The news of support has been out for about ten days, and SAP has just now updated the support note 674851 "Virtualization on Windows".

Here are key passages:

• "VMware ESX Server 3.0 is the first virtualization solution for Industry Standard Server and Microsoft Windows that meets the prerequisites of SAP applications..."

• "..In internal tests, SAP applications could be reliably used under VMware without affecting the system stability. Currently, no problems are known that restrict the use of SAP applications under VMware. In addition, published benchmarks from Dell, HP, IBM and Fujitsu Siemens display good performance...."

(Let me add that Sun has a certified benchmark as well. See http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx for a complete current list.)

Also important is note 1104578, which describes how SAPOSCOL, the SAP kernel, and transaction OS07 need to be adjusted so that important key figures are visible in the SAP System Monitoring.

This is all very good. But how does the support framework work in practice? Generally, per the note, the call is opened with SAP. If the cause is suspected to be related to the VMware software component, "... SAP will transfer the problem to VMware support. [...] SAP and VMware have defined a process for a common solution to this problem."

Note though that the note specifically refers only to VMware ESX Server. If the question concerns higher-level VMware Infrastructure elements, like VMware High Availability, Distributed Resource Scheduling, live migration with VMotion, etc., VMware support should be contacted directly.

This should be a very clear framework for our customers!

Happy holidays,

Joachim