Auto scaling on AWS helps eliminate the need for SAP S/4HANA application server sizing

June 5, 2018

A blog post by Tita Venatius, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP; Rahul Kabra, partner solutions architect, AWS; Naresh Pasumarthy, partner solutions architect, AWS

Introduction

Many enterprise organizations rely heavily on SAP mission-critical applications to drive revenue and gain competitive advantage in the marketplace, but facilitating high-efficiency performance of these applications across the IT landscape is critical to achieving the expected results. Thus, organizations running SAP applications should make sure the infrastructure it runs on is elastic and can scale based on demand fluctuations to help optimize performance efficiency.

With traditional sizing, translating business requirements into hardware requirements is done in anticipation of higher workload demands (month-end, quarter-end, year-end, etc.), which increases the risk of over provisioning IT resources.

If SAP application servers are underutilized, it can result in unnecessary cost to the business. Some enterprise customers create workflows to consolidate and shutdown additional application servers after the event is over, but there are additional costs involved in planning, documenting, and executing these operations after every major event. Inefficiencies in the performance of business-critical applications could result in the deterioration of an organization’s business performance and thereby suffer revenue loss, decline in customer satisfaction, lower employee productivity, and jeopardized brand reputation.

To address these challenges, Deloitte’s auto scaling application server solution on AWS helps organizations reduce operational cost and improve efficiencies so the business can focus on innovation. The solution can automatically detect SAP application server consumption based on SAP-specific workload metrics for dialog, batch, enqueue, and print work processes under different system workloads (concurrent user logins, month-end or quarter-end closing, and parallel batch processing). The solution also keeps system performance and response time efficient, helping to lower the operation cost through the automatic provisioning and decommissioning of application servers based on demand in a pay-as-you-go model.

Deloitte’s solution, built on AWS’ cloud platform, provides the capabilities to run SAP workloads in a more agile, secure, and cost-effective manner. AWS has a broad and deep set of offerings that span from traditional services like compute (EC2), storage (EBS), and networking to scalable services like Lambda and EC2 auto scaling. It also incorporates emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Solution brief

Deloitte’s auto scaling application server solution on AWS leverages SAP-specific metrics to determine when to automatically scale an SAP application server in or out as demand shifts. These SAP-specific metrics are customizable to meet a client’s specific requirements, and once configured, take only minutes to launch or terminate.

The solution utilizes SAP application server Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to launch new EC2 instances. The process is orchestrated through AWS hyperscale services such as API Gateway, Lambda functions, EC2 Auto Scaling, and CloudWatch Alarms to launch new SAP application server EC2 instances from an AMI and the automatic registration to SAP’s built-in load balancer. Similarly, the termination of excess application servers is triggered when there are no more active work processes after certain thresholds. However, the termination of an application server is aborted if demand suddenly increases. Please refer to the architecture diagram below:

Potential benefits

With Deloitte’s pre-configured auto scaling solution’s on-demand capabilities, you only pay for what you really need, helping to reduce direct operational cost. With this solution, SAP Basis administrators do not need to plan for additional server capacity, nor do they need to manually provision, administer, and operate SAP application servers. Deloitte’s pre-configured auto scaling application server solution is built on AWS’ cloud platform and takes full advantage of the platforms elasticity, scalability, high availability, and fault-tolerant infrastructure. In addition, it comes with pre-packaged deployment templates and scripts. It’s fully configurable to meet your business’ requirements and it leverages modern technologies like RESTful APIs to scale out as demand increases.

Deloitte service offerings on AWS

Deloitte’s auto scaling application server solution on AWS

As an SAP competency partner of AWS, Deloitte offers a complete set of end-to-end SAP services in an AWS public cloud environment.

Setting the strategy

• Cloud strategy and business case
• Cloud readiness assessment
• Develop cloud migration approach, roadmap, and plan

Implementation of services

• Cloud migration
• Machine learning, IoT, big data, and analytics
• SAP S/4HANA, Ariba, SuccessFactors extensions using SAP cloud platform
• SAP cloud integration services 
• Provisioning of cloud hosting infrastructure with enterprise-class service level agreements
• SAP performance testing services

Managed services

• End-to-end cloud infrastructure and application managed services with 24/7 support
• SAP cloud platform application and integration managed services
• Improvements and innovation

Conclusion

Deloitte provides industry-leading practices and pre-configured solutions on AWS designed to deliver a best-of-breed portfolio of SAP services at a faster time to value, lower operation cost, and improved business agility.

Please reach out to us at RunSAPonCloud@deloitte.com or at saphana@amazon.com for more details.