SAP on Linux: Virtualization on commodity hardware now officially supported
Wow, it is done! Of course, there are several IBM virtualization technologies already supported, zLinux on zOS and Linux on Power on AIX LPAR, but both of them are only available on huge IBM machines. But now you are able to run your SAP application on a supported virtualized Linux platform on commodity hardware using commodity virtualization technologies. But wait, this is not a general support statement here. You still cannot simply mix hardware, virtualization technology and Linux client system as you like. You have to use the tested and certified virtualization technology and hardware mentioned in several SAP notes and documents. As all this information may be hard to find, I'd like to give you all the information in this blog. A complete list of all virtualization technologies, which are supported for Linux clients, can be found in SAP Note 1122387: "Linux: Supported virtualization technologies with SAP". This note is updated on regular basis, so check it from time to time. It also lists currently unsupported technologies for productive SAP environments. Nevertheless, the other technologies may be used for test and development systems. A list of certified hardware can be found here: SAP on Linux -> Supported Platforms -> Supported Hardware. Every Hardware vendors does have a different way to announce its certified hardware. Please keep always in mind, that a simple certification for a virtualization technology and a certain hardware type does not include a SAP certification. For SAP on Linux, always navigate through SDN the above mentioned way and check for additional marks for virtualization. These remarks will look like: Server XY is certified for SLES9/10, VMware 3.0.1 (Guest OS SLES10),... . Servers without such remarks are not certified for virtualization for SAP, although you maybe can use them as bare metal with a directly installed Linux operating system. Here is a list of all related SAP Notes which give you detailed information about virtualization:
1122387 - Supported virtualization technologies with SAP 1122388 - Linux: VMware ESX Server 3 configuration guideline 962334 - SAP on Linux on XEN virtual machine
1048303 - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: Installation and upgrade 958253 - SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10: Installation notes
895807 - SAP support in virtualized Linux environments
