The Amsterdam, Netherlands-based joint venture of Fujitsu Ltd and Siemens AG has designed and built the FlexFrame for mySAP system with the assistance of Walldorf, Germany-based SAP and network attached storage specialist Network Appliance Inc.
Fujitsu Siemens’ chief technology officer, Joseph Reger, told ComputerWire that SAP’s involvement was crucial to achieving the lowered total cost of ownership through the virtualization of its mySAP software suite.
The reason that this could be achieved is because the SAP services are all virtualized, he said. For every SAP service that would normally require a single physical server a virtual server is needed and placed on the physical server, which results in a higher degree of virtualization.
Also key to the cost reduction is the fact that the entire system runs on a single instance of the Linux operating system, which is held in a Network Appliance filer. Each server component has read only access to a copy of the operating system.
While the use of Linux, rather than Unix, helps to keep the cost down, the requirement to boot all hardware in the system from a single image can only be enabled with Linux, using the open source Netboot facility, said Reger.
This is the first time that such a configuration is available on Linux only, said Reger. This is putting an entirely new light on the Linux market as it’s a proposition not just for cost, but a proposition for innovation, a proposition for performance, and a proposition for security.
Reger said that the company had worked closely with SuSE Linux AG to tune the Linux operating system for the FlexFrame configuration, but that no kernel changes were required. He said it is conceivable that a version running Red Hat Inc’s Linux may also become available at some stage.
The precise configuration of the FlexFrame for mySAP system will depend on customer choice, although the integral components include the Primergy BX300 blade server, Primergy four- and eight-way servers, Network Appliance filers, and of course the mySAP software. Customers can also, if they choose, include Fujitsu Siemens’ PrimePower Unix servers in the mix, although they would lose the ability to boot and manage the whole configuration with the same program, added Reger.
Although the company worked closely with SAP to create the FlexFrame architecture, Fujitsu Siemens is not reducing its development work to SAP environments, and intends to use the architecture for other applications suites.
It’s a flexible application-specific server architecture, and it can be done for any application suite with rich functionality such as SAP, said Reger. Another one that could be thought of is Oracle Applications. We will work on these and then adapt it to other applications.
Source: Computerwire
