Balluff upgraded the mechanism of transaction processing SAP ERP

In December, 2016 it became known of an implementation project of the complex platform IBM for transaction processing SAP ERP and analytical applications SAP Business Warehouse in a computing environment of the German company Balluff. The project and works on implementation were performed by the companies IBM SAP SE PROFI Engineering Systems.

Project Tasks

In process of business development the Balluff company made the decision on implementation of the complex IBM platform for transaction processing of SAP ERP and the SAP Business Warehouse analytical applications.

IT infrastructure of Balluff is based on two IBM Power Systems servers with support of technology of virtualization of IBM PowerVM and the IBM AIX operating system for the crucial SAP applications working with the IBM DB2 databases. The company integrated the IBM Power Systems servers using massive and parallel grid-system architecture of storage of IBM XIV Storage System and economic IBM System Storage DS3500 disk^[1].

Project Progress

The first stage

As the first step on the way of performance improvement of the environment of transactions of SAP ERP and increase in productivity of staff of all business departments of the enterprise, in Balluff made the decision to optimize the operating IT infrastructure, including software products, servers and storage systems. For this purpose specialists of Balluff got acquainted with opportunities of the general updating of servers and the innovation offers in the field of technologies of storage.

On the next stage specialists of the company concentrated the attention on improvement of decision making at the expense of faster and exact business intelligence on the basis of the available data with the help of the latest of IBM DB2 technology for Linux, UNIX and Windows and its functional feature of BLU Acceleration.

Balluff unrolled two storage systems of IBM XIV with direct (DAS) connection to servers using Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) technology. As the solution for disaster recovery selected a management system of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager with tape library IBM System Storage TS3500 from the company.

The Balluff IT command was not interested in consecutive making changes as there was a problem of implementation of radical changes for a private cloud environment and service of transaction (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) business applications. For achievement of this purpose at the first stage the company upgraded ERP applications of SAP and the corresponding infrastructure of servers and storage systems of IBM, and on the second — implemented IBM DB2 with the accelerating BLU Acceleration application for Business Warehouse SAP application.

Server architecture

For optimization of performance of ERP applications of SAP with the IBM DB2 databases under Linux, UNIX and Windows for fast and reliable transaction processing, IT infrastructure of Balluff was upgraded two IBM Power 750 servers, each of which is equipped with 32 main cores IBM POWER7+ and 1 Tbyte of RAM. For the maximum flexibility and reliability servers are configured as a private cloud with a possibility of further work in case of unavailability of separate components of a system.

To simplify capability management of a private cloud environment, Balluff uses the dispatching Dynamic Power Cloud Manager system released by the business partner of IBM — FRITZ & MACZIOL company. The manager Dynamic Power Cloud Manager provides operational monitoring of logical partitions using the user web interface and helps to automate problems of system administration.

For the maximum level of data protection and a system, availability of the ERP system of SAP and the related crucial business applications, in Balluff use the IBM PowerHA SystemMirror software package under IBM AIX 7.1.

Representation of a cloud of Balluff, (2016)

For creation of the temporary isolated software environments for development and testing of functions and superstructures for a SAP-applications, in Balluff sections of WPAR (Workload Partitions) are used. Several sections of WPAR can be created within one logical partition (LPAR) for start of one or several applications. Advantage of such approach is the possibility of use of one LPAR for development and applications testing. At the same time, each application is started in the separate section of WPAR in this logical partition of LPAR. Thus, the LPAR resources are distributed dynamically according to all sections of WPAR without any influence on the general system configuration, minimizing workloads of configuring and administration at simultaneous increase in isolation of noncritical software environments for development.

The maximum use of resources of memory and computing resources is reached in Balluff thanks to a possibility of data compression in RAM implemented in AIX using Active Memory Expansion (AME) technology. Application of AME for data compression reduces total requirement in a system memory and increases system performance due to moving of small information volumes to RAM and from it. Insignificant falling of capacity of the processor due to the need of compression and unpackings of data, are with interest compensated by the accelerated data access and significant economy of expenses due to reduction of requirements to a base memory.

For the isolated software environments in sections of WPAR, the AME function is configured with the doubled coefficient that, respectively, doubles effective storage capacity, selected for sections, and leaves more physical memory for crucial business applications.

Mobile applications within the general support by the manager Dynamic Power Cloud Manager provide remote safe monitoring and quick access of the system administrator to the vital information on a system at any time and in any place. Even being out of office, the IT personnel of Balluff have opportunities for support of operability of a system.

System architecture of storage

Having completed updating of servers in Balluff started optimization of system architecture of storage and added it two a flash arrays of IBM FlashSystem 840 with a capacity of 20 Tbyte everyone, with support of IBM MicroLatency technology.

For SAP and other systems in Balluff the storage with virtualization on the basis of technology of virtualization of storage systems SAN Volume Controller (SVC) for IBM System Storage is used. For further expansion of capacity of DWH, in addition to IBM of SVC in the company made the decision on adding of the Storwize V5000 system.

Backup architecture

Within a subproject of automation and acceleration of processes of backup, specialists of Balluff, together with experts of the business partner of IBM PROFI Engineering Systems, implemented the manager IBM Tivoli Storage Manager with the tape solution of IBM of new generation and tape library IBM TS4500 using the drives LTO6 on the magnetic tape.

Implementation of IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager, in combination with function of creation of the instant pictures tied to applications using IBM SVC Storage System, allowed to reduce process to seconds. It led to considerable reduction of time necessary by recovery of the Balluff database and improved data protection for the most important systems. Now the company can create easily more than one copy of the database daily, minimizing data loss in case of failure.

All infrastructure of IBM is integrated into the companies with the operating monitoring system of Ganglia Monitoring System for the consolidated and detailed overview of all IT environment.

Using the standardized practice the combined team of specialists of Balluff and IBM provided migration on five SAP applications a day, in parallel with a 3-hour operating cycle on each system.

As a result of updating of technologies of IBM, response time of ERP applications of SAP on the IBM equipment Balluff was reduced by 50%. Use of technology of compression for IBM DB2 reduced database volume by 85% in comparison with use of uncompressed data thanks to what the needs for data storage for backup decreased, and the solution for backup also allowed to rationalize recovery processes.

The second stage

SAP application of Business Warehouse services at the same time ~ 500 users and a main objective of upgrade - increase in personal performance of each employee in real time in enterprise scales.

Having estimated options, including SAP HANA, SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator and IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, the Balluff command stopped the choice on IBM DB2 taking into account the price, complexity and the predicted system performance. Works are carried out with a view to sharing of IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration technology.

Minimizing interruptions in access for all the 500 at the same time working employees, the company implemented SAP Business Warehouse 7.3 and transferred IBM DB2 databases 9.7 to IBM DB2 10.5 with BLU Acceleration support.

Cooperation of a command of IBM with specialists of Balluff in the analysis of SAP applications of Business Warehouse allowed to reveal ~ 1.5 thousand tables in 1.5 Tbyte of the database which will get additional benefits in performance at implementation of BLU Acceleration technology. Specialists of IBM helped Balluff to transfer these 1.5 thousand tables approximately in 17 hours without stopping of main system by means of parallelization of processes.

As the level of optimization of performance necessary for work with business information in a pseudo-real-time mode can be reached effectively only directly at the level of the database, SAP implemented the additional abstraction layer of the Core Data Services database. It maintains functionality of all SAP-applications, including workloads of the OLTP class SAP ERP and OLAP loading like SAP Business Warehouse, taking into account features of the database from different suppliers.

Expanded integration into software products of SAP

The maximum integration of the Balluff database into SAP solutions is reached with SAP implementation of DBA Cockpit for DB2 and ABAP Core Data services. The manager SAP DBA Cockpit for DB2 provides to database managers execution of operations on service in the SAP ERP environment.

Project Results

With support of specialists of IBM, transfer of the IBM DB2 database took one night. Thanks to the improved technologies of compression, it was succeeded to achieve an additional compression of data for 26% in comparison with the previous result, having reduced database volume from 1.5 Tbyte to ~ 1.1 Tbyte. The smaller volume of databases provides faster process of backup, reducing costs of time for 30% and saving up to 30% of space for data storage and backup copies. According to the statement of the press service of the company, in Balluff it was succeeded to reduce time for data processing in batch mode with BLU Acceleration technology by 25%.

Project Results

• 98% acceleration of access to difficult analytical reports
• 50% performance improvement of work of personnel thanks to the improved response time of SAP ERP
• 26% economy of space of storage system at the expense of the improved data compression
• 5-fold acceleration of access to business documents
• 30% cost reduction of time for backup
• 25% acceleration at batch processing of data
• 7-fold acceleration of batch jobs in SAP ERP
• 99% faster recovery of data, crucial for business

Notes