Quanta Computer Gains 80 Percent Data Compression for SAP with SQL Server 2008

Overview “Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking Country or Region: Taiwan advantage of the Data Compression feature has Industry: High-tech and electronics manufacturing enabled us to extend the useful life of our SANs. We are seeing data compression in excess of 80 percent.” Customer Profile Established in 1988, Quanta Computer is TJ Fang, Chief Information Officer, Quanta Computer the world’s largest original design manufacturer of laptop computers. The Quanta Computer has a global workforce of 30,000 generating Taiwan-based Fortune 500 Company has more than 30,000 employees. annual revenue of U.S.$25 billion as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of laptop computers and other computing Business Situation Quanta Computer needed a compression devices for the biggest names in the industry ranging from solution to help it keep pace with its SAP Apple iPods to notebooks, laptops, and other devices for Dell, database that was growing at a rate of half a terabyte per month. HP, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and other pillars of the computing industry. With its SAP database supporting its global operations Solution The company upgraded to Microsoft® growing by more than half a terabyte a month, Quanta needed SQL Server® 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) to either replace its SAN infrastructure or find a compression database software and took advantage of the new SQL Server Data Compression solution. The company upgraded to Microsoft® SQL Server® and Backup Compression features. 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) to take advantage of new SQL Server

Benefits compression technology. SQL Server 2008 Database  Up to 87 percent data compression Compression has reduced some tables by as much as 90  Compression performed online  85 percent backup compression percent, while SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression has  Ease of upgrading to SQL Server 2008 provided compression of 85 percent.

Fast Facts client. The project, called 3:1, involved SAP database size prior to compression 8.0 terabytes total size (7.4TB used) upgrading the existing SAP 4.6C system to SAP ECC 6.0 and converting from non- SAP database size saved with compression > 7TB Unicode Asian character set to Unicode to (after first 6 tables compressed) fully support all Asian languages. The new SAP ACCTIT table prior to compression 211 GB centralized SAP infrastructure included a SAP ACCTIT table after compression 26 GB single instance of SQL Server 2005 SAP COSP table prior to compression 462 GB Enterprise Edition (64-bit) hosted on an HP Integrity Superdome computer with 64 SAP COSP table after compression 89 GB dual-core processors and 256 gigabytes Backup compression rate 86 percent (GB) of RAM.

Situation The SAP Application Servers are hosted on 24 blade servers each with 2 Quad core Quanta Computer generates annual Intel Nehalem CPU with 32 GB RAM revenue of U.S.$25 billion as one of the running the Windows Server 2008 world’s largest manufacturers of laptop Enterprise for 64-Bit Systems operating computers. The company is also one of the system. Storage is on a HP EVA 8400 world’s most respected organizations, storage area network (SAN) and SQL Server ranked 12th on “2008 World’s Most Log Shipping for Database replication. Admired Companies” by Fortune Magazine.

The solution went live in July of 2008 and Based in Taiwan, the Fortune 500 Company was considered a complete success, with has a global logistics network that includes the infrastructure supporting a peak of 8.0 more than 30,000 employees, who work million SAP dialog steps per day with an together to design, develop, and average total response time of half a manufacture high-value products and second. solutions for global brands including ACER, Apple (including the iPod), Cisco, Compaq, As part of the 3:1 project the original 5- Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. terabyte SAP database was reduced to less than 1 terabyte by archiving historical data, Managing such a large global operation and only moving master data to the new requires an enterprise-grade IT system. The company generates so much infrastructure including a powerful business, though, and tracks so many enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. products, that by the end of 2008 the SAP Quanta has long run its entire business database had already grown to 4 terabytes, using the Microsoft® Application Platform, including 660 GBs of growth in just and for ERP uses SAP running on Microsoft December 2009. SQL Server® 2005 database software and the Windows Server® 2003 operating Looking at SAP database growth of more system. The Quanta PTC Windchill PLM than half a terabyte a month, the company system has also been standardized on SQL was rapidly running out of SAN space. “Our Server. transaction volume and business requirements mean we have to keep a lot In 2007 Quanta began a program to of data online rather than archived,” says TJ consolidate its three largest SAP instances Fang, Chief Information Officer at Quanta into a single SAP instance and a single SAP Computer. “Our SAP database growth rate meant we had only a matter of months Impressed by what it saw, Quanta decided until our SAN storage would need to be on upgrading to take advantage of upgraded or replaced. We needed to find a compression. The upgrade to SQL Server solution.” 2008 was performed with just four hours of scheduled downtime. Table compression Solution was performed online, with no discernable Quanta found its solution by upgrading to impact on processing resources. SQL Server 2008 to take advantage of new data compression features. Quanta worked For high availability, the SQL Server 2008 with Microsoft SQL Server Development instance supporting the SAP database was resources deployed in the Asia region and deployed using Windows Server 2008 Microsoft Taiwan Premier team to gain the Failover Clustering technology to create a confidence that the Data Compression and two-node active/passive cluster using two Backup Compression features of SQL Server HP Integrity Superdome computers, each 2008 were enterprise-ready for its global with 64 processors and 256 GB of RAM. operations. As part of its research, Quanta In addition Quanta have deployed SQL looked at how Microsoft has benefitted 2008 Log Shipping with a delay interval to from using SQL Server 2008 Data protect their system against logical Compression with the 6-terabyte SAP application level corruption. instance used for Microsoft’s global operations. Looking ahead, the company is planning to use SQL Mirroring to have a real time Global – Quanta Computer creates a replica of the production database and Log world of computing products. Shipping possibly at a different site in Taiwan or abroad with a 24 hour delay behind the production system. In addition Quanta will soon upgrade to SQL 2008 R2 in order to gain extra compression on Unicode data with UCS-2 compression built into SQL 2008 R2.

Benefits Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (64-bit) has enabled Quanta Computer to gain up to 90 percent data compression on some of its largest tables while enjoying the uptime enabled by online compression. The company has found 85 percent backup compression. An additional benefit has been the ease of upgrading to SQL Server 2008.

Up to 90 Percent Data Compression Quanta Computer has been impressed by the compression it has seen since upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking advantage of the Data Compression Compression Rates feature. SQL Server 2008 Data Compression that the extreme efficiency of the Table Compression keeps data pages compressed in the data compression algorithms meant there was buffer effectively caching more data and very little impact on processors during COSP 80 percent reducing disk IO, contributing to faster compression so production work wasn’t GLPCA 89 percent response times. adversely impacted. COEP 87 percent RESB 90 percent Quanta uses SQL Server 2008 page “With SQL Server 2008, the data compression, which stores a repeating compression runs in the background, while ACCTIT 87 percent value only once per page and sets a pointer users continue to access the information,” MSEG 87 percent from the respective columns within the says Fang. “There is only a minor, virtually FAGLFLEXA 88 percent page. Using page compression, the undetectable, performance hit from BSIS 90 percent company’s SAP ACCTIT table was compressing tables online. Because compressed from 211 GB to 26 GB. The compression enables us to have more data COSB 84 percent SAP COSP table was compressed from 462 in cache, overall performance has actually GLFUNCA 89 percent GB to 89 GB. been improved.”

By the time Quanta had upgraded to SQL 85 Percent Backup Compression Server 2008, its SAP database had grown to Quanta Computer is using the Backup more than 5 terabytes. By using page Compression feature of SQL Server 2008 to compression on the top 200 tables in its save additional resources and to simplify system, Quanta was able to save more than database maintenance. The company 7 terabytes in space while at the same time reports backup compression rates of about maintaining a 500 millisecond dialog 85 percent. response time. The performance impact of SQL 2008 page compression is hardly With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, noticeable with modern powerful Intel the compression is performed in memory hardware. The entire table compression before the data is transferred to disk. process is fully online and does not Backups run significantly faster since less adversely impact performance while a table disk I/O is required. Backup compression is being compressed. reduces the storage required to keep backups online, reducing the overall cost of “Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 and taking keeping disk-based backups. advantage of the Data Compression feature has enabled us to extend the useful life of “The backup compression rates we’re our SANs,” says Fang. “We are seeing data seeing from SQL Server 2008, which are compression in excess of 80 percent, in about 8.5 to 1, are significantly reducing some cases up to 90 percent. Upgrading to the time required to perform backups, as SQL Server 2008 was far faster, cheaper, well as the size of the backup image,” notes and easier to implement than a SAN Fang. upgrade would have been.” Ease of Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Compression Performed Online Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 was easy for Quanta Computer was relieved to find that Quanta Computer, as was taking advantage the Data Compression feature of SQL of the Data Compression and Backup Server 2008 works while the database is Compression features. The SQL 2008 online, and doesn’t require downtime or upgrade required only 4 hours of locking. Additionally the company found downtime. For More Information Windows Server 2008, SQL For more information about Microsoft “Migrating SAP from SQL Server 2005 to Server 2008, and Visual Studio products and services, call the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was very easy to do,” says 2008 Sales Information Center at (800) 426- Fang. “We required less than four hours of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft downtime. For our operations, it was easily and Visual Studio 2008 provide a secure Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- worth upgrading to SQL Server 2008 just to and trusted foundation for creating and 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- take advantage of the new compression running your most demanding applications. of-hearing can reach Microsoft text technology. It was also simple to Combined, the products offer advanced telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) implement data compression once up on security technology, developer support for 892-5234 in the United States or (905) SQL Server 2008.” the latest platforms, improved 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 management and Web tools, flexible United States and Canada, please contact SAP-AG in Germany quickly supported SQL virtualization technology to optimize your your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access 2008 and both Windows 2008 and SQL infrastructure, and access to relevant information using the World Wide Web, Server 2008 are General Availability for all information throughout your organization. go to: www.microsoft.com SAP customers. For more information about Windows For more information about Quanta Summary Server 2008, go to: Computer products and services, visit the In summary, Quanta Computer was able to www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008 Web site at: www.quantatw.com achieve compression rates of up to 90 percent by upgrading to SQL Server 2008 For more information about SQL Server to take advantage of the new compression 2008, go to: features included with the database www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/default.mspx software. By using SQL Server 2008 Data Compression to reduce the size of its SAP For more information about Visual Studio database by more than 7 terabytes, the 2008, go to: company extended the useful life of its SAN www.microsoft.com/vstudio infrastructure.

Software and Services Hardware  Microsoft Server Product Portfolio  HP Integrity Superdome with 64 dual- − Windows Server 2008 Enterprise for core processors and 256 GB RAM 64-Bit Systems − SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (64-bit)  Microsoft Premier Support Service

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2009