Best Practice 13.1 – Evaluate or estimate performance requirements

Future hardware requirements can be estimated by examining the capacity and usage patterns of existing SAP systems. SAP provides several tools for sizing hardware for new and existing systems. To further validate sizing estimates, proof of concept (POC) deployments and performance testing can be used.

Suggestion 13.1.1 – Reference SAPS performance metrics of source hardware

SAP benchmarks hardware using SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS), which is a hardware-independent unit of measurement that describes the performance of a system configuration in the SAP environment. Consult your existing hardware vendor and the SAP benchmark directory to obtain SAPS values for your on-premises server hardware.

A sizing based on SAPS is appropriate for a migration that introduces minimal changes to the underlying capacity requirements, often referred to as a lift and shift migration.

Suggestion 13.1.2 – Reference SAP EarlyWatch Alert reports and monitoring tools for historical usage details

SAP EarlyWatch Alert reports provide utilization information of your SAP application, such as peak memory and CPU usage. A holistic analysis of these reports spanning several peak events, such as month-end closing and large batch loads, can provide valuable insights into system usage.

In addition to EarlyWatch alert reports, infrastructure level monitoring tools can provide more granularity and further insights.

Suggestion 13.1.3 – Use SAP HANA sizing reports to estimate compute requirements

When migrating to SAP HANA, use SAP provided tools for estimating the size of the target compute. The output generated by these tools details the hardware sizing requirements for your SAP HANA database.

Suggestion 13.1.4 – Use SAP Quick Sizer for greenfield implementations and functional changes

SAP Quick Sizer can be used for sizing new SAP implementations or for those undergoing changes (for example, increased user base, new functionality or modules). The tool helps you to translate your application’s requirements into hardware specifications. For best results, technical and functional teams should collaborate to input values into the Quick Sizer tool.

We recommend the use of SAP expert sizing to validate the sizing of complex implementations.

For more information on SAP tools and services, refer to the following:

Suggestion 13.1.5 – Use proof of concept deployments for sizing accuracy

You can take advantage of the flexibility of AWS services to right-size your SAP workloads and scale as business demands change. Use proofs of concept (POCs) to test migrations to cloud and analyze the performance requirements. This can help right-size the workloads for both cost and performance.