As you likely have heard, VMware has announce a major new version of its
virtualization software for servers called vSphere 4. This version is the
successor to the VMware Infrastructure software suite.

We have spent the last couple of months with SAP testing this new version
to make sure no problems or SAP specific issues arise when using vSphere.

vSphere is now officially supported in Production for Linux operating systems.

The support note from SAP is 1122387 "Linux: SAP Support in virtualized environments."

We have also updated the note 1122388 "Linux: VMware ESX 3.x or vSphere configuration guidelines"
to reflect the latest guidelines.

For Windows, we are expecting the updated support statement by the end of May,
pending the general availability of vSphere 4.

All tests of vSphere 4 have shown improved Performance, reduced
overheads and excellent scalability for SAP components. With the introduction of
support for up to 8 virtual CPUs, vSphere 4 is able to handle even large database
loads.

We are currently working with our hardware partners on sizing and publishing
new SD Benchmarks and expect those results to come out over the next couple of months.