Managing Serviceguard Extension for SAP, December 2007

Understanding Serviceguard Extension for SAP
Designing SGeSAP Cluster Scenarios
Chapter 1 15
Designing SGeSAP Cluster Scenarios
SAP applications can be divided into one or more distinct software
components. Most of these components share a common technology layer,
the SAP Application Server (SAPWAS). The SAP Application Server is
the central building block of the SAP Netweaver technology. Each
Application Server implementation comes with a characteristic set of
software Single Points of Failure. These will become installed across the
cluster hardware according to several high availability considerations
and off-topic constraints, resulting in an individual configuration
recommendation.
There are various publications available from SAP and third parties that
describe the software components used by SAP applications in more
detail. It is recommended to refer to these documents to get a basic
familiarity before continuing to read. It is also recommended to
familiarize with Serviceguard clustering and virtualization by reading
the Serviceguard product manual “Managing Serviceguard”, eleventh
edition or higher. The latest version can always be found at
http://docs.hp.com/en/ha.html#Serviceguard.
Each software Single Point of Failure defines a SGeSAP package type.
SGeSAP follows a consistent naming convention for these package types.
The naming conventions were created to be independent of SAP software
release versions. This allows to use a similar approach for each SPOF,
regardless of whether it appears in the latest SAP Netweaver stack or a
SAP software that was released before the first design of SAP
Application Server. Older SAP components sometimes only support a
subset of the available clustering options.