What is the purpose of SAP S4 deployment options? How important is it to deploy the SAP S4? These are the questions we will discuss below.
What SAP S4 Deployment Options?
The SAP S4 is an SAP NetWeaver component. It is part of SAP NetWeaver.
So SAP S4 is a high-performance, in-memory database. It is used to store and process the most critical data in your company.
The SAP S4 stores the data in memory and provides fast data access to users. The performance of the system is very important for the company.
Therefore, it is very important to deploy SAP S4 correctly. There are several deployment options of the SAP S4 system.
It depends on the wishes of your company, the workload of your system, and other factors. Here are those deployment options:
SAP Shared Memory Server (SM):
This option uses physical memory for storing data blocks. It reduces CPU usage and increases the performance of your system if you do not have many concurrent users.
So this option requires less hardware than other options. But it does not support hot standby for standby systems or multiple active systems for a single instance.
SAP Shared Memory Server (SM) with Fast Recovery:
Another option includes a hot standby for redundant systems and multiple active systems for a single instance. It uses flash memory or solid-state drives (SSDs).
If you have many active users, this option is for you because it uses less memory than other options. You can also use this deployment option in case you are migrating to all-flash with an upgrade to NX/NXD 7.5 SP10.
Or later versions and want to keep using SM as a cache server within your system landscape. The CPU utilization will be improved when using SSDs instead of flash memory.
It is because this technology has higher random access times compared to SSDs. With SSDs, there will be more idle cycles on each CPU core than with flash memory which permits higher CPU usage per core in general.
However, if you want to use all-flash as write-optimized storage, SM will still be required as a cache server. It is because all data must be written out to all-flash storage before being considered “committed” in a transaction.
Thus making SM necessary for any future write operations on all-flash storage regardless of SSD or flash media being used as primary storage. In addition, SM comes with several advantages.
Such as faster backups and recovery from backups using FlashCopy as well as support for ASYNC/SYNC backups. It can be used as a workaround for the I/O throttling limitations of Fast Recovery.
SAP Shared Memory Server With Snapshots (SM ESS):
It is the most advanced option. It uses hardware snapshots to reduce the impact of database updates on the database’s real-time performance.
With this deployment option, you can easily upgrade your system without any downtime. You can use this deployment option for new installations of SAP S4.
When you choose this deployment option, you will use SSD or flash memory to store database data and snapshots. Synchronous logging will be used.
This is one of the most important factors in improving performance because it avoids data loss and data corruption when you update the data.
SAP Shared Memory Server With Flash-Copy Read Replica:
This option enables you to run and maintain a standby system for your primary SAP S4 server in another location by using FlashCopy technology. It provides high availability with zero downtime during upgrades and maintenance activities.
This is an important factor because it allows access to your SAP S4 system in case of an outage or failure. The standby system has an identical configuration as the primary system with the same SAP S4 instance.
It includes all necessary data and configurations. You can also modify the configuration at any time during normal operations without causing any service disruption to your users or applications.
While keeping all other locations synchronized with each other at all times through FlashCopy replication technology.