SAP Business ONE, on physical Server vs VMWare

[alexis_skouris]

Hello there,

We have a customer who wants to migrate to a new server and are faced with a dilemma between a physical server and a VM machine.

• The database is currently above 200GB
• They have 21 concurrent users
• Working 24/7 actively on server
• MSSQL database

The current setup is on a physical machine which they choose to improve performance as much as possible because they had issues in the past.

The company is now considering migrating to a new VMware machine but is not sure if this will cause any issues down the line.

There is a documentation from VMware: Best Practices Guide of SAP Solutions: VMware, Inc., but it’s for VSPHERE 5 which is too old.

My questions are,

• what are the best practices for SAP on VMware machines?
• Are there any other issues that could affect performance, that make it better to install SAP on a physical machine?
• And lastly, how much memory is required for a database this size and concurrent users?

Thank you in advance for your help

[riccardo_cola · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I recommend you have a look a following SAP on VMware on-line resource.
Here you can see the best practices relevant to SAP NetWeaver systems,

'SAP on VMware vSphere'

Here you can see also the SAP notes (1409608, 1409604, 2161991, ..) which indicate the SAP requirements for the configuration of the VMware virtual machines which will receive the SAP NetWeaver / DB installation.
Once the VMware virtual machines are configured according to SAP requirements, you can use the SAP NetWeaver installation guide to see how-to perform the installation. This guide is valid for both the physical and virtual machines

Check also the SAP Sizing reference.

Best regards,
Riccardo

[Johan_Hakkesteegt]

Hi Alexis,

SAP Business One is a database driven software. That means that the database does all the heavy lifting. In your case, you can look into recommendations for MS SQL Server on virtual environments.

In general, with a physical server all hardware resources will be used for the database. With a vm, the database will be sharing resources with all other virtual machines. With current hardware the difference is going to be next to negligible, but with a physical server you will not have to wonder.

That said, we have a 180GB+ database, and we were also looking at performance problems. In January 2022, we chose a setup with two physical servers, one with only MS SQL and SAP Business One, and the other with HyperV, to run all other necessary machines and software. We have not had problems since. This setup cost us around 17000€. Either way, invest in RAM and SSD drives. You can also take a look at this blog for some more recommendations.

If there are few or no addons in the installation, you should consider moving the installation to the cloud. For example Cloud One, but shop around. This is the best future proof solution, hardware reasons for possible performance problems can be ruled out right away, and you can access your B1 system from anywhere. With your 24/7 scenario it should also offer the least down time.

Regards,

Johan

[alexis_skouris]

Thank you for your reply. really helpful!

[fosorio]

Here is the link to the latest "SAP HANA on VMware vSphere Best Practices and Reference Architecture Guide" https://core.vmware.com/resource/sap-hana-vmware-vsphere-best-practices-and-reference-architecture-g...

Also check SAP note https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2020657 "SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA virtualized"