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SAP Quick Sizer is a web-based tool that calculates hardware requirements. The Quick Sizer tool is available in two versions. Use the SAP HANA version to size an SAP HANA database and the classic version if you want to size a non-SAP HANA database.
The tool bases its calculations on functional parameters such as the number of users working with the different SAP application systems, throughput, and other inputs.
SAP has identified different and independent sizing models with different advantages and disadvantages. The Quick Sizer tool incorporates the following sizing models:
Quick Sizer presents the results in SAPS. Hardware vendors provide their SAPS for a particular server configuration by running SAP Benchmark tests and posting the results on the SAP website. For more information about SAPS sizing, see the Quick Sizer documentation on the SAP Service Marketplace (access requires login credentials).
SAPS is a hardware-independent unit of measure that describes the performance of a system configuration in the SAP environment. SAPS is derived from the Sales and Distribution (SD) benchmark, where 100 SAPS is defined as 2,000 fully business-processed order line items per hour.
In the SD benchmark, “fully business-processed” refers to the business process of an order line item. It encompasses:
This throughput is achieved by processing 2,400 SAPS transactions, 6,000 dialog steps (screen changes), or 2,000 postings per hour in the SD benchmark. SAPS is divided into requirements for the database layer (database SAPS) and application layer (application SAPS). Database SAPS is more relevant for sizing your storage requirements.
The design approach for this solution uses the published SAPS values for the PowerEdge R960, R860, and R760 servers based on official SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark results. The certifications are based on high-performance Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8180 processors. Dell performed internal testing with Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPECint) benchmarks to extrapolate and determine values for SAPS and SAPS per core. The calculations are for all platinum, gold, silver, and bronze processors that are available in the R960, R860, and R760 range. You can calculate server sizing and storage capacity requirements by using the output from SAP Quick Sizer projects and for the R960, R860, or R760 PowerEdge server model by using the SAPS values.
The following table provides details of certified SAPS values for PowerEdge servers:
PowerEdge server (CPU model) | Number of cores | Number of sockets | Number of cores per socket | Certified SAPS | SAPS per core |
PowerEdge R960 (Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8490H, 1.90 GHz) | 240 | 4 | 60 | 831,130 | 3,463 |
PowerEdge R760 (Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8480+, 2.00 GHz) | 112 | 2 | 56 | 427,800 | 3,819 |
Note: The Quick Sizer tool bases calculations on 65 percent utilization. Therefore, additional calculations to account for overhead are not required to achieve predictable server behavior. You can compare your Quick Sizer SAPS result with existing certified benchmark results. However, you can expect a 10 percent performance degradation in virtualized environments.
The Dell SAP team uses the SAP QuickSizer tool to estimate greenfield (new) sizing for SAP standard solutions if you are planning:
The team uses brownfield (post-go-live) sizing if you are currently running SAP but want to expand your hardware capacity or introduce new infrastructure. For brownfield sizing, we collect data and metrics from the system on the existing hardware and use the information to extrapolate sizing as follows:
This section provides information about how to interpret Quick Sizer results for CPU, disk, disk I/O, and memory requirements.
CPU sizing results provide requirements for the relevant layers, primarily the database layer and the ABAP application layer. The results are specified in SAPS, which, in CPU terms, is a performance unit that describes the throughput power of a server. Two‑thousand fully business-processed order line items per hour equates to 100 SAPS. If a customer provides the total SAPS requirement but not the breakdown between database SAPS and application SAPS, the Dell SAP engineering team applies general rules for the ratio of database SAPS to application SAPS:
Disk sizing is the general sizing determined for the database by the SAP Quick Sizer tool, using the following assumptions:
Some factors that might influence disk size, such as small tables, indexes, backups, dumps, and exports, are not considered or are considered only as exceptions. Calculating disk I/O is linked to database SAPS based on the analytical or transactional consumption of SAPS and disk I/O.
For translating SAPS to IOPS, the following general rule applies:
Note: Disk space calculations from Quick Sizer are for database space only. Also consider storage sizing for operating system, swap, database software binaries, and SAP software binaries on each host.
If a customer does not provide a memory size result from the SAP Quick Sizer project, the Dell SAP engineering team uses the following general rule from the SAPS requirement: estimate 3 GB of memory for every 1,000 SAPS in most throughput-based sizing.
Note: Quick Sizer results are assumption-based estimates. Contact your Dell Technologies representative to obtain solution sizing for your specific requirements.
Single-system sizing compared with system landscape sizing
Quick Sizer results are for a single application system. Sizing for SAP must be performed against a system landscape rather than a single system for each application that is implemented. A basic SAP system landscape consists of at least three systems: PRD, QAS, and DEV. Many customers have up to five or seven systems per SAP application, which can result in a high number of systems in a landscape, with each system demanding resources.
Virtualization sizing considerations
VMware has provided a direct comparison between virtualized and bare-metal systems with the same hardware configuration and the same SAP benchmark workload. The overhead is less than 6 percent. When sizing a virtualized SAP system or landscape with VMware vSphere, consider an overhead of 10 percent. So, if you are using VMware virtualization, you can calculate the virtual SAPS as 90 percent of the certified server SAPS value. In addition, follow these guidelines:
The maximum number of vCPUs in VMware is 128 for a single VM, which might limit the SAPS value that is achievable in a single VM.
For more information, see the following documents:
With a VMware ESXi cluster, you define two or more physical machines that are to provide resources for the hosts (or resource pools) that are assigned to the cluster. High availability and load balancing of VMs (VMware DRS) is achievable by using ESXi clusters. Both these features use the vSphere VMotion tool to move these virtual guests from one physical host to another.
When you size clusters, the amount of spare compute resources that you require depends on the number of physical hosts in the cluster. Spare compute resources must be available to take over the workload for at least one physical host in the cluster to ensure continuous availability.
Failure and downtime of mission-critical SAP environments can bring an entire organization or large parts of it to a stop. The business costs associated with SAP downtime can be high. If your primary site suffers a disaster (such as flooding, fire, or a major earthquake), the disaster recovery plan must have your normal operations up and running in as short a time (recovery time objective, or RTO) as possible and with minimal data loss (recovery point objective, or RPO).
With multisite data centers, the secondary site must have enough available compute, network, and storage resources to take over the workloads from the failed site. Therefore, the compute, network, and storage requirements are doubled when you size for disaster recovery.
SAP systems grow year on year over time, affecting the size of the database and the number of users. Dell Technologies recommends factoring an annual growth rate into the sizing of the storage requirements over the term of the maintenance support for the infrastructure.
For example, if a database sizing is 600 GB and you expect an annual growth rate of 8 percent with maintenance for 4 years, calculate the requirement as follows:
600 GB x 1.08 x 1.08 x 1.08 x 1.08 = 816 GB
SAP HANA TDI Phase 5 introduced some important enhancements for customers:
For more information, see SAP HANA Tailored Data Center integrations.
This combination of workload-driven SAPS-based sizing with an increased variety of CPU processors gives customers more flexibility when choosing SAP HANA compute nodes from the wide range of R760, R860, and R960 systems to cost-optimize the servers for their specific workload requirements.