Writing this blog for SAP Technical team to make them part of Green IT initiative of their organization.
Green IT, which is referenced as green computing and the main aim is to reduce the impact of IT on environment.
SAP Landscape :
SAP applications are used for Enterprise Resource Planning which manage all areas of business operations like Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Record to Report, Quote to Cash , Hire to Retire, Make to Order (MTO), Make to Stock (MTS) etc … Based on the uses the of SAP applications the SAP system is designed and resources are allocated to the server.
Below is the example of T-shirt sizes for HANA Appliance, the sizes are not defined by SAP but it is used by the end while recommending the resource requirement.
Real Issues which were identified:
- Servers remain fully Powered on nights, weekends and even days when it is not in use.
- Huge amount of electricity needed to power and cool the data centre.
- Lot of Carbon dioxide emissions generated by cooling devices and during Power generation.
Keeping in mind GREEN IT initiative and to make the environment more sustainable by reducing the infrastructure cost following actions should be taken by SAP Technical Team:
Step 1: Categories all the systems / Serves into three categories:
Example: S/4HANA landscape is having below systems and based on the uses we can categories them as follows:
Step 2: Define the Stop and Start process of application and servers.
Pay-as-you-Go Model: If the charges are Consumption based in that case the servers identified as on demand are kept in shutdown status and the server identified as weekly shutdown the technical team can shut down on Friday’s late evening and brought them up on Monday early morning.
Monthly Charges: If the server charges is based on the actual resource attached and the charges will be on prorated, technical team can follow two-step process for on demand and Weekly shutdown servers:
Before shutting down the server they
Reducing the resource will reduce the monthly charges and the Hardware Partner will charge prorated basis only.
Starting the Application:
Precaution: Since most of the clients are migrated or migrating their SAP landscape into Cloud, only precaution should be taken is that when you are shutting down the server, the resources are released and go into the common pool. When you are bringing up the application again the pool should have sufficient resources which can be assign back to the server.
Inching towards Green IT:
The substantial electricity use of data canters give rise to concerns over their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
By following the above twostep process by SAP technical teams will take a small step towards the Green IT initiative which not only save Infrastructure cost, also helped in reducing significant amount of electricity consumption by the servers.
The above two steps process can either be automated or using the SAP Landscape Management Cloud can help in performing the tasks.
Kindly give me feedback about my Green IT initiative and if any one has other ideas please share.
Green IT, which is referenced as green computing and the main aim is to reduce the impact of IT on environment.
| How to achieve? | Making Computing devices more energy efficient . |
| Build using non harming material | |
| Easily disassemble and recycle | |
| Promoting renewable energy to power the IT infrastructure. | |
| Optimum use of IT Infrastructure | |
| IT systems to Improve business sustainability. |
SAP Landscape :
SAP applications are used for Enterprise Resource Planning which manage all areas of business operations like Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Record to Report, Quote to Cash , Hire to Retire, Make to Order (MTO), Make to Stock (MTS) etc … Based on the uses the of SAP applications the SAP system is designed and resources are allocated to the server.
Below is the example of T-shirt sizes for HANA Appliance, the sizes are not defined by SAP but it is used by the end while recommending the resource requirement.
| SAP T-Shirt Size | XS | S | M | L | XL | XXL |
| Server Memory | 128 GB | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 GB | 2 TB | 4 TB |
| CPU's | 2 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Data Volume (SSD) | 1TB | 1 TB | 2 TB | 5 TB | 10 TB | 20 TB |
Real Issues which were identified:
- Servers remain fully Powered on nights, weekends and even days when it is not in use.
- Huge amount of electricity needed to power and cool the data centre.
- Lot of Carbon dioxide emissions generated by cooling devices and during Power generation.
Keeping in mind GREEN IT initiative and to make the environment more sustainable by reducing the infrastructure cost following actions should be taken by SAP Technical Team:
Step 1: Categories all the systems / Serves into three categories:
- Always Running – Application is used by end users 24X7. Ex. Production Systems
- Weekly Shutdown – The servers which is mostly used during weekdays. Ex Development, Sandbox, Quality Systems.
- On Demand – The Solution which is ready and use only for demonstration purpose, those servers are kept shutdown and brought up only when the deo is planned. Ex. Test Systems, Training Systems etc …
Example: S/4HANA landscape is having below systems and based on the uses we can categories them as follows:
| System Uses | Category |
| Sandbox | Weekly Shutdown |
| Test | On Demand |
| Development | Weekly Shutdown |
| Quality | Weekly Shutdown |
| Production (HA Environment) | Always On |
| Training | On Demand |
Step 2: Define the Stop and Start process of application and servers.
Pay-as-you-Go Model: If the charges are Consumption based in that case the servers identified as on demand are kept in shutdown status and the server identified as weekly shutdown the technical team can shut down on Friday’s late evening and brought them up on Monday early morning.
Monthly Charges: If the server charges is based on the actual resource attached and the charges will be on prorated, technical team can follow two-step process for on demand and Weekly shutdown servers:
Before shutting down the server they
- Stop the SAP application and database on the server.
- Reduce the resources of the server from cloud console, changing the CPU core and RAM as minimum as possible.
- Shutdown the server.
Reducing the resource will reduce the monthly charges and the Hardware Partner will charge prorated basis only.
Starting the Application:
- Bring up the Server using Console.
- Increase the resources similar like it were before.
- Start the application.
Precaution: Since most of the clients are migrated or migrating their SAP landscape into Cloud, only precaution should be taken is that when you are shutting down the server, the resources are released and go into the common pool. When you are bringing up the application again the pool should have sufficient resources which can be assign back to the server.
Inching towards Green IT:
The substantial electricity use of data canters give rise to concerns over their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
By following the above twostep process by SAP technical teams will take a small step towards the Green IT initiative which not only save Infrastructure cost, also helped in reducing significant amount of electricity consumption by the servers.
The above two steps process can either be automated or using the SAP Landscape Management Cloud can help in performing the tasks.
Kindly give me feedback about my Green IT initiative and if any one has other ideas please share.
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