1. we know
they know
Klinikum Chemnitz cuts SAP infrastructure
investment costs by 20 percent
Overview
 The Challenge storage system to a SAN based on  Key Solution Components
Older infrastructure for SAP IBM System Storage DS4000 disk Industry: Healthcare
applications at Klinikum Chemnitz systems. Data management was Applications: SAP® ERP® including
presented a serious business risk, rationalized by standardizing on core financials, asset management,
with database and application IBM DB2, with IBM Tivoli Storage materials management and sales
servers that were not protected Manager for automated backup, and distribution components,
adequately against failure. The archive and restore services SAP for Healthcare solution, SAP
systems had reached the limits of NetWeaver® Business Warehouse
their capacity, and could not be  The Benefits Hardware: IBM ® Power Systems™
extended further. The eight physical Reduced initial investment costs by p5-570 and p5-550, IBM System
servers in the SAP environment 20 percent and cut operating costs Storage® DS4000 systems, IBM
were costly to support, maintain and by 10 percent with a shared System Storage SAN32B-3
administer. infrastructure, using IBM PowerVM (32-port 4GB SAN Switch), IBM
to support multiple virtual servers System Storage TS3310 Tape
 The Solution on each p570 server. Reduced user Library
Working closely with Klinikum response times by 35 to 40 percent Software: IBM AIX®, IBM DB2®, IBM
Mittleres Erzgebirge GmbH, in dialogue mode and by a factor of Tivoli® Storage Manager
Klinikum Chemnitz chose four or five in batch mode. Cut Services: PROFI, an IBM Premier
to consolidate to a shared system recovery time in case of Business Partner
infrastructure for SAP applications, component failure from one day to
using virtualization to reduce from around 10 minutes. Reduced time
eight HP servers to two IBM Power for complete data recovery in case
Systems servers. Data storage of disaster from one day to around
was moved from an isolated RAID two hours.

2. The Klinikum Mittleres Erzgebirge not able to extend capacity further. The eight HP servers were replaced
(KME) and Klinikum Chemnitz operate The whole system architecture was by two IBM Power Systems p5-570
several locally owned hospitals outdated and the performance was servers, running the complete
in the Saxony region of Germany. not meeting the business needs. KME production SAP application landscape
KME possesses about 450 beds was experiencing similar issues, and for both organizations. Two IBM
and employs some 700 clinical and had updated its IT infrastructure with p5-550 servers support the other SAP
non-clinical staff, with hospitals help of the latest IBM technology applications, such as development or
in Zschopau and Olbernhau. The in 2006. We therefore decided to consolidation systems. Virtual servers
Klinikum Chemnitz group is one of the leverage the synergetic potentials and provide separate environments for the
largest hospitals in Germany, running start creating a combined solution in various SAP instances and the DB2
a 1,790-bed hospital with 15 clinics, a cooperative project between both databases. Some 800 users at KME
and employing more than 4,000 organizations.” and about 1,700 users at Chemnitz
people. access the SAP applications, with 600
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Olaf Schlimpert, concurrent users continually using the
All significant business, financial and CEO of MidGerman Health GmbH production systems.
patient administration processes Medizininformatik, the IT service
across the combined group are provider for Klinikum Chemnitz, “We wanted to create an economically
handled by SAP applications, using comments, “It is costly and time- advantageous solution,” says Dr
the SAP for Healthcare solution. consuming to run dedicated servers Stefan Förster. “What we found
The core data needs to be always for each information system, and really interesting regarding the IBM
available, and, because requirements some of the servers were not being system architecture was the PowerVM
are continually changing, the system actively maintained. We only had one virtualization technology. PowerVM
needs to be able to grow and adapt database server, which had reached allows you to run several systems
to new demands. All shared systems the limits of its expansion, and a total within a single machine, even using
infrastructure was hosted by Klinikum failure would have caused a data different operating systems, and
Mittleres Erzgebirge at its Zschopau outage of up to 24 hours. We were also with fine-grained logical partitioning
location. running several operating systems, features. That was a big wow factor for
including TRU64, and 32- and 64-bit us, and it was clear that virtualization
Dr.-Ing. Stefan Förster, Head of Linux, which further complicated would help us meet our objectives.
Medical Informatics at KME, explains, maintenance.”
“The Chemnitz system was operating “The former monolithic systems were
at its absolute limits, and we were Possible routes to lower costs dedicated to specific tasks, with
To meet the twin challenges of specific RAID storage systems in each
availability and scalability, a team machine. We had reached the point
“PowerVM allows you to
was formed including IT staff from where we simply could not extend
run several systems
both organizations, led by Dr. the systems in this direction any
within a single Förster. The team examined two further cost-effectively. The new IBM
machine, even using possible approaches: deploy new architecture has taken us to another
different operating server infrastructure at Chemnitz, or level of overall performance and
consolidate and extend the systems system flexibility.”
systems, and with fine-
at Zschopau. The ambition was to
grained logical
introduce resilient systems, reduce “Virtualization allows us to assign
partitioning features. operating costs, and implement capacities automatically, use dynamic
That was a big wow scalable systems that would enable load balancing, share virtual I/O
factor for us, and it was continued expansion. After an devices and adapters, all of which
intensive study covering technical help us to reduce costs and makes IT
clear that virtualization
feasibility and cost-efficiency, the services management more efficient.
would help us meet our
consolidation option was selected, The Micro-Partitioning facility allows us
objectives.” offering hardware investment cost to assign tenths and even hundredths
savings of around 20 percent and of CPU capacity to a virtual server,
Dr.-Ing. Stefan Förster
Head of Medical Informatics
operating cost savings of around 10 dynamically with or without limits,
KME percent annually. so that the server always consumes

3. what it currently needs. That’s a very In 2005, KME had reviewed its “We measured and
smart solution and a highlight for us! database strategy, and selected compared database
The technical advantages translate IBM DB2 for SAP applications as the
solutions, and DB2 was
directly into business benefits, which group-wide standard. A combination
convinced us to decide for IBM.” of superior performance and lower
better than other
licensing costs for SAP applications systems, not only in
Olaf Schlimpert adds, “The IBM made DB2 the right choice for KME. terms of performance
solution provides some new Klinikum Chemnitz chose to migrate metrics, but also
possibilities not previously available. from its existing Oracle database
concerning handling
In the old set-up we needed to platform to DB2 for the same reasons,
buy new hardware and install which would also ensure a uniform
and management of
application servers or whatever and simplified landscape for the backups and costs.”
was needed – now by virtualization combined operations.
Dr.-Ing. Stefan Förster
this is rarely necessary, so we can
Head of Medical Informatics
provide new systems faster and “We wanted to run one, consistent, KME
more cost-effectively. The bottom database environment, which would
line is high investment protection reduce workload and make it easier
over the next years. Additionally, this to integrate tasks such as backup cost-efficient backup processes that
is a more elegant solution: adding across all systems. We measured and provide operational flexibility.
applications and servers does not add compared database solutions, and
to complexity, which helps restrain DB2 was better than other enterprise- “We selected IBM Tivoli Storage
administration and maintenance costs, class systems we considered, not Manager to provide incremental
too.” only in terms of performance metrics, backups for all SAP and other
but also concerning handling and critical data,” says Stefan Förster. “
Improving data management management of backups and costs. The IBM Tivoli solution reduces our
During the evaluation and Database systems differ substantially administrative overhead for data
implementation project, the team also from each other when it comes to backup significantly, enables fast and
considered data management. It was maintenance, and we found that DB2 reliable backup and recovery of data,
vital to ensure that data was always offers significant cost savings here,” and provides greater reassurance that
available, and that a suitable disaster says Stefan Förster. business-critical information is being
recovery service was in place. safeguarded at all times.”
“Additionally, the DB2 licensing
“At the time, SAN technology was arrangements for SAP applications Though backups were completed
new to us,” says Stefan Förster. “We provide very attractive price points every day, the previous solution was
replaced the single RAID backup- and lower costs than competitor vulnerable to server failure. The worst-
managed, vulnerable database offerings, with a better cost- case scenario would have been loss of
server with a SAN based on IBM performance ratio. a full day’s data, with restore times of
System Storage DS4000 systems that several hours. To mitigate this risk, the
would ensure that data was reliably Ensuring high availability new IBM servers are clustered using
accessible, and introduced data Klinikum Mittlere Erzgebirge IBM PowerHA. In the case of server
mirroring that would ensure continuity implemented IBM Tivoli Storage failure, workload is automatically
even if a specific storage device Manager Solutions across its entire transferred to available servers for
became unavailable.” SAP and non-SAP application continuous operation.
environment, yielding fast and
Two storage servers at different flexible backup, recovery and “Fortunately, we have never
locations have been deployed, with archiving processes. Resource experienced a major hardware failure,
data automatically and continuously utilization can be optimized by and SAP applications have only
mirrored to both locations. This balancing workload between storage been unavailable during planned
arrangement has eliminated the single subsystems. By deploying IBM Tivoli maintenance,” says Stefan Förster.
point of failure, and ensures data is Storage Manager, Klinikum Mittleres “SAP application availability on the
always available for the critical patient Ergebirge has minimized system IBM Power Systems servers has been
and administration systems. downtime and implemented simple, better than 99.8 percent – or 99.9

4. percent if you exclude maintenance PowerVM virtualization technologies,
windows. With PowerHA clustering, total energy consumption has
and the data mirrored to the remote been significantly reduced. The
IBM Deutschland GmbH
DS4000 systems, we expect SAP dedicated RAID arrays in the previous D-70548 Stuttgart
application availability to become standalone servers have been ibm.com/solutions/sap
near-continuous. replaced by the DS4000 storage IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, AIX, DB2, Power
Systems, System Storage and Tivoli are
systems, which allows total storage trademarks of International Business Machines
“PowerHA monitors the systems space to be allocated more efficiently Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions
worldwide. A current list of other IBM trademarks
continuously and disaster recovery is and the energy-hungry RAID systems is available on the Web at “Copyright and
automated, responding automatically to be eliminated. trademark information” at http://www.ibm.com/
legal/copytrade.shtml
to different breakdown scenarios
Intel, the Intel logo, Intel Xeon and the Intel Xeon
and moving applications from one Common infrastructure – better results logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of
system to the other. We operate two The new IBM infrastructure is Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other countries. UNIX is a registered
p570 systems in the cluster and all delivering straight performance trademark of The Open Group in the United
production SAP systems run on these improvements when compared with States and other countries. Linux is a trademark
of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other
machines. In a breakdown scenario, the former solution, and reduced countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows, Windows
perhaps when a hardware component response times are leading to NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other
fails, the affected systems move to increased user satisfaction and rapid countries, or both.
the second machine with no manual user acceptance. Other company, product or service names may
intervention. After 10 minutes the be trademarks, or service marks of others.
systems are back online. Stefan Förster comments, “The This case study illustrates how one IBM
customer uses IBM and/or IBM Business Partner
common infrastructure for the technologies/services. Many factors have
“It is well known that server failures hospitals leads to ease of IT contributed to the results and benefits
described. IBM does not guarantee comparable
tend to happen out of hours or during management, for example through results. All information contained herein was
vacations – yet with PowerHA we joint release updates and software provided by the featured customer and/or IBM
Business Partner. IBM does not attest to its
remove the burden from our standby patches. Previously, these tasks accuracy. All customer examples cited represent
staff, which saves costs and allows and services were duplicated, how some customers have used IBM products
and the results they may have achieved. Actual
us to devote time to more proactive whereas now we have the option to environmental costs and performance
tasks.” plan and execute upgrades or the characteristics will vary depending on individual
customer configurations and conditions.
implementation of new features across
This publication is for general guidance only.
Excellent project management all business units, reducing the cost of Photographs may show design models.
Under EU rules, the implementation operation. The next joint task of our IT © Copyright IBM Corp. 2009. All rights reserved.
project was offered for public tender, departments will be to migrate to the
which was won by IBM Business latest release – SAP ERP 6.0.”
Partner PROFI.
He concludes: “The new IBM
“PROFI completed the hardware infrastructure has given us the
implementation promptly and on time, capacity, performance and availability © Copyright 2009 SAP AG
SAP AG
with a very smooth set up, integration to complete a number of consolidation Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16
and migration of the production projects successfully. The bottom line D-69190 Walldorf
systems to the new platform, and we is that we are very satisfied with the SAP, the SAP logo, SAP and all other SAP
products and services mentioned herein are
were very satisfied with their work. actions and tasks delivered by both trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG
IBM completed implementation of the PROFI and IBM.” in Germany and several other countries.
SAP applications and DB2 migration,
again a very satisfactory service,” says
Stefan Förster.
A spin-off benefit of the program
has been reduced power costs. By
consolidating its infrastructure to a
smaller number of more powerful
IBM Power Systems servers using
SPC03095-DEEN-00 (March 2009)