Pushing SAP's R/3 to the limits

Walldorf, 17 November 97 Sun reported that it's Enterprise 450 server set a new performance record for a four-processor system on SAP's R/3. According to the company results surpassed the best results posted by any four-way PC- based system running Microsoft Windows NT by more than 60 percent. Supporting 190 benchmark users with an average dialog response time of 1.44 seconds, the Enterprise 450 system achieved throughput of 59.800 dialog steps per hour with an average CPU utilization of 99 percent - equivalent to 19,900 fully business processed order line items per hour.

The results were achieved using the Sun Enterprise 450 workgroup server, with the Solaris 2.5.1 operating environment, running Oracle7 Server 7.3.3 and using R/3 Release 3.1G. The test was run in a centralized configuration - where both the application and database server software reside on a single system. The test, using a four-processor of 300 Mhz an Enterprise 450 server with 2 GBytes main memory and 50.4 GBytes internal disk total storage, was conducted at Sun's Global SAP Competency Center in Walldorf, Germany.

According to earlier results the SNI system with four Pentium Pro 200MHz processors, 1GB memory, 32GB total disk space, supported 118 users with an average dialog response time of 1.60 seconds, achieved throughput of 36,600 dialog steps per hour with an average CPU utilization of 98 percent - equivalent to 12,000 fully business processed order line items per houron Windows NT 4.0, R/3 version 3.0E.

Some of Sun's and SAP's joint customers include Bay Networks, Browning-Ferris Industries, Dow Corning Corporation and Raychem Corporation.

Sandra Wermer