Introduction

What it is all about - a definition of terms

To begin with, a small definition of terms: this Wiki is focusing on SAP software that is installed and operated by SAP customers themselves or hosting partners on behalf of customers: So-called box software products. Traditionally, these SAP products used to be installed on infrastructure located in a customer's or outsourcing partner's datacenter.  The corresponding deployment models are referred to as "on-premise" - or short "on-prem". This term is used for both: software that is operated directly on bare-metal hardware or on servers equipped with hypervisor technology aka virtualization software.

Meanwhile, more and more companies use flexibly scalable, public infrastructures. So-called "public clouds". These offer many advantages that can also be used in conjunction with SAP “on-prem” installations. Relevant terms for these public cloud offerings are, e.g.: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), onDemand environment or cloud computing platform. Like all medallions, these public infrastructures come with pros and cons. From the point of view of the operation of business-critical software solutions, the support aspect is particularly important.

Why this wiki - and what is "certification"?

But before we get into the facts about support, let's take a look back at history. There have always been specifications and guidelines from SAP, which have historically been answered by SAP's hardware certification programs. In the “onPrem” case described above, server models and families or their manufacturers were certified for all SAP software solutions. This certification demonstrates, among other things, the performance of the hardware as well as the flawless interaction of the support organizations involved, which can help a customer hand-in-hand, so to speak, even in the event of a critical error. The same is true for SAP certified virtualization solutions, like VMware vSpere, XEN, KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, and others.

In IaaS environments, the specific server model, virtualization technologies or the physical wiring can no longer be optimized for SAP workloads nor even known to the end-customer or SAP support engineers. That’s the reason why SAP invented the IaaS platform release program as an equivalent to hardware certification programs.

And no matter which option you choose to run your SAP applications, make sure they run on approved, supported infrastructure. Otherwise, if there's a problem, it's a problem. And to make sure that doesn't happen, here's all the useful and important information to help you choose the best certified infrastructure for your specific needs.
In case of questions or any uncertainties, there's the community. SAP is reading along. Or open an Incident, where experts take care of all certification concerns.