What This Chapter Is About

To explain the requirements of high-performance data infrastructures so that even those not considered specialists could benefit, we will first explain some of the technology basics that may seem self-evident to networkers. A discussion of the famous OSI seven-layer networking model, however, will be avoided as much as possible. Instead, the pros and cons of the available networking technologies will be discussed and recommendations will be made with respect to SAP systems. Rather than present a complete network tuning methodology, which is beyond the scope of this book, our intention is to provide basic information on some widely applicable techniques for optimizing applications like mySAP.com, deployed over networks. With special focus on high availability, we will also discuss some side areas that may be of interest even to experienced network professionals. This includes topics like cabling and building equipment, down to grounding and lightning protection. Also here, the principles will first be highlighted in order to make the recommendations for the successful operation of mission-critical client/server applications like SAP.

As with the computing and storage infrastructure topics, the following chapters present the SAP network infrastructure with respect to performance (response time), total cost of ownership (TCO), and ability to support mission-critical applications (availability). In addition, the various factors influencing network response time are presented, as well as some solutions to improve the response times. This particular chapter covers the characteristics of SAP network traffic. In addition, estimates of network load caused by the mySAP.com components like Business Information Warehouse (BW) and Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) are discussed. The formulas shown in this chapter, however, are only intended to demonstrate the relationship between the parameters. In the chapters following, the demand SAP applications place on the different parts of a network infrastructure is discussed in detail.