Lenovo Solutions for SAP HANA

Lenovo Group Ltd. announced an array of high-performance, workload-optimized solutions for businesses deploying the SAP HANA platform.

3850-x6 system

The range of solutions, unveiled at the Sapphirre Now conference, are built upon the company’s line-up of powerful and scalable X6 servers, and include two EMC supported offerings – VMAX3 family and VNX Unified Storage systems certified by SAP as an enterprise storage solution for SAP HANA ⁽¹⁾ and VSPEX technology for classic SAP solution-based landscapes.

These solutions are optimized for deployments of SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite software, delivering outstanding performance.

“Business analytics presents big opportunities and challenges for virtually every enterprise,” said Darrel Ward, VP, enterprise marketing and storage business unit. “Our new X6 server-based solutions and services for SAP HANA and SAP Business Suite offer a powerful, scalable and fast path for turning data into a competitive advantage.“

At SAP Sapphirre Now, Lenovo and Bluefin Solutions Inc. have demonstred a real-time, mobile data capture and analytics application. With a complete end-to-end product portfolio at its disposal, Lenovo has showcased a fully connected enterprise, from device to datacenter, utilizing Motorola smartphones and Moto 360 watches, ThinkPad laptops, Yoga tablets, and System x3850 X6 servers with SAP HANA.

x3950-x6 system

Lenovo appliance delivers workload-optimized solutions for SAP HANA
The solutions from Lenovo are optimized and certified by SAP to run SAP HANA. They are based on system x3850 X6 and system x3950 X6 server platforms and incorporate the Xeon E7v3 processor. They provide outstanding performance and scalability. When combined with company’s Enterprise Solution Services, these workload-optimized solutions can be deployed in days, helping customers speed deployment of new applications and simplify on-going management of their infrastructure for SAP HANA.

Results on SAP business warehouse-enhanced mixed load standard application benchmark
System x3850 X6 has achieved an result on the SAP Business Warehouse-Enhanced Mixed Load (SAP BW-EML) standard application benchmark ⁽²⁾. The x3850 X6 netted a record load of 1,992,570 ad-hoc navigation steps per hour on the benchmark, more than 29% faster than the previous result Lenovo posted in March ⁽³⁾ . The SAP BW-EML standard application benchmark measures performance in a real-time, data-warehouse environment running SAP software. This benchmark result demonstrates that the system x3850 X6 solution for SAP HANA offers near-linear scalability. By simply adding more nodes to the existing infrastructure, enterprise IT solutions can expand memory capacity for SAP HANA and benefit from extremely fast response times for analytical workloads and business queries.

Record results on two-tier SAP sales and distribution standard application benchmark
on Windows
Lenovo posted another result on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark on the Windows OS. The system x3850 X6 delivers 22% improvement over previous-generation Xeon processors and continues history of achieving excellent performance results on SAP standard application benchmarks The result was achieved on the IBM System x3850 X6, configured with four Xeon processor E7-8890 v3 processors, and running DB2 10 and SAP enhancement package 5for the SAP ERP application Release 6.0. The system x3850 X6 achieved 0.97s average dialog response time for 30,501 SAP SD benchmark users, 166,830 SAPS, with measured throughput of 10,010,000 dialog steps per hour (or 3,336,670 fully business processed line items per hour), and an average CPU utilization of 98% for the central server. ⁽⁴⁾

Integration with EMC enterprise storage solutions
Lenovo and EMC are delivering a complete set of fully integrated solutions and services featuring system x servers and VMAX, VNX and XtremeIO Enterprise Storage offerings. These can be deployed using the SAP HANA tailored data center integration approach. Using this approach, customers can leverage their existing hardware and infrastructure components (e.g., EMC enterprise storage) for their SAP HANA-based environments, providing further choice for organizations, even when working in heterogeneous environments. Company’s Enterprise Solution Services offers a range of capabilities to install and maintain system x and Flex system servers for SAP HANA with EMC storage offerings.

EMC VSPEX for classic SAP solution-based landscapes
Lenovo has announced EMC Proven Infrastructures, VSPEX with Flex for Private cloud and Virtual Desktop solutions, have been expanded and are enabled to support SAP Business Suite landscapes, enabling faster implementation, simplified management and reduced TCO. VSPEX with Flex provides the scalability, performance and response times needed for mission critical SAP applications.

Accompanying this validated solution, the VSPEX sizing tool will help simplify deployment of SAP Business Suite applications on VSPEX with Flex by providing accurate sizing with built-in forecasting of application environments. Lenovo’s  Flex System technology powers these solutions, which are based on VSPEX Proven Infrastructure solutions.

“Tomorrow’s world will be full of connected devices working together to build databases that enable people around the world to make better decisions, faster,” said John Appleby, GM, Bluefin Solutions “For example, this will help fuel the reduction in the cost of long-term healthcare – enabled by technologies like Lenovo servers and the SAP HANA platform.“

“Combining EMC enterprise storage offerings with Lenovo servers offer customers also running SAP applications with the ability to help speed deployment, simplify management and reduce TCO,” said Roger Frey, VP, enterprise applications solutions, EMC. “Lenovo System x and Flex System servers combined with EMC storage offer customers a great combination of enterprise server infrastructure with enterprise storage, enabling them to confidently run their business.“

⁽¹⁾ EMC storage solutions SAP – certified for SAP HANA.
⁽²⁾ Performance results of the system x3850 X6 on the SAP BW-EML standard application benchmark as of May 5, 2015. This benchmark fully complies with the SAP Benchmark Council regulations and has been audited and certified by SAP SE – Certification number 2015011. More information can be found at the following web page: www.sap.com/benchmark. Details can be obtained from Lenovo and SAP. Latest SAP benchmark results.
⁽³⁾ Performance results of the system x3850 X6 on the SAP BW-EML standard application benchmark as of March 16, 2015. This benchmark fully complies with the SAP Benchmark Council regulations and has been audited and certified by SAP SE (certification number 2015007). Details can be obtained from Lenovo and SAP.
⁽⁴⁾ Performance results of the system x2850 X6 on the two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark as of May 5, 2015. This benchmark fully complies with the SAP Benchmark Council regulations and has been audited and certified by SAP AG. Certification Number 2015010. Details can be obtained from Lenovo and SAP. The benchmark was performed at Lenovo in Research Triangle Park, NC, USA, by Lenovo engineers.