IBM Support

IBM System z: SAP for Insurance Tests

White Papers


Abstract

Both IBM and SAP view the insurance industry as important. Together, we developed a reference architecture document for IBM Z with SAP. This paper describes several tests the companies jointly performed with IBM Z, Db2 for z/OS and the SAP for Insurance application. The focus of the IBM efforts and this paper was on the interactions of the application with the IBM supplied infrastructure. Infrastructure examples are servers, storage subsystem, operating systems, relational database, and associated items. While SAP optimized their SAP for Insurance application behavior during these tests, the IBM team focused on the infrastructure. These tests were not performance measurements nor were they formal benchmarks. Our goal was to understand the workload behavior and learn for further optimizations. While we did report several performance-related metrics, these tests were more like stress tests. There was limited exposure of the application to the test environment. Sometimes there were just a couple tests. In addition, there were relatively low business volumes attempted. As a result, there was limited infrastructure tuning, investigation of performance bottlenecks, and investigation of how to scale up the volumes. Further, we ran on systems that are two generations old with the associated limitations of features and functions. For example, the DB Server’s System z9 used was two generations down level from today’s zEnterprise System. Using the prior generation environment resulted in relatively slow communication speeds for networks and disks compared to the current generation because it did not have the capability to use features like High-Performance FICON for IBM Z (zHPF). However, we used current versions of z/OS, Db2 for z/OS for testing. All that being said, this project enabled SAP to enhance this application with several functions, features, and extensions to run more efficiently from a database as well as application server perspective.

[{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SWG10","label":"AIX"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB08","label":"Cognitive Systems"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SSEPEK","label":"Db2 for z\/OS"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"z\/OS","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB10","label":"Data and AI"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SSEPEK","label":"Db2 for z\/OS"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB10","label":"Data and AI"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SSEPEK","label":"Db2 for z\/OS"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB10","label":"Data and AI"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SSEQJS","label":"IBM DS8000"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB61","label":"IBM Technology Lifecycle Services"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":null,"label":null},"Product":{"code":"SUNSET","label":"PRODUCT REMOVED"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":""},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"HW1A1","label":"IBM Power Systems"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB57","label":"Power"}},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU054","label":"Systems w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"HW1C1","label":"Power->Power 550"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":""},{"Business Unit":{"code":null,"label":null},"Product":{"code":"SSRRCQ","label":"PureApplication System Pattern for SAP CRM"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":""},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU054","label":"Systems w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"HW22D","label":"z Systems->System z9 EC"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":""},{"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Product":{"code":"SWG90","label":"z\/OS"},"ARM Category":[],"Platform":[{"code":"z\/OS","label":"Platform Independent"}],"Version":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB56","label":"Z HW"}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
18 November 2022

UID

WP101890