This document provides guidance on designing and configuring SAP applications on the Nutanix enterprise cloud platform. It discusses platform selection, storage container configuration, sizing working set size and hot tier capacity, hypervisor guidelines, and operating system guidelines. The document is intended to help architects, administrators, and engineers deploy Nutanix infrastructure for SAP workloads.

1. SAP on Nutanix
Nutanix Solution Note
Version 2.1 • April 2020 • SN-2039

2. SAP on Nutanix
Copyright | 2
Copyright
Copyright 2020 Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual
property laws.
Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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Contents
1. Executive Summary.................................................................................5
2. Introduction.............................................................................................. 6
2.1. Audience and Purpose.................................................................................................. 6
3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview...................................................... 7
3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture.......................................................................................8
4. SAP on Nutanix....................................................................................... 9
5. SAP HANA on Nutanix..........................................................................10
6. Sizing SAP on Nutanix..........................................................................11
7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix.............................................. 13
7.1. Platform Selection........................................................................................................13
7.2. Storage Container Configuration................................................................................. 13
7.3. Working Set Size and Hot Tier Capacity.....................................................................14
7.4. Hypervisor Guidelines..................................................................................................14
7.5. Operating System Guidelines...................................................................................... 15
7.6. SAP Application Layer Design.....................................................................................16
8. Conclusion..............................................................................................18
Appendix..........................................................................................................................19
References...........................................................................................................................19
About Nutanix......................................................................................................................19
List of Figures................................................................................................................ 20

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List of Tables.................................................................................................................. 21

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1. Executive Summary | 5
1. Executive Summary
The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud is a highly resilient, hyperconverged compute and storage platform
that brings the benefits of web-scale infrastructure to virtualized instances of SAP systems.
For business-critical transactional and analytical workloads, Nutanix delivers the performance,
scalability, and availability both end users and IT depend on—particularly Basis and database
administrators. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud offers:
• Localized I/O and flash for index and key database files, enabling low-latency operations.
• Infrastructure consolidation that lets you remove underutilized application silos and
consolidate multiple workloads onto a single, dense platform, using up to 80 percent less
space and significantly lowering capex.
• Nondisruptive upgrades and scalability, including one-click node addition with no system
downtime.
• Nutanix VM- and app-centric data protection and disaster recovery to automate backups.
• Consumer-grade simplicity for storage management, eliminating complicated configurations,
manual provisioning, and mapping with disks, RAID, and LUNs.
• Rapid one-click cloning of SAP VMs without the wasted storage capacity that copying
requires.
• One-click hypervisor conversion for lower TCO.

6. SAP on Nutanix
2. Introduction | 6
2. Introduction
2.1. Audience and Purpose
This solution note is part of the Nutanix Solutions Library. We wrote it for architects, Basis
administrators, database administrators, and system engineers responsible for designing,
managing, and supporting Nutanix infrastructures running SAP. Readers should already be
familiar with SAP Basis, database administration, and the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud.
This document includes:
• An overview of the Nutanix solution for delivering SAP on Nutanix AHV, VMware vSphere, and
Microsoft Hyper-V.
• The benefits of running SAP applications on Nutanix.
• Sizing guidance for scaling SAP deployments on Nutanix.
• Design and configuration considerations when architecting SAP on the Acropolis Distributed
Storage Fabric (DSF).
Table 1: Document Version History
Version
Number
Published Notes
1.0 April 2016 Original publication.
1.1 September 2017
Updated Platform Selection section and Nutanix
overview and added AHV support.
2.0 March 2019
Updated Nutanix overview and SAP technology
sections.
2.1 April 2020 Updated Nutanix overview.

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3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview | 7
3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview
Nutanix delivers a web-scale, hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for
virtualization and both containerized and cloud environments. This solution brings the scale,
resilience, and economic benefits of web-scale architecture to the enterprise through the Nutanix
enterprise cloud platform, which combines the core HCI product families—the Nutanix Acropolis
OS and Nutanix Prism management—along with other software products that automate, secure,
and back up cost-optimized infrastructure.
Available attributes of the Nutanix enterprise cloud OS stack include:
• Optimized for storage and compute resources.
• Machine learning to plan for and adapt to changing conditions automatically.
• Self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.
• API-based automation and rich analytics.
• Simplified one-click upgrade.
• Native file services for user and application data.
• Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Powerful and feature-rich virtualization.
• Flexible software-defined networking for visualization, automation, and security.
• Cloud automation and life cycle management.
Nutanix Acropolis provides data services and can be broken down into two main components:
the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) and AHV. Nutanix Prism furnishes one-click infrastructure
management for virtual environments running on Acropolis. Acropolis is hypervisor agnostic,
supporting two third-party hypervisors—VMware ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V—in addition to the
native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.

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3. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Overview | 8
Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS Stack
3.1. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture
Acropolis does not rely on traditional SAN or network-attached storage (NAS) or expensive
storage network interconnects. It combines highly dense storage and server compute (CPU
and RAM) into a single platform building block. Each building block delivers a unified, scale-out,
shared-nothing architecture with no single points of failure.
The Nutanix solution requires no SAN constructs, such as LUNs, RAID groups, or expensive
storage switches. All storage management is VM-centric, and I/O is optimized at the VM virtual
disk level. The software solution runs on nodes from a variety of manufacturers that are either
entirely solid-state storage with NVMe for optimal performance or a hybrid combination of SSD
and HDD storage that provides a combination of performance and additional capacity. The DSF
automatically tiers data across the cluster to different classes of storage devices using intelligent
data placement algorithms. For best performance, algorithms make sure the most frequently
used data is available in memory or in flash on the node local to the VM.
To learn more about Nutanix enterprise cloud software, visit the Nutanix Bible and Nutanix.com.

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4. SAP on Nutanix | 9
4. SAP on Nutanix
SAP was first certified to run on Nutanix in October 2015. In November 2016, we announced
our certification of the native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV, for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP
NetWeaver. In August 2018, AHV became the first hypervisor certified for production SAP HANA
on Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI).
At the heart of SAP solutions is the SAP ERP application, which is complemented by SAP
CRM, SAP SRM, SAP PLM, and SAP SCM, among other products. SAP now delivers this
comprehensive suite of modules in a simplified form called S/4. For traditional SAP systems, the
backend databases can be either SAP HANA, SAP Sybase ASE, Oracle DB, or MS SQL Server.
However, for SAP S/4, the backend database must be SAP HANA. From financial accounting
through manufacturing, logistics, sales, marketing, and human resources, SAP solutions manage
all the key mission-critical business processes that occur each day in companies around the
world.
Deploying and operating SAP applications in your environment is not a trivial task. The Nutanix
Enterprise Cloud provides the reliability, predictability, and performance that the SAP suite
demands, all with an efficient and elegant management interface.
The Nutanix platform offers SAP customers a range of benefits, including:
• Lower risk and cost on the first hyperconverged platform certified for SAP applications.
• A turnkey validated framework that dramatically reduces the time to deploy your SAP
applications.
• Mission-critical availability with a self-healing foundation and VM-centric data protection,
including support for the top enterprise backup solutions.
• Flexibility to choose from industry-leading SAP-supported hypervisors.
• Simplified operations, including application- and VM-level metrics alongside single-click
provisioning and upgrades.
• Reduced TCO from infrastructure right-sized for your SAP workload.

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5. SAP HANA on Nutanix | 10
5. SAP HANA on Nutanix
While general SAP workloads on Nutanix allow great flexibility in the options for hardware,
hypervisor, and guest platforms, the technical requirements for HANA, based on SAP’s
guidelines, are a little more specific.
There are two key requirements for running SAP HANA on Nutanix:
1. SAP HANA on Nutanix is only available with specific certified models of Lenovo and Dell
OEM hardware solutions. The hardware OEM is responsible for providing and supporting the
certified solution for the customer.
2. The only supported hypervisor for SAP HANA on the Nutanix platform is Nutanix AHV.
Please read the best practices and other relevant reference documents for SAP HANA on
Nutanix. See SAP note 2686722: SAP HANA Virtualized on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (SAP
account required).
The Nutanix platform for SAP HANA offers the following advantages:
• You can now manage all infrastructure and applications, including VMs running HANA
databases, from a single interface—Nutanix Prism.
• Simplified architecture for a true on-prem cloud landscape for your mission-critical
applications.
• The latest proven technology with a turnkey solution stack that is fully certified and supported
out of the box.
• Integrated support for the entire stack.
• Shorter time to deliver cloud services for mission-critical applications (including SAP HANA) to
the business.

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6. Sizing SAP on Nutanix | 11
6. Sizing SAP on Nutanix
Sizing and deploying SAP on Nutanix is simple by design and risk-free. Whether running Nutanix
AHV, VMware ESXi, or Microsoft Hyper-V, the Nutanix platform provides all the enterprise
features that customers expect in terms of scalability, performance, high availability, and
disaster recovery. The process for sizing an SAP environment on Nutanix is straightforward
and well established, and Nutanix sales teams are available to assist with selecting the optimal
infrastructure for customers’ current and future needs.
At a high level, sizing involves the following points:
• For new and existing SAP environments, follow standard application sizing guidance from
SAP (SAP account required).
• Perform compute sizing using the hardware’s SAPS (SAP Standard Application Benchmarks)
rating, which SAP publishes on its benchmarks page.
• Use best practice guidance from Nutanix, VMware, and Microsoft to size VM configurations.
• Follow SAP best practice documentation and SAP Notes for specific information about how
to size and configure the virtualized environment for the chosen hypervisor (Nutanix AHV,
VMware ESXi, or Microsoft Hyper-V).
• Design Nutanix clusters based on high availability and database licensing requirements.
• Observe the design and configuration recommendations general to the DSF while also
accounting for SAP workload characteristics such as capacity, performance, and redundancy
requirements.
• Do not overcommit CPU for production environments.
• Do not overcommit RAM for any environments.
• Consider your workload. Transactional systems rely on low response times, while analytical
systems emphasize I/O throughput. When designing around these dependencies, do not
ignore network design architecture.
• Read Nutanix best practice guides and reference architectures for assistance with correct
sizing for the underlying database technology used to host the SAP database.
For SAP HANA, sizing involves additional considerations:
• Always deploy SAP HANA on certified OEM hardware. Refer to SAP’s HCI certification
matrix for approved solutions. Contact the manufacturer for certified hardware and certified
installation partners for your HANA systems. This step is critical to ensure proper support.

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6. Sizing SAP on Nutanix | 12
• Observe the CPU socket, RAM ratio, and production VMs per host limitations as per SAP note
2686722.
• The CPU socket assigned to the Nutanix CVM cannot be used for any HANA production
workloads. However, other workloads on that socket are fine, if enough resources are
available.

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7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix | 13
7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix
In the following section, we offer guidance for important design decisions, including selecting the
right nodes for your SAP workloads, configuring containers, establishing working set size and
hot tier capacity, and configuring hypervisors. We also include a list of other validated sources
of information that can help you ensure optimal configuration and implementation. Beyond these
high-level recommendations, customer-specific requirements are decisive when deploying
SAP on Nutanix in your enterprise. Nutanix Consulting Services can help you incorporate these
specifics into your design and provide suggestions on how to reduce complexity and risk, as well
as how to migrate your existing workloads from physical or virtual systems to Nutanix.
7.1. Platform Selection
Nutanix has certified and provides support for running SAP workloads on all Nutanix platform
types. However, some node types are better suited for the server types or VMs that constitute an
SAP implementation.
For SAP application servers, hybrid NX-3000 and NX-8000 series are both good choices,
depending on SAP requirements and sizing. These series also work well for small- and medium-
sized database servers. For large database servers, we recommend using NX-8000 because
of its enhanced cold-tier performance and overall optimization for database workloads. Nutanix
offers all-flash (SSD) options in both platforms for databases that require very high performance
and consistent latency across very large active datasets. You can also configure mixed all-
flash and hybrid clusters to efficiently run application servers alongside databases with high
performance demands.
For SAP HANA, please work with certified OEM partners to procure the right servers and
services for installation and support.
The Nutanix sales team is available to assist you in designing a Nutanix cluster to ensure that
it aligns with your requirements. SAP specialists in Nutanix Solutions Engineering can help you
with the sizing process as well.
7.2. Storage Container Configuration
There are several data reduction and efficiency technologies available in the Nutanix Enterprise
Cloud. In general, however, we recommend using inline compression (delay=0) for all SAP
workloads. Extensive industry testing has shown that compression yields significant benefits in
database environments, including those supporting SAP applications.

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7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix | 14
7.3. Working Set Size and Hot Tier Capacity
A working set refers to the amount of data that a process or workflow uses in a given time period.
Think of it as commonly accessed (hot) data in your overall persistent storage capacity. The
concept of the working set implies that some data is being used actively while the remainder is at
rest. Understanding how working sets and the hot tier function is important because the DSF is a
highly cache-driven storage subsystem.
To achieve optimal system performance in a Nutanix environment, size the SSD tier to hold the
application working sets. To estimate the size of a database server working (active data) set,
one rule of thumb is to multiply the peak monthly growth of the database by three. The result is a
useful data point that has worked well in the field for existing customers. However, this estimate
may not work for all SAP deployments, as certain SAP systems have far more read-heavy or
write-heavy requirements based on the nature of the business the system supports.
We highly recommend contacting Nutanix Solutions and Services experts at sap@nutanix.com
for a detailed assessment and sizing exercise. In addition to providing helpful sizing guidance,
Nutanix Services can reduce your SAP solution’s overall deployment and operations complexity.
SAP also provides useful information for calculating working set size through a program called
the SAP EarlyWatch Alert.
7.4. Hypervisor Guidelines
Nutanix, VMware, and Microsoft support and have certified Nutanix for AHV, ESXi, and Hyper-V,
respectively. Keep in mind, though, that SAP does not support running SAP on Windows guest
OS on Nutanix AHV and Linux guests on Microsoft Hyper-V (SAP Note 1122387).
For SAP HANA, the only certified hypervisor for Nutanix is AHV.
SAP has released hypervisor-specific configuration guidance in support of virtualized SAP
systems. Consider their recommendations carefully to avoid operational issues. The following
SAP Notes refer to particular hypervisor configurations and operating systems. These notes
are available on SAP’s support portal home page, but you must have a valid SAP Service
Marketplace (SMP) account to access the content.
Nutanix AHV
Please refer to the following SAP Notes when deploying SAP applications on Nutanix AHV:
• Note 2428012: SAP on Nutanix
• Note 2686722: SAP HANA Virtualized on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor
• Note 2656072: Steps Required to Run Virtualized SAP Applications on Nutanix AHV

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7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix | 15
VMware ESXi
Please refer to the following SAP Notes when deploying SAP applications on VMware ESXi:
• Note 1492000: General Support Statement for Virtual Environments
• Note 2161991: VMware vSphere Configuration Guidelines
• Note 1501701: Single Computing Unit Performance and Sizing
• Note 1482272: Key Monitoring Metrics for SAP on VMware vSphere (up to version 5.5 u2)
• Note 2266266: Key Monitoring Metrics for SAP on VMware vSphere (version 5.5 u3 and
higher)
• Note 1173954: Support of Oracle for VMware (see also VMware’s white paper on Oracle
certification, support, and licensing)
Microsoft Hyper-V
Please refer to the following SAP Notes when deploying SAP applications on Microsoft Hyper-V:
• Note 1492000: General Support Statement for Virtual Environments
• Note 1246467: Hyper-V Configuration Guideline
• Note 1570141: Key Monitoring Metrics for SAP on Hyper-V
• Note 1329848: Oracle Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
7.5. Operating System Guidelines
Linux
• Note 1122387: Linux: SAP Support in Virtualized Environments
• Note 171356: SAP Software on Linux: General Information
• Note 540787: CPU Affinity and CPU Priority under Linux
• Note 989963: Linux: VMware Timing Problem
• Note 1552925: Linux: High Availability Cluster Solutions
• Note 1681501: Configure an SAP JVM to Use Large Pages on Linux
• Note 724140: Extended Memory, Release for Operating System
• Note 1102124: SAPOSCOL on Linux: Enhanced Function

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7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix | 16
Windows
• Note 1409608: Virtualization on Windows
• Note 1409604: Virtualization on Windows: Enhanced Monitoring
• Note 1612283: Hardware Configuration Standards and Guidance
• Note 1374671: High Availability in Virtual Environment on Windows
• Note 1678705: Installation Scenarios for a Standalone ASCS Instance
• Note 1580509: Windows Editions Supported by SAP
7.6. SAP Application Layer Design
This section provides configuration recommendations for a selection of example cases.
Two-Tier vs. Three-Tier SAP Implementations
Nutanix recommends a three-tier SAP architecture over a two-tier if possible for several reasons,
including operational efficiency, security, resiliency, and the ability to easily scale on demand, as
enterprise cloud applications should.
Three-tier implementations allow you to take full advantage of virtualizing an SAP landscape.
Administrators can deploy separate application servers as needed with little manual effort,
and SAP load balancing mechanisms efficiently distribute the user load across the application
servers. Because application servers and database servers have completely different resource
consumption patterns, deploying them separately improves operations.
Three-tier implementations make it easier to monitor resource utilization, as they eliminate
guesswork during resource contention. Two-tiers may appear easier to deploy, but they can be
much harder to operate and tune later.
Three-tier implementations also enable better security because of their isolated access patterns.
Users only access the application servers, and only application servers and administrators have
access to the database servers.
Finally, three-tier implementations let administrators move database or application VMs to faster
hardware without any downtime using live migration, and administrators can manage these VMs
independently. This approach helps create a more resilient design.
Sprawling Application Server Instances
Nutanix recommends using smaller application servers with lower vCPU counts to avoid the
following disadvantages:
• Larger instances mean more work processes per instance. This configuration results in work
process context switching, which results in higher overheads.

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7. Design and Configure SAP for Nutanix | 17
• Bottlenecks may occur on shared resources within one instance, including in the dispatcher,
the gateway, network connections, and buffers.
• Problems occurring within an instance may affect a greater number of sessions.
• Poorer handling during monitoring and error analysis—for example, larger instances require
more time to analyze user traces and performance statistics.
• Operating systems can have problems handling the larger number of requests, especially
around the number of connections and file handlers, which can cause performance issues.
As an example, we recommend using four VMs as four app servers with 4 vCPU each, rather
than one app server with 16 vCPUs. The latter ultimately uses the same resources but splitting it
up delivers better performance and resilience.
For detailed information on using smaller and more agile application server or dialog instance
VMs, see SAP Note 9942. This approach results in faster and more efficient performance for the
overall SAP system.
NUMA Configuration Considerations
NUMA (nonuniform memory access) is a design method that allows microprocessors in a
multiprocessing system to share memory locally, improving performance and scalability. Local
memory access times on NUMA-based systems are many times faster than remote because the
memory controller is directly connected to one processor.
The number of vSockets configured and available directly impacts the likelihood that access
occurs locally rather than remotely (fewer vSockets means higher likelihood of local access).
Keep in mind that because ESXi and Hyper-V can provide NUMA-aware scheduling, VM
configurations affect OS behavior.
When configuring SAP VMs, see SAP Note 1612283, which recommends sizing SAP VMs within
a NUMA node boundary, if possible.

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8. Conclusion | 18
8. Conclusion
Nutanix is breaking new ground in simplifying the datacenter, helping customers build a
flexible and easy-to-consume enterprise cloud built on high-performance hyperconverged
infrastructure. With SAP on Nutanix, you get storage performance, CPU, and memory resources
that scale linearly. You also get rapid application deployment and seamless operation through
an intuitive user interface for end-to-end administration and monitoring, especially around
storage requirements. Run SAP alongside your other mission-critical applications for predictable,
consistent, and reliable performance, all with the assurance that your data is backed up by best-
in-class disaster recovery technology. With the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, you get all the benefits
of virtualization without the costly complexity of classic SAN or NAS implementations.

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Appendix | 19
Appendix
References
SAP
• SAP on VMware Best Practices Guide
• SAP on VMware Sizing and Design Example
• SAP on Nutanix Solution Brief
Databases
• SAP HANA on Nutanix Best Practices Guide
• Oracle Databases on Nutanix Best Practices Guide
• Microsoft SQL Server on Nutanix Best Practices Guide
High Availability
• The Case for SAP Central Services and VMware Fault Tolerance
Microsoft Hyper-V
• SAP on Hyper-V Documentation
• SAP on Windows Community
• Microsoft Virtualization Blog
• Microsoft Enterprise Customer Information Center
About Nutanix
Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that
power their business. The Nutanix enterprise cloud software leverages web-scale engineering
and consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization, and storage into
a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable
performance, cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and seamless application
mobility for a broad range of enterprise applications. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow us
on Twitter @nutanix.

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS Stack...................................................................8

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List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History................................................................................... 6