two hours

The Chevron IT team worked with HP andSAP engineers to transfer their global ERPenvironment from PA-RISC–based HP 9000servers to the 64-bit HP Integrity platform.

Because HP delivers data compatibility and acommon release of the HP-UX 11i UNIX®

operating environment on both HP 9000 andIntegrity platforms, the transfer to Integrityservers required no data migration.

“The process took two hours during aweekend”, says Brody, “with no downtime tothe business.”

“We didn’t have to export any data or rewritecode”, continues Brody. “And the transitionwas transparent to users. All they noticed wasthe threefold gain in processing speed.”

Five nines availability

While improving the performance and manageability of its ERP applications anddata, Chevron had to ensure the security andavailability of these business-critical resources.

“These are large and critical assets”, says Brody.“They integrate information throughout ourentire enterprise. They can’t be down.”

The Chevron IT team leverages the built-inreliability and efficiencies of the HP-UX 11i v2environment and employs HP OpenViewmanagement software and HP Mission Criticaland Proactive Services to consistently achieveSLAs for 99.999 percent availability.

“We have a close relationship with HP Ser-vices”, says Wilson.”We meet together monthlyto review changes in our environment.

HP continues to enhance the HP-UX 11ioperating system with tools that automatesecurity and system management. For example,we use the IP filter feature of HP-UX quitea bit to restrict port numbers and the IPaddresses that can connect to our servers.”

“We’ve built our monitoring infrastructurearound HP OpenView management software”,Wilson continues. “It alerts our SAP systemadministrators if any component is not con-figured properly or functions outside our prescribed metrics. OpenView has alerted usmany, many times to problems that can thenbe addressed before end users are impacted.”

Wilson adds that HP has also incorporatedsome of Chevron’s own scripts and processesinto the HP OpenView system.

A HP-UX 11i v2 and HP Integrity serverplatform enables Chevron’s global ERPinfrastructure to keep pace cost-effectivelywith rapid growth in data and operations.

Primary application

• Enterprise resource planning

Primary hardware

• HP Integrity rx4640 Servers

Primary software

• HP-UX 11i v2 operating system

• HP OpenView v7.1 management

solutions

• HP OpenView Storage Area Manager

• SAP R/3

• Oracle database versions 9.2.0.5,9.2.0.7 and 10.2.0.2

Services

• HP Business Infrastructure Support

• HP Mission Critical and Proactive Services

62

SAP on Oracle database and HP at Chevron

Productive collaboration

Chevron’s IT team works closely with HP tounderstand and influence the direction of“what’s next.” The company participated inbeta-testing Oracle and SAP software onIntegrity servers, and Chevron collaborateswith HP engineers and HP Services consultantson innovations to increase the productivity ofIT resources – including people, processes andtechnologies.

“A decade ago, we started with the biggestservers HP made”, says Wilson. “Now we runsmaller Integrity systems powerful enough tosupport hundreds of users. HP products andservices have continued to stay ahead of ourrequirements – including our cost targets.”

Virtual SAP partitions

Wilson also likes the way HP-UX 11i-basedIntegrity servers come in a range of sizes tohandle changing needs. “We can’t always predict IT needs”, he notes. “Suddenly youacquire another company and you have to putall that data into a business warehouse.”

“Each Integrity server is a modular environ-ment that we can configure in myriad ways”,Wilson continues.

“Memory, disk drives and CPUs are all quicklyswappable among systems.” HP-UX 11i v2virtualisation capabilities, he adds, “will enableus to cost-effectively maintain dedicated en-vironments for multiple SAP applications – allon one server.”

Fuelling growth

“It’s critical to Chevron that we efficiently andeffectively scale up IT to meet the emergingneeds of our businesses”, says Brody. “Workingwith HP and its Integrity servers, we’veachieved that – and stayed cost-competitive.”

“We run multiple SAP instances and Oracledatabases on a single server using just 50percent of capacity”, says Wilson, “so we haveplenty of room for growth.”

Moving forward, he adds, ”The Integrityarchitecture scales far beyond the reach of any64-bit x86-based platform.”

Chevron has transformed its ERP environmentinto a business asset which is as dynamic as itsoperations. The adaptable infrastructure cansmoothly and cost-effectively keep pace withever-larger streams of data.

“As we look to the future, we see an enormousamount of growth still coming”, concludesBrody. “We believe that the Integrity platformand the other investments that HP is makingare going to help us scale out for the futureand provide the reliability and performancewe need, while keeping our costs manageable.”

63

64 All4it Group

I T S T R A T E G Y A N D T R A N S F O R M A T I O N : A L L 4 I T ' S

S T R A T E G I C I T E F F E C T I V E N E S S P R O F E S S I O N A L S

H E L P O R G A N I Z A T I O N S O P T I M I Z E I N V E S T M E N T S ,

T R A N S F O R M C A P A B I L I T I E S A N D A C H I E V E

G R E A T E R B U S I N E S S V A L U E F R O M I T .

Founded in 1997, All4it was surrounded bysenior consultants to issue an advisory servicefor high value-added technology around theOracle database for SAP: Consulting,technology and outsourcing.

Through large projects at the enterprise level,All4it now offers a range of vertical services,from physical infrastructure, to the businessborders of the information systems.

In particular, All4it has managed to distinguishthis market that supports projects involvingvery large databases and infrastructure SAPand respecting the strength core business ofits customers. Specifically, All4it led manysuccessful ECC/Oracle database migrationsand major implementations of new Oracle features (RAC, partitioning, charset migration,environment split/merge, key index com-pression, Flashback, Data Guard, and now,Database Vault) in compliance with the rulesof SAP ERP and BI support.

The partnership between Oracle database &SAP and All4it is historic. First, from the origin of its employees and then thanks to the permanent will to better meet itscustomers utilizing the technologies offeredby Oracle. Recently Decathlon, leader indistribution of sports items, was wining bythe acquisition of SAP Award from theinnovation 2007, thanks to migration ECC5.0

conducted jointly with All4it. Today, as partof strategy partners, Oracle chose All4it forits ability to manage end-to-end projects.

From a practical point of view, All4it investedin programs Oracle for SAP Organization:Global Technology Center, RAC Beta testingprogram, to be perpetually aware of bestpractices.

Last fall in Paris at the event Fujitsu-Siemensto the “Palais des Congrès” (FSC-Future IT),All4it was implementing a platform RAC-10g/SAP-ECC6 to demonstrate the capabilities ofsolution FlexFrame for SAP Solution.

In summary, the success of All4it builds onthe following key drivers:

- Understanding of the issues customersupstream phase of study and design

- Project monitoring and control - Proposals of the best technologies, federation,

implementation, skills transfer

- Integration of technologies offered bymanufacturers like IBM, HP and others

and finally propose optimizations inoutsourcing of the operation to free upbudgets ...

Industry:

Consulting & outsourcing

Locations:

• Luxembourg

• Belgium

• France

Annual Revenue:

12,5 M€

Employees:

135

For additional information

regarding All4it, please visit

our website at www.All4it.com,

or contact Olivier Lambert at

+33 6 08 73 09 92

All4it Group

All4it focuses his offer on a SAP ERP on Oracle database delivery solutions

65Delta Consult ing

Delta

For additional

information regarding

Delta Consulting,

please visit our website

at www.go-delta.com

or contact:

Jack Tomb, Partner at

610-558-1730.

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 deep rooted

belief that the successful implementation of an SAP solution involves much more than

installing software – it requires the integration of people, processes and technology.

Our extensive SAP expertise and multi-disciplinary business backgrounds makes Delta

consultants uniquely qualified to effectively deliver a broad range of SAP solutions.

D E L T A C O N S U L T I N G

As a certified SAP Services Partner for over 10 years and a member of the Oracle PreferredPartner Program (OPP), Delta Consulting ispleased to announce its selection by Oracle to extend its agreement to provide support services for Oracle Real Application Clusters(RAC). Using SAP with Oracle RAC offersa unique solution for SAP customers alreadyrunning Oracle by providing them with a totalsolution that provides high availability andscalability. Our team includes highly skilledand experienced Oracle DBA’s who are trainedand certified in SAP basis administration.

Oracle 10g RAC is the highly scalable andreliable database cluster for mission criticalSAP solutions. Our commitment and focus on this technology enables Delta Consultingto bring the best practices for migrating anexisting SAP R/3 4.6D installation from asingle instance Oracle database to a multipleinstance Oracle RAC cluster database confi-guration.

Services to be provided by Delta Consultinginclude:

• RAC Implementations• Database Migrations• Tuning and Performance Optimization• Backup/Recovery and Hot Standby Solutions

Over two-thirds of all mid-sitze to high-endSAP customers run their applications on Oracle.With SAP’s endorsement and certification ofOracle 10g RAC, the motivation to implementRAC include:

• Higher Availability– New Requirements– Maintenance window negotiation– More and more work places rely on

SAP ERP

• More Flexibility– Dynamical growth by adding servers– Better reuse of equipment

• Cost Savings– Buy cheaper servers (scale out)– Reduce maintenance costs

Want to increase the ROI on your existingSAP system? Working with Delta Consulting,we can help you explore areas where you canleverage industry best practices and make current processing even more efficient. Weoffer a wide array to help you take advantageof your SAP investment.

Delta Consulting, Inc.5 Christy Drive, Suite 109Chadds Ford, PA 19317Toll Free: 1-888-461-5553Phone: 1-650-558-1730E-mail: [email protected]: www.go-delta.com

66

I O U G S A P S P E C I A L I N T E R E S T G R O U P ( S A P S I G )

Join us at Collaborate 2009

in Orlando Florida, May 3 – 7.

The Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) sponsors Special Interest Groups (SIGs) thatare designed to assist members with specificOracle products and products that are tightlyintegrated with the Oracle products they use.The goal of the IOUG SIGs is to offer technicalinformation and peer-to-peer collaboration inorder to facilitate the effective implementationof products.

The SAP SIG provides a forum for open discus-sion and education on Oracle technologyrelated issues associated with SAP running onan Oracle database.

During the 1998 IOUG conference a groupof about 40 attendees started as a roundtableto surface issues and solutions to commonproblems. The group has grown every year sinceand officially became an IOUG SIG in 1999.

IOUG SAP SIG Mission

The mission of the SAP SIG is to provide aforum for open discussion, education andnetworking to meet the challenges ofimplementing, and maintaining Oracledatabases with SAP Applications. The SAPSIG facilitates raising issues and providingenhancement suggestions to both SAP AGand Oracle development teams.

The benefits of SAP SIG membership inclu-de; offering open forums for discussion andnetworking opportunities among members,education sessions at Collaborate, periodicconference calls and web conferences with guestspeakers covering a range of technical topics.

SAP SIG Events

The main events for the SAP SIG are held atthe yearly Collaborate Conference. Each yearthere is a business meeting, networking recep-tion, SAP/Oracle Development Update, andPanel Discussion with participation from bothSAP and Oracle. Also lunch time meetingsoffer informal discussions and formal technicalsessions on various SAP/Oracle issues.

The SAP SIG also sponsors quarterly techno-logy forums. The forums are one hour dial-incalls or Web Casts, each forum focuses on aspecific topic of interest to the SIG. This is agreat opportunity to stay in touch with theOracle and SAP technical communities.

Web Site

The SAP SIG web site can be accessed fromthe IOUG web site at: http://www.ioug.org/Click the Special Interest Groups Tab, thenfollowed by SAP SIG in the drop down lists.Or use the following link:http://www.ioug.org/networking/sap/sap.cfm

Membership

Membership in the SAP SIG comes with yourIOUG membership.See details at: http://www.ioug.org/Join IOUG:http://www.ioug.org/about/join.cfm

For more information please contact:Thomas Stickler, IOUG SAP SIG LiaisonOracle [email protected]

IOU

GIOUG – SAP Special Interest Group (SAP SIG)

67

Oracle is one of the most significant, DB plat-forms available for SAP systems – so why hasn’tsomeone written a book on how to configurethe interaction? Well, here it is: With thisin-depth reference book, administrators getmuch needed background knowledge, as wellas complete details on architectural andsoftware/logistics issues, in addition to step-by-step instructions for all of the mostimportant administration tasks. Every aspectof system landscape planning and mainten-ance is covered, helping administrators honetheir problem solving skills. Bonus chaptersdeal with Java, SAP NetWeaver BI, and thehighly complex issues of Backup, Recovery,and Restoration.

What this book covers:

- Interaction of SAP and Oracle database

- Planning and expanding the system

landscape

- System life-cycle: Installation, system

maintenance, upgrades

- Performance: Analysis of hardware,

operating system, database, SAP system,

SQL instructions and much more

- Backup, recovery and restore: Data backup

methods, BR*Tools, Oracle Recovery

Manager, backup strategies

- Oracle and SAP NetWeaver BI

Press comments:

IT & Production:The publication on the interaction of SAP andOracle DBMS (Database Management System)provides administrators with basic knowledgeabout the SAP system and database, looks atarchitecture and software logistics issues andexplains administration tasks in SAP lands-capes. It combines background knowledgewith practical guidance, helping the readerto address specific administration problems.For example, it contains advice on improvingthe performance of the system operation andimproving availability and data security.The book is equally suitable for administratorswho want to upgrade a legacy SAP installationand Oracle experts who wish to use theirknow-how in conjunction with SAP.

S A P D A T A B A S E A D M I N I S T R A T I O N W I T H O R A C L E

A n d r é F a u s t m a n n , M i c h a e l H ö d i n g , G u n n a r K l e i n ,

R o n n y Z i m m e r m a n n

SAP Press – SAP Database Administrat ion with Oracle

SAP PRESS

818 p., 2008,

bound, with reference card

€89.95,

ISBN 978-1-59229-120-5

Immediate deliveryavailable

• Provides guidance on

administration and back-

ground knowledge

• Helpful advice for planning

the system landscape,

performance optimization

and monitoring

• Includes chapters devoted

to backup, recovery and

restore, Java and SAP

NetWeaver BI

68

O R A C L E A D V A N C E D C U S T O M E R S E R V I C E S F O R S A P

Database Services for SAP Environments

Oracle database and SAP

More than two thirds of all mid-size to high-endSAP customers entrust their data to the Oracledatabase. Almost two million registered users– in nearly ten thousand locations have cometo expect the best technology and performancethat the Oracle database brings to the SAPenvironment. This outstanding performancelevel is a direct result of years of intensivepartnership between SAP and Oracle database.

However, the SAP and Oracle database co-operation does not end with the databasetechnology integration. Customer support andsatisfaction are tangible day-to-day benefitsof the ongoing partnership.

This extraordinary level of customer support isthe result of SAP’s requirement for permanenton-site Oracle Support staff. This group staffsthe Development Level Support queue andprovides immediate assistance for a wide rangeof activities and issues from semi-critical tocritical priority 1 “production down” situations.The SAP Support and Services group at Oraclewas created to coordinate and staff this SAP-focused customer support team. We are a world-wide services group, with locations in Walldorf(Germany), Palo Alto (US), and Tokyo (Japan),providing assistance for all aspects of SAP opera-tions. More specifically, our mandate coverstasks ranging from management of increasingdata volumes, performance optimization, setupof high availability solutions, to data exchangebetween the SAP system and other Oracle data-bases over a secure interface.

In addition to our integrated support withSAP, many customers choose to engage OracleSupport directly to help achieve even greaterperformance and ROI from their SAP-Oracle

configured environment. These services are available through Oracle’s Advanced CustomerServices (ACS) organization. Advanced Custo-mer Services experts deliver personalizedservices directly to customers worldwide tomaximize performance and increase produc-tivity for all Oracle systems. Recently, OracleAdvanced Customer Services formalized aportfolio of personalized services for customersusing the Oracle database in SAP environ-ments.

“SAP works in partnership with Oracle toprovide quality system support. Many of ourjoint customers however, require even higherlevels of support for their database environ-ments to leverage maximum Oracle capabili-ties. Our annualized services take supportto the next level”, explains Larry Abramson,senior vice president, Oracle AdvancedCustomer Services.

The services provide for three levels of annua-lized operational support, custom scopedengagements and onsite Technical Skill Work-shops. All Advanced Customer ServicesDatabase Services for SAP Environments aredelivered by Oracle support experts who areskilled in maximizing Oracle technologycontributions to overall system performance,stability and recoverability. Oracle AdvancedCustomer Services, in concert with SAP, lever-ages over 20 years of partnership experience indelivering SAP solutions operating with theOracle database.

Oracle with SAP Expert Guidance

Tailored to Your Business

Database Services for SAP Environmentsoffers three levels of annualized services or<<services that can be combined to meet yourspecific needs.

Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP 69

Advanced Support Assistance – facilitates andexpedites service requests through a singlepoint of contact, Your Service Delivery Manager(SDM) ensures that the right people and orga-nizations are aligned with meaningful actionplans resulting in more efficient and effectiveissue resolution.

Business Critical Assistance – combines servicerequest resolution with proactive advice andassistance tailored to your specific operationsand projects. Your SDM coordinates the effortsof a team of engineers who develop backgroundcapabilities on your company and your ITgoals, and then assist with ensuring a successfuloutcome for each of your projects.

Solution Support Center – offers our mostcomprehensive service, with a team of focusedengineers that are deeply aware of your environ-ment, operations and projects. This focusedteam of engineers is available to you througha direct access hotline to provide assistance forcritical Service Requests and a range of pro-active services including assessments and rootcause analysis.

Depending on the level chosen, Oracle Ad-vanced Customer Services offer the specializedexpertise of a Service Delivery Manager (SDM)who is familiar with SAP and support processesto serve as your Oracle support focal point.SDMs work with you to establish an annualsupport plan that includes the identificationof your key business requirements, alignmentof support processes, and documentation ofjoint contact information while incorporatingthe existing SAP support model features.

One role of your designated SDM is to expedite“high” or “very high” (SAP severity levels)problem resolution activities and escalations.SDMs also provide expert guidance whenService Requests have multiple related inci-dents, or show behavioral patterns that maybe the outcome of a common problem or issue,or when the standard escalation process on anindividual issue does not address your specificbusiness needs.

Your SDM draws on the expertise of an exten-ded team of support analysts and SAP environ-ment specialists. Because your SDM speaks thelocal language and understands your specificbusiness and IT context, he or she can applythat context to the escalation to ensure yourissues are resolved effectively. Whatever thecircumstance, your SDM is personally commit-ted to orchestrating a quick and appropriateresolution to your Service Requests.

The SDM also leads formal quarterly reviewsto assess performance against best practicestandards, discuss your business and technicalplans, anticipate and avoid escalations, andoffer insight on how to ensure that you arereceiving the most value from your Oraclerelationship.

SAP Aware Service Delivery

SAP customers using our Services plans benefitfrom faster access to Oracle through a directrelationship. Getting the most functionality,stability and availability from your Oracledatabase software requires both Oracle andOracle with SAP expertise, due to the compli-cated interoperability factors between SAPapplications and Oracle database software.

Advanced Customer Services help improveyour IT staff productivity by streamlining theprocess of interpreting Oracle and SAP infor-mation for patching and system configurationchanges. Customers can focus on the recom-mendations that align with their specificenvironments and versions. Not all Oraclefeatures are leveraged in standard SAP deploy-ments, so Oracle Advanced Customer Servicesstands ready to assist in enabling new featureswhile maintaining SAP Certified Configura-tions.

70

Oracle/SAP Oriented Workshops and

Engagements

To build your IT staff’s capabilities and confi-dence in optimizing the Oracle database in anSAP environment, our workshops are createdand delivered by specialists who know howSAP applications interact with Oracle Data-bases. Based on a long history of technicalpartnership with SAP, Oracle provides thefollowing Technical Skill Workshops:

- Fundamentals of Oracle database for SAPERP (Level I)

- Oracle Advanced Performance Tuning forSAP ERP (Level II)

- Oracle Expert for SAP (Level III)

- Oracle database 10g for SAP Environments

- Oracle database Administration for SAPBusiness Warehouse

- Oracle Real Application Clusters for SAP

- SAP ERP ABAP Tuning with Oracle data-base Platform

To further enhance the value, these TechnicalSkill Workshops can be modified and enhancedto help ensure alignment with your specificsituation and goals. Technical Skill Workshopsare specific to your company, are scheduledbased on availability, and may not be availablein all geographies.

Many customers find that additional experienceand expertise is necessary during upgrades,migrations, and other infrastructure changes.Oracle can establish a statement of work toprovide such assistance with varying degreesof Assisted Services involvement. AssistedServices are support advisory services for custo-mers who need customized assistance fromOracle’s SAP engineers. The concept is toprovide Oracle engineers that are skilled withthe SAP application system, tools, proceduresand most importantly the Oracle database withSAP. An Oracle engineer is assigned to the customer for a predetermined period of timeto deliver agreed upon support services for theefficient operation and management of Oraclesoftware operating in a SAP application envi-ronment.

Our most popular engagements include:

- Database Planning and Configuration

- Database Health Check

- Database Partitioning

- SAP ERP Administration Concepts

- Review and Proof of Concepts

- Hot Standby/Data Guard Implementation

- Backup/Restore/Recovery

- RAC Setup Assistance

- HW Migration “O2O”/Oracle AdvancedCustomer Services as Provider

- HW Migration Assistance “O2O” Packages- Oracle Advanced Customer Services as

Advise and Assist

- Database Migration Assistance “R3LOAD”

- Database Reorganizations

With Advanced Customer Services for SAPEnvironments, you enjoy a preferred relation-ship with Oracle subject-matter experts, ITprofessionals, and developers to maximize thevalue of your Oracle environment. Shownbelow are descriptions of several engagementtypes.

Database Planning and Configuration

of an SAP System

At the beginning of an SAP project, applicationdesign and implementation are the primaryfocus of most activities. This time is mostcritical for ensuring that the configurationand design of your database is configuredoptimally and flexible enough for meetingyour future needs. Improper or suboptimalconfiguration means increased effort in termsof operational efficiency and management.Customers are advised to engage the properresources during the initial stage of your SAPproject to help you prepare and configure thedatabase with current best practices and yourdesign goals in mind.

Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP 71

Database Healthcheck/Performance Analysis

Performance is one of the keys to success inthe introduction and operation of an SAPsystem for all SAP customers. Our speciallytrained staff, not only knows the Oracle data-base in detail, but is also trained in the intri-cacies of Oracle in a SAP environment. Thus,our staff is positioned to analyze any perfor-mance problem and to provide solutions. Thesesolutions could be, for example, in the areasof index design, parameter optimization, ABAPoptimization or adaptation of operating systemparameters. Our staff is also, of course, able todeal with specific features of individual SAPsolutions. Performance problems in SAP ERPor BI/BW systems appear in various forms andtherefore the approaches to solution-solvingwill vary.

High Availability/Backup Concepts

Unavailability of the SAP system leads to mas-sive problems for most customers (logisticallyand financially). In order to minimize the riskof unplanned downtime in a mission criticalenvironment, IT organizations must proactivelyplan for failover and recoverability. However,in this area there are very different approaches,all with advantages and disadvantages (hard-ware clusters, mirror technologies, standbydatabases, RAC, Data Guard...). Oracle ACScan advise on the optimal approach strategyfor your company and, of course, help duringimplementation of the chosen solution.

Oracle RAC Enablement for SAP

Oracle provides the “Real Application Clusters”(RAC) option. You can use this option todistribute the database instance on differentservers (nodes). This offers new possibilitiesin the area of high availability of an Oracledatabase system, and also provides greaterflexibility in the dimensioning of systemresources (scalability). Oracle provides profes-sional services to assist you with enablingRAC for your SAP environments. These servicesinclude workshops, planning, and implemen-tation of RAC software.

Database Migration Services for SAP

A great majority of all SAP ERP installationsrun on an Oracle database. The Oracle Ad-vanced Customer Services for SAP group iscertified by SAP for database migrations andcan assist companies who wish to migratetheir SAP Business Suite installation froma non-Oracle database to Oracle. One reasonthat our migration services are highly valuedby customers is the familiarity of the changefrom a DBA perspective. Oracle AdvancedCustomer Services can assist your staff in exe-cuting a migration plan while familiarizingthem with the new database operations.

Oracle to Oracle Database Migrations (O2O)

– Extremely Fast and Smooth Database

Migrations for SAP Systems, Heterogeneous

Database Migrations

Because standard tools require long transfertimes, many situations require more than 48hours, Oracle provides “O2O” migrationservices. Based on a set of services, proceduresand tools, Oracle ACS can help customersachieve a significantly faster process, typicallyat a speed of 100 to 150 GB per hour. Thismeans systems can now be migrated that couldnot be handled previously using standard tools.The service set is based on Oracle technologies,and support migrations of SAP ERP as well asBI/BW systems. Systems using this advancedmigration approach remain fully within SAPsupportability requirements.

Oracle Partitioning for SAP Customers

Oracle Partitioning is an option to Oracledatabase 10g Enterprise Edition. At a technicallevel, Oracle Partitioning allows tables andindexes within a database to be subdividedinto smaller pieces. Oracle can “partition” atable by ranges of values, so for example, thedata for Jan 1, 2009 through Jan 31, 2009can reside in its own partition. Oracle can alsopartition a table by a list of values, so thatNorth American data is in one partition, whilethe European data is in another partition.Partitioning is a critical feature for managinglarge databases.

11gD A T A B A S E

72

Growth is the basic challenge that partitioningaddresses for large databases, and Oracle Par-titioning enables a “divide and conquer” tech-nique for managing the large tables in thedatabase, especially as those tables grow.Although your database may have twice asmuch data next year as it does today, yourend-users are not going to tolerate their appli-cation running twice as slow, your database isnot going to be given twice as much time tocomplete maintenance and batch processing,and your IT managers are not going to doubleyour hardware budget.

Partitioning is the feature that allows a data-base to scale for very large datasets whilemaintaining consistent performance, withoutan unduly increased need for hardware resour-ces or administrative efforts. Oracle Partitioningis embedded into the core database engineand supported by Oracle’s administrative tools.From an SAP application perspective, partitio-ning is completely transparent: no changesneed to be made to the application or to theSQL statements in order to use partitioning.

Partitioning for SAP is supported since SAPRelease 4.6C (see SAP Note 742243) SAPKernel 6.20 Please contact us for more informa-tion and see further more the Success Story forPartitioning at Coop Switzerland underwww.oracle.com/sap.

Preparing for Oracle database 11g

SAP AG will skip Oracle database 11gRelease 1 and certify Oracle database 11gRelease 2, at least 12 months before Oracledatabase Release 10g goes into the extendedsupport cycle.

As Oracle and SAP refine and test integrationfor supportability of Oracle database 11g,Oracle Advanced Customer Services continuesservice delivery preparations for this upgradeactivity. Oracle Advanced Customer Servicescan assist your staff in preparing upgrade plansbetween Oracle database versions.Whether through our ongoing support andpartnership with SAP, or directly with yourIT organization, Oracle Advanced CustomerServices deliver personalized services withdeep familiarity with the intricacies of theSAP environment.

For further information please contact in:

Europe, Middle East and [email protected]

North [email protected]

Japan, Asia, [email protected]

Latin [email protected]

11gD A T A B A S E

Oracle Advanced Customer Services for SAP

73IS4IT – IT Consult ing

P E O P L E , K N O W L E D G E , P R O J E C T S , A N D I S 4 I T =

4 S U C C E S S F A C T O R S T O H E L P Y O U G E T A H E A D !

Contact:

Michael JilgArea ManagerIS4IT GmbHGruenwalder Weg 28b82041 Oberhaching/GermanyTel: +49 89 638 98 48 22e-mail: [email protected]

The main task of IS4IT, as a manufacturer-independent IT-consulting firm, is solving ourclients’ technical problems through theapplication of our IT-specialists’ expertise.

We provide IT services individually-tailored toyour specific requirements. With the help ofaround 85 consultants across Germany, weprovide a full range of services, from analysis,conception, and planning, to finalimplementation to the production process.

SAP Basis and SAP Infrastructure have success-fully been our main focus for many years.From the very beginning, our activities haveincluded solving problems of server- andstorage virtualization, as well as HA cluster.

In addition to handling such projects, we alsoprovide our customers with SAP technicalmaintenance in accordance with Service LevelAgreements.

Oracle Support and Services for SAP customers

http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/service.html

Oracle for SAP

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/orahttp://service.sap.com/dbaora-BC-DB-ORA-RAChttp://service/sap/com-PAM

74 Useful l inks Oracle database for SAP customers

Oracle Database Global Technology Center for SAP

http://www.oracle.com/sap

Customer Success Stories, SAP on Oracle

http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/archive.html

Events

http://www.oracle.com/newsletters/sap/events.html

Some OSS Notes Oracle and SAP

1021844 Extension of Oracle 9.2 maintenance until July 31, 2008105047+ 742243 + 722188 Partitioning and Oracle Functionality supported by SAP 156548 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel version 4.6x23875 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel version 3.1I^407314 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Web Application Server 6.x524816 Enqueue Service for RAC SAP-Enqueue-Service527843 Oracle RAC support in the SAP environment740897 Licensing581312 Licensing581320 FAQ Oracle RAC for SAP592393 FAQ Oracle1125923 + 966117 + 966073 Flashback Database598678 Oracle9i: New functions (composite SAP Note)669902 Oracle9i: Setting the national character set to UTF8 (This note is valid also for Oracle 10g)701235 Compressed Data Segments705608 SAP RAC specific monitors720886 Oracle database 10g: Integration into the SAP environment740897 Info about the Oracle license scope; required Oracle options819655 Add. info.: Upgrade to SAP NW 2004s ABAP ORACLE819829 Oracle database 10g: Instant Client 10.x on Unix819830 Oracle database 10g: Additional Information on upgrade:UNIX820062 Oracle database 10g: Patch sets/patches for 10.1.0828268 Oracle database 10g: New functions830576 Parameter recommendations for Oracle 10g830982 HW fine tuning for SAP on RAC environment836517 Oracle database 10g: Preparation for SAP-upgrade838725 Oracle database 10g: New database statistics841728 Oracle database 10g: Software installation wizzard 10.2.085838 Supported database and operating system releases for SAP Kernel versions 4.5x and 4.0x871096 Oracle database 10g: Patch sets/patches for 10.2.0885167 Add. info.: Upgrade to SAP NW 2004s Java ORACLE921594 Inst. SAP NetWeaver2004s SR1 - UNIX: Oracle925871 'Customer Care Support' for Oracle 9.2932722 Upgrade to Oracle 10.2 during a database copy940794 Releasing Oracle 10.2 versions for older SAP versions940811 Oracle database 10g: Migration from 32-bits to 64-bits973450 Advanced Security (Network Encryption)974876 Advanced Security (Transparent Data Encryption)998004 Update the Oracle Instant Client on Windows990955 Oracle Datamining Connector 2.1 for SAP1027012 Details about MOPatching1109743 Index Compression1086956 + 1058988 Instant Client142635 Installation of a backup library for Oracle968507 Considerable enhancements to backups using BR Tools 7.00964619 Oracle database 10g: Block change tracking1016173 Verifying database and archive log files using RMAN110153 Support for RMAN save sets for backups and hard disk148535 Database backup fails with RMAN-04005/ORA-01031170013 Differences between Brbackup with “All“ and “Full”620803 Oracle 9i /10g: Automatic segment space Management910389 FAQ: Oracle Segment Shrinking646681 Recognizing tables with BR SPACE355771 Migration to ASSM1043381 Performance problems with Indexes in ASSM table spaces896717 Performance problems.....983230 LOB corruption1037755 Performance problems....1124639 Long runtime for DSO1166242 enq: HW contention859841 Uninstall of Oracle Partitoning software option937492 FAQ: Oracle Flashback602843 Oracle_SID1033126 BR tools setup905359 Using BR Tools562403 FAQ: Oracle Net830578 Oracle database 10g: Linux environment variable

76

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R/3 and all other SAP product and service names mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of

SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. This document

is provided for information purposes only, and the contents here of are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be

error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and con-

ditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document, and no contractual

obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its

affiliates. This document is provided for informational purpose only and the information herein is subject to change without notice. Please report

any errors herein to Oracle ([email protected]). Oracle Corporation does not provide any warranties covering and specifically disclaims

any liability in connection with this document. Copyright © 2009 Oracle. All Rights Reserved. Published in the U.S.A.

Oracle Corporation

World Headquarters

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U.S.A.

Published byOracle Corporation,Oracle Database for SAPGlobal Technology Center

Albrecht [email protected]

Altrottstr. 3169190 Walldorf, GermanyTel. ++49 (0) 6227-8398 -0Fax ++49 (0) 6227-8398 -199E-mail:[email protected]

Internet:http://www.oracle.com/saphttp://www.sap.com/partner/index.htm

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