Amazon Web Services has made a number of announcements so far this year. Our experts have selected those that are of particular relevance to our customers, focusing on what will most help companies using SAP systems to optimize their cloud operations.
In 2006, AWS began providing IT infrastructure services in the cloud, and since then the company has steadily evolved its services and introduced enhancements to its platform to increase the benefits, in terms of cost, scalability and flexibility, that can be gained from the model.
2021 has been a prolific year for new developments and we have asked our specialists to select the most relevant ones, based on the value contribution they can offer our customers and how they contribute to improving the operation of SAP systems, and this is their choice.
Four new high memory EC2 instances
One of the most relevant news for SAP users on AWS is the four new high-memory configurations for EC2 instances: u-6tb1.56xlarge, u-6tb1.112xlarge, u-9tb1.112xlarge and u-12tb1.112xlarge. Resources with 6TB, 9TB and 12TB of memory. In this case, he pointed out, they could be ordered both on demand and reserved.
Why is this important for SAP customers? For one thing, these instances are based on AWS Nytro System, a hypervisor that frees up additional memory for SAP HANA workloads, improving performance and lowering USD/GB costs. They are very useful for testing or bug-fixing systems because of the ability to choose an on-demand mode and switch to an extended period, if required, with AWS Saving Plans.
These high memory Amazon EC2 instances are certified by SAP to run Business Suite on HANA, SAP S/4HANA, Data Mart Solutions on HANA, Business Warehouse on HANA and SAP BW/4HANA.
EBS io2 Block Express volumes
During the ReInvent 2020 event, AWS gave the first details of a new generation of architecture for storage in EC2 instances, and in July of this year announced the general availability of Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volumes that are designed to host intensive workloads that require the deployment of large databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, SAP HANA and SAS Analytics, among others.
With this announcement, enterprises can scale to petabyte capacity in minutes at half the cost of a traditional SAN system, and the storage is managed by AWS, without having to procure, scale and maintain the on-premises system.
New One Zone storage classes
In March, the public cloud platform announced new One Zone storage classes for Amazon EFS (Elastic File Systems) that reduce costs by 47% compared to those already offered by the company. These store data redundantly within a single Availability Zone (AZ), and are used by enterprises when they need cost-optimized file storage options for their workloads and applications that do not require the level of availability and durability offered by AWS within its Amazon EFS service.
With One Zone, there are no minimum commitments or upfront fees, and customers pay only for the amount of file system storage used. Customers using Amazon EFS for their business-critical applications, such as SAP, can realize significant savings when it comes to managing these types of loads.
Upcoming opening of Israel and UAE regions
During May and June, AWS announced that in the first half of 2022, the United Arab Emirates will become the home of the AWS Middle East (UAE) region, and that the AWS Israel (Tel Aviv) region will launch in the first half of 2023, making it easier for businesses in these areas to run workloads and store their information in local data centers, with lower latency. Undoubtedly, these new data centers are good news for our customers in these geographies.
AWS currently has 80 availability zones in 25 geographies and, in addition to these two new regions, has plans for new openings in Australia, India, Indonesia, Switzerland and Spain.
These new developments in the public cloud platform are important for our experts to help organizations take advantage of all the benefits of moving SAP systems to the cloud.
Following this link we explain the five advantages of moving your SAP systems to AWS. Our consultants help customers around the world to take advantage of the benefits of this cloud platform through our migration services.