SAP / Red Hat Global Alliance

Technical Overview

Red Hat's partner engineering team works with SAP to ensure that SAP products are optimized and certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat maintains a full-time engineering presence on-site at SAP to bolster the ongoing working relationship between the SAP Linux Lab and Red Hat product development.

This relationship has resulted in the addition of SAP-specific features for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, joint testing, problem resolution, ongoing performance work by Red Hat, and close cooperation between the partners around virtualization. One example of the SAP/Red Hat collaboration is the addition of a new framework to Red Hat Cluster Suite to manage SAP's requirements for bringing up a complex set of services in a specific order when doing high-availability clustering failover.

SAP has access to pre-release versions of Red Hat software, and Red Hat includes testing of SAP software against development versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a nightly test suite provided by SAP.

Enhanced Security is a top priority

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed by, and for, the most security-conscious organizations in the world. Red Hat leads the way in developing new security technology, making a secure operating system architecture an affordable, mainstream solution. Two examples:

• SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) is a feature of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that enables granular policy-based control over programs' access to data and kernel resources, preventing a compromised program from acting outside its policy. SELinux was developed in coordination with the open source community and the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide the highest levels of security for the Linux operating system. This kind of functionality was previously available only in special purpose operating systems for the military.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux contains many innovations to prevent buffer overflow and other memory-based attacks. These include Fortify Source, Stack Smashing protection (canary values), Pointer encryption, and SELinux memory protection.

With its latest security solution, Red Hat Enterprise Identity, Policy, Audit (IPA), Red Hat has built upon open technologies and standards to provide centralized authentication and management of identity information in a package that's easy to install and manage. This centralized approach allows user accounts to be shared across multiple applications and systems, increasing the efficiency of IT administrators while increasing the productivity of end users. Enterprise IPA's centralized management also allows enterprises to more easily achieve compliance and reduce the risks associated with having identity information distributed across multiple locations. This is also paving the way for integration with customer's broader IAM environment including Active Directory, NIS, WAM, and Provisioning solutions.

Fully certified solutions

• SAP-certified
• Red Hat-certified

Red Hat, in conjunction with our partners, is working on providing a comprehensive set of documentation detailing the benefits of these joint solution stacks combining SAP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SAP's Standard Application Benchmarks help customers and partners locate the most appropriate configurations for their IT needs.

The SAP Standard Application Benchmarks can also be used to test and verify scalability, concurrency, and multi-user behavior of system software components, databases, and other business applications.

In November 2008, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and DB2 running an IBM system x3850 M2 server achieved the best SAP-SD results to date on a 24-core x86 64-based server.

• SAP SD standard SAP ERP 6.0 (2005) application benchmark

See the complete reference architecture providing all the details of this validated solution stack.

• SAP® SD Benchmark using DB2® and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 on IBM System x3850 M2

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a fully integrated hypervisor that renders expensive third party add-on virtualization solutions obsolete. For a closer look at how it all works in an SAP environment, download the virtualized SAP reference architecture documentation:

• Performance & Scalability of Virtualized SAP Servers on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®

The most recent SAP-SD benchmark from 17 December 2008, fully virtualized with 24 virtual CPUs, which details the excellent performance numbers of the SAP-SD benchmark on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is available:

• SAP-SD benchmark from 17 December 2008

If you would like to be kept informed on plans for future performance benchmarks and/or reference architectures for combined SAP/Red Hat solutions, email us at isvpartners@redhat.com

Key Customer Benefits

Red Hat has been rated the #1 Enterprise Software vendor for customer value for the last four years by the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat also delivers value to joint SAP customers through compelling price/performance benefits. Deploying SAP on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on industry-standard servers is well documented by satisfied SAP/Red Hat customers around the world. SAP customers who have migrated their SAP applications from proprietary UNIX or from Microsoft Windows have seen their OPEX and CAPEX costs reduced through lower hardware costs, better application performance, and reduced system administration overhead.

Red Hat and SAP deliver highly secure technology platforms, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux achieving the highest security certification for Linux, Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL 4+).

For SAP customers, Red Hat provides the most comprehensive portfolio of open source solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware platforms, leading management solutions, and full support for open source virtualization technologies including KVM and Xen. Additionally, Red Hat has the largest partner ecosystem of any Linux vendor, enabling SAP customers to choose best-of-breed solutions from a vast selection of ISVs, OEMs, systems integrators, and others.

Customer Success Stories and References

SAP and Red Hat deliver value to joint customers across the world, for a complete listing please visit http://customers.press.redhat.com

Global Events

Red Hat and SAP are working on several joint events in the coming months. Please check back regularly for updates to this calendar of events.

Meet Our Partners

Red Hat is partnering with thousands of global solutions providers, many with deep expertise in SAP deployments on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. By aligning with a comprehensive global network of leading hardware, software, and service provider vendors, Red Hat delivers to customers the widest selection of trusted advisors to help design, deliver, and implement certified SAP solutions. Here are some of our partners that can help find the right solutions for your business needs:

For a complete listing of all of our partners and to find a solutions provider with the best-in-breed technology expertise, customer focus, and industry knowledge, please visit our partner locater service here:
https://www.redhat.com/wapps/partnercatalog

For inquiries related to partnering with Red Hat, please contact any one of the Red Hat Partner Desks for questions on Red Hat partner opportunities and information on the Red Hat solutions portfolio: