I read through 1 of the blogger post and found that the Novell SUSE Linux and VMWare vSphere 4 will be sell as a bundle if you purchase your software licenses for VMware vSphere 4 after June 2010. In order to utilize Novell SUSE Linux, you will require to purchase the software licenses as well as support contract to get the Novell support on both physical and virtual environment. VMware try to bundle the Novell SUSE Linux Software Licenses with the vSphere 4 now, which meant you will be licensed to install Novell SUSE Linux as the VM guest in every CPU that been licensed for VMware vSphere 4.  One key thing that you need to delve into the announcement to find is that the free SLES is unsupported. You get upgrades, but not support. VMware will offer extra-cost support for SLES  in due course.  VMware will also build all its own virtual appliances on SLES as part of the deal.

Please find the full blog post from here.

It also support the P2V conversion process for Windows Server 2008. VM converter version 4 do support for converting new third-party image formats, including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft.

VMware Converter 4 Beta

Click here if you do not have a VMware account

SAP always have their internal certify program which certify from software to hardware level to ensure their users are compliance with the application requirement for the SAP deployment. You will see a big range of choice you can choose from the certify list from Unix, Linux to Windows as an example. On my case, we choose Novell SUSE Linux as we have a good relation with Novell which require minimum amount of software subscription to run our environment. At the same time, the latest version of SAP are recommended to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 64 bits with MaxDB 7.5. SUSE Linux 10 is perform as you need on VMware. The support from Novell and VMware both are committed to the VM which run the SUSE Linux. This had been the important point of why I am choosing SuSE linux over the rest of the operating system available.

Now we talk about the VM with SAP, I started with the environment in DR for our SAP. Our DR today are fully virtualized with the ESX machines we have and commission with the EMC SAN storage for our DR purpose. If I would have to stick with physical servers, I may require to purchase 10 units of physical server and the operating cost VS single ESX server we have today is too high. We run the DR SAP with RDM (Raw Device Mapping) to ensure in disaster cases, we will have the performance require to handle the production. Although we lose the features, but it is fine as DR doesn’t active most of the time. To run SAP on DR with VM, my experience can tell is absolutely workable.

Now we go to production, to fully virtualize the entire SAP, it only able to happen if the environment is very small. We currently virtualize the Apps server on SAP to our VM. VMware provide HA/DRS which is the features we need for our production. Beside that, we can also easily increase the amount of apps server to support the business requirement during the quater or month end closing. Front end on VM is just absolutely right choice for us to reduce the amount of server we require. We are currently looking at the DB servers to further analyze the possibilities for virtualize. 8 Vcpu per VM is on the way, and that will be another opportunitties for us to virtualize more DB servers. 6 cores processors is out, and it provide the processing power require by the virtualization, and I am strongly believe VM is a must for every DC today, and virtualize mission critical DB no longer a dream.