Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Customer Solution Case Study Moving SAP Off Mainframe to SQL Server Nets Australia s QR Limited U.S.$100,000 a Month Overview Country or Region: Australia Industry: Transportation and Logistics Customer Profile Based in Brisbane, Australia, QR Limited provides passenger train and freight train services to the state of Queensland as well as other parts of the country. Business Situation QR Limited needed to find an alternative to hosting its SAP applications and databases on a mainframe computer and the DB2 database. Solution The company moved its SAP infrastructure from the mainframe and DB2 to the Microsoft Application Platform including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit). Benefits Better performance High availability ROI of less than 4 months Ease of migration Easier system refreshes This means we were able to pay for the entire migration to SQL Server hardware included in just a matter of weeks from our mainframe savings. Tim Robinson, SAP Basis Manager, QR Limited Having been in the business since the 1860s, Australia s QR Limited knows how to run a railroad. As the company prepared to upgrade its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) software it decided to move its SAP applications and databases from a mainframe and DB2 environment to the Microsoft Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database software running on a geocluster supported by the Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system. The company estimates it is saving about U.S.$100,000 per month in mainframe costs, since moving its SAP infrastructure to a cluster of commodity servers running the Microsoft Application Platform. QR Limited reports 20 to 40 percent faster SAP transactional response times and up to 8 times faster batch processing since moving SAP to SQL Server 2005.
Fast Facts SAP Software ECC 6.0 SAP modules BW, FI/CO, HR, MI, MM, PM, PS, SD, SRM, XI, and portal modules Largest database (ERP) 1 Terabyte Performance Increase 20 to 40 percent faster (transaction response times) Batch processing performance Up to 8 times faster Estimated savings from migration U.S.$100,000 per month Application Platform Capabilities Data Management 170,000 passengers and more than 683,000 tons of freight. QR Limited, until 2007 known as Queensland Railways, is owned by the citizens of Queensland as a Company Government Owned Corporation. The company s 15,000 employees help generate more than U.S.$2.2 billion in annual revenue. Along the way, the company has earned an international reputation for its excellent maintenance programs and safety records. Passenger Service - QR Limited s high-speed tilt train in northern Queensland. Situation Imagine a steam locomotive from the 1860s chugging across the vast landscape of Australia, and you get a feel for the history of QR Limited which more than 140 years ago introduced train travel to Queensland, the diverse state that makes up the northeast quadrant of Australia, with the Great Barrier Reef just off its eastern shore, and the famed Australian Outback to the west. QR Limited operates more than 1,000 train services a day, including carrying more than It takes a lot to run a railroad, which is why more than a decade ago QR deployed SAP software to support accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other businesscritical functions. QR deployed SAP R/2 hosted on a mainframe computer and using the DB2 database. The company later added the HR and Finance and Logistics modules, and in 2004 upgraded to SAP R/3. As use of SAP applications grew, the company found it expensive to increase resources on the mainframe, and that they wanted better performance. Over time as QR needed to add SAP components, including BW, XI, SRM and MI, it deployed them using the Microsoft Application Platform, though the core R/3 system continued to run on the mainframe. By the time SAP announced it was ceasing support for native mainframe versions of SAP, QR was eager to move the rest of its SAP deployment off the mainframe. The company s production mainframe system had a total of 191 mainframe service units (MSUs), with 70 MSUs assigned to SAP and 18 MSUs assigned to non-production SAP use. Figuring about 44 SAPS per MSU, we were at about 3,080 SAPs, says Scott Bigalla, Principal Infrastructure Architect at QR Limited. Our peak loads ran at 126 MSUs, or 5,544 SAPs, at which point we tended to get capped. With our limited mainframe resources it was virtually impossible for us to support large projects
Freight Service - QR Limited transports coal from the mines of Queensland. requiring system copies or CPU-intensive batch runs. The migration ended the resource capacity problems and also enhanced performance. We were very happy with how well SAP and our other applications performed using the Microsoft Application Platform, says Tim Robinson, SAP Basis Manager at QR Limited. So we knew we would see some important benefits if we moved our SAP database off DB2 and the mainframe. Solution QR migrated all of its SAP operations onto the Microsoft Application Platform. SAP databases are hosted on a geographically dispersed cluster using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) with Service Pack 2 running on Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition for 64-bit Systems with Service Pack 2. The cluster was deployed on two Dell PowerEdge 6950 server computers, each with 4 dual-core AMD processors and 64 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Storage is on Hitachi Data Systems storage arrays. After the migration was completed, QR upgraded from SAP R/3 to SAP ERP Enterprise Core Component (ECC) 6.0 and updated its SAP BW to version 7.0. The ECC database has grown to about 1 terabyte, and the BW database is about 600 GB. QR Limited runs a number of SAP modules, including BW, FI/CO, HR, MI, MM, PM, PS, SD, SRM, XI, Solution Manager and portal modules. CRM and SCM are scheduled for deployment soon. We now run our complete SAP infrastructure from general ledger, HR, warehouse inventory, and everything else we need to run our business on the Microsoft Application Platform, says Bigalla. The migration went smoothly and we are enjoying even more benefits than we had anticipated. Benefits Migrating SAP from the mainframe to the Microsoft Application Platform is providing QR Limited with a number of benefits including significantly better performance. The company s use of Windows Server clustering technology is providing high availability and supporting disaster recovery. The savings in mainframe costs is providing an ROI of less than four months. The ease of migration made it simple for QR to achieve these benefits, and system refreshes are easier than with the mainframe. Better Performance QR Limited saw immediate performance improvements after migrating off of the mainframe and DB2. Performance on the mainframe was adequate, and we had few user complaints, but since moving from DB2 to SQL Server 2005 we ve found transactional response times with SAP ERP are now 20 to 40 percent faster, says Robinson. Prior to the migration, QR performed some benchmarks for batch processing jobs. Testing after migration showed that about 95 percent of our batch jobs performed more
SQL Server and the rest of the Microsoft Application Platform provide availability that is equal to or superior to what we experienced on the mainframe. Scott Bigalla, Principal Infrastructure Architect, QR Limited quickly on the Microsoft Application Platform than they did on the mainframe, says Robinson. We found that in many cases we were seeing an 8-to-1 reduction in batch processing time. We were a bit surprised. We really weren t expecting such huge performance increases, but we are delighted to see them. High Availability To help ensure high availability, QR deployed its SAP ERP applications and database using the Majority Node Set (MNS) cluster feature of Windows Server 2003 to deploy a geocluster configuration to enhance disaster recovery efforts. With an MNS cluster, each node maintains a local copy of the quorum device data, and the cluster service ensures that the cluster configuration data is kept consistent across each cluster node. With MNS, each cluster can support up to 8 nodes per cluster using Windows Server 2003, and up to 16 nodes per cluster using Windows Server 2008. QR uses the tie-breaker feature of Windows Server 2003, which makes use of a file share that is external to the cluster as an additional vote, to determine the status of the cluster in a two-node MNS quorum cluster deployment. In case of a node failure, file share witness designates the surviving cluster node. The company has been impressed with the high availability of SAP hosted on SQL Server and the geocluster. SQL Server 2005 has performed perfectly for us, Robinson says. We ve had no unscheduled downtime, and we ve found that SQL Server is easier to manage than was our legacy system, so our need for scheduled downtime has been reduced. clustering, says Bigalla. We did performance testing and fail-over testing. We even simulated pulling the power cord out of the back of a server. SQL Server and the rest of the Microsoft Application Platform provide availability that is equal to or superior to what we experienced on the mainframe. Using MNS to support a geocluster solution that links data centers several miles apart has given QR the high availability security of having a disaster recovery infrastructure that is always ready to go. We now have a hot DR solution, says Robinson. With our mainframe, disaster recovery would have been cold. Our data was protected, but it would have taken many hours to bring up the new site had we ever had to use it. DR on the mainframe is one-way, meaning that failing over can be done, but failing back is a major operation. This contrasts with the MNS, which in addition to DR, makes life easier for QR database administrators. We use our clusters to roll out software updates and security fixes, says Robinson. We can make sure the new code is running properly on one node, and then fail over to it and update the next node. This reduces the need for scheduled downtime while protecting the integrity of the system. ROI of Less Than 4 Months QR Limited is delighted with the savings it has enjoyed since moving SAP from the mainframe to the Windows Application Platform. Robinson estimates that, had the company kept all SAP applications and databases on the mainframe, it would have required additional mainframe capacity that he estimates would have cost about $100,000 a month. Prior to migration, QR tested the Microsoft Application Platform for availability. We performed extensive testing on SQL Server and our Microsoft Majority Node Set The Dell servers we used to replace the mainframe with a cluster cost less than half our projected monthly savings, including the service contract, says Robinson. We are
We were surprised with how smoothly the migration went. Tim Robinson, SAP Basis Manager, QR Limited also saving licensing costs for third-party applications that we used to require as part of our mainframe solution. This means we were able to pay for the entire migration to SQL Server hardware included in just a matter of weeks from our mainframe savings. QR s largest expense was new disk capacity for the Open systems environment. However, the disk that was used on the mainframe has been freed up for other applications both on the mainframe and on the Open systems environment. So there is a net zero change in disk usage for the SAP installation, says Robinson The savings weren t immediate, but as large resource-intensive projects came on line, the savings have been progressive and steady. This is expected to continue as there are still many projects in the pipeline at QR. We project our return on investment at less than four months. Additional savings are coming from Microsoft pricing policies that are based on the number of processor sockets, not processor cores, as is the case with other database vendors including Oracle and DB2. Moving off the mainframe and DB2 has also helped the company take full advantage of its substantial Windows and SQL Server skill sets. It was harder and harder to find the skill sets we needed to support SAP on the mainframe, says Bigalla. We already have great talent on staff when it comes to Windows and SQL Server. We had a SAP-certified consultant on hand for the migration, just to make sure all went well, but there were no surprises, says Robinson. It was quite an easy deployment, and was completed within 24 hours. The only problem the team encountered was that they needed to remove some code that some years earlier ABAP programmers had been forced to create in order to work around bugs in the mainframe porting layer to facilitate reporting. These statements were quickly identified and recoded into standard supportable SAP ABAP, Robinson says. Apart from that we did a couple of hours reconciliation testing, and then a few hours of additional testing, but then we were done. We were surprised with how smoothly the migration went. Only minimal tuning was required after going live on SQL Server. We only added three indexes two for projects and one for HR modules, says Robinson. The tuning effort by the Basis team has been reduced on an ongoing basis as the mainframe was quite high-maintenance due to the restrictions of capping. The migration team at QR had high praise for the ease of use and completeness of the SAP migration tools. SAP provides fast and effective migration tools that are fully documented, safe, and easy to use, says Robinson. And the tools are fully supported by SAP. Ease of Migration Migrating SAP applications and databases from the mainframe to the Microsoft Application Platform turned out to be easier than QR Limited had anticipated. The company allocated a weekend for the migration, but required only about half that time. Easier System Refreshes System refreshes are easier with the Microsoft Application Platform than they were with the QR Limited s mainframe environment. Regular system refreshes or system refreshes from production to test environments were complex and time consuming on the mainframe, says Robinson. It was both difficult and expensive to create a test system to allow business
For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about QR Limited products and services, visit the Web site at: www.qr.com.au users to try new SAP functionality or test SAP support packs. System refreshes are much easier with SAP hosted on the Microsoft Application Platform. Summary In summary, QR Limited has found it could reduce costs while enhancing performance and high availability by moving its SAP infrastructure from a mainframe and DB2 environment to the Microsoft Application Platform running on commodity servers. Microsoft Server Product Portfolio For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to: www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is comprehensive, integrated data management and analysis software that enables organizations to reliably manage missioncritical information and confidently run today s increasingly complex business applications. By providing high availability, security enhancements, and embedded reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps companies gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage. And, because it s part of the Microsoft server product portfolio, SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments. For more information about SQL Server 2005, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for 64-Bit Systems with Service Pack 2 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) with Service Pack 2 Hardware Dell PowerEdge 6950 server computers, each with 4 dual-core AMD processors and 64 GB of RAM Partners Dell AMD This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published December 2008