Looking for feedback on a SLES and native KVM reference architecture for SAP
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MellowCedar42
My company is developing an exit strategy from VMware because of the rising licensing costs. We provide SAP environments from our datacenter and are evaluating SLES with native KVM, Pacemaker, and the related high-availability stack as the replacement platform.
I've published the reference architecture we're currently following in the linked project. We specifically need to use native KVM with Pacemaker because that is the certified approach for SAP in our situation. Alternatives such as Proxmox or oVirt are therefore outside the scope of this design.
I'd appreciate feedback on the architecture, especially from anyone who has operated or supported SLES, KVM, and SAP at provider scale.
Answers
SUSE does have a certified path for SAP, but the important detail is the combination: SLES for SAP, native KVM, and the Pacemaker/HA stack. That is essentially the direction you’re taking. Platforms such as Proxmox and oVirt generally fall outside the official certification story, which can make vendors hesitant to support them when something goes wrong.
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One immediate concern is the project name. If it isn’t intended to be associated with the virtio library, using a nearly identical name is likely to confuse people. It sounds like a fork, wrapper, or related implementation at first glance.
MellowCedar42: That’s fair—the name was a mistake. I’m going to change it to something that doesn’t suggest a relationship with virtio.
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MellowCedar42: Exactly. We’re an SAP partner, and SUSE confirmed that native KVM with the SUSE HA stack is the supported direction. The documentation is split across the HA and KVM guides, though, so putting the pieces together into a practical reference design has been more difficult than expected.