SAP EM Blog Series #8 - The sizing of an SAP EM server

[kevin_wilson2]

In my last blog I walked through what was made available in each of the major SAP EM releases. Now let's take a look at what to consider when sizing an SAP EM server.

Sizing a server to handle the processing for SAP EM is important.  Potentially a large amount of data can be processed by the SAP EM system in a very short period of time.  Sizing is impacted by both business and technology components.  The number of users and number of processes covered will have an impact on the size of machine required. The SAP Standard Application Benchmarks and Scalability Tests located at http://www.sap.com/benchmark can be used to determine sizing detail.

Sizing for SAP EM needs to consider the volume of Event Handlers and event messages the system will process.  Memory is dependent on the size of the packages containing event messages.

Areas that relate to larger volumes of disk space being utilized are:

• Archiving and deleting residence times. The larger the residence time, the larger the disk space requirement
• If logging of the Event Handler and event messages is enabled, then large amounts of data are recorded and stored, thus potentially needing terabytes of disk space...

SAP provides an event management sizing guide with the following information in a .pdf file:

• Sizing CPU and Memory
  • Assumption: 4 event messages per Event Handler
  • 4 categories of volume are covered:
    • At most 100k EHs / day: 300 SAPS (CPU) and 1GB (Memory)
    • At most 250k EHs / day: 600 SAPS (CPU) and 2GB (Memory)
    • At most 500k EHs / day: 1,250 SAPS (CPU) and 4GB (Memory)
    • At most 1,000k EHs / day: 2,500 SAPS (CPU) and 8GB (Memory)

Note: There is no consideration made on the complexity of the rule set that has an impact on processing consumed

• Sizing the disk space
  • Assumption: residence period of 1 month
  • 4 categories of volume are covered:
    • At most 30m events / yr: 70GB
    • At most 75m events / yr: 190GB
    • At most 150m events / yr: 390GB
    • At most 300m events / yr: 780GB

Note: It would be advisable to use the Reveal modified version of SAP’s Event Management Sizer spreadsheet (that covers Unicode compliance) to more accurately estimate database size.  Also take into account the application log and other large tables in to specific sizing calculations.  The sizer only takes into account the size of SAP EM related tables.

In my next blog I will discuss how I determine which type of parameter to use. i.e. A Parameter decision tree...