Cisco Unified Computing System?  is unique among vendors with its comprehensive set of solutions for SAP and SAP HANA workloads-solutions that include servers with two to eight processors. Cisco Cisco UCS? C220 M4 Rack Server delivered 16,025 users and a SAPS score of 87,680:the best two-processor, two-tier resultrunning Microsoft Windows 2012 Datacenter Edition.

Some of the key highlights of this result are:

• Best Two-Socket Server SAP SD Benchmark Result: The Cisco UCS C240 M4 running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 delivered the best two-tier SAP SD Benchmark result with SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012. The solution supported 16,025 SAP SD Benchmark users while maintaining a consistent application response time of less than one second
• Scale to meet demand:Cisco UCS C240 M4 Rack Server configured with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 family can support up to 16,025 concurrent SAP SD Benchmark users in a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 environment.
• Optimize application throughput:High-performance rack servers, blade servers, and network fabrics enable Cisco UCS to handle many SAP application tasks, with results showing that the system can process 1,753,670 order line items per hour or 5,261,000 dialog steps per hour.
• Cisco Consistently Improves Two-Processor, Two- Tier SAP SD Benchmark Performance:As illustrated in the graph below, these results show almost a60 percent improvementover performance delivered by the last generation of Intel Xeon processor E5 product family CPUs.

The SAP SD Benchmark is designed to stress the computing infrastructure and determine whether a consistent response can be delivered as more users consume system resources. Cisco tested a Cisco UCS C240 M4 server equipped with two 2.30-GHz, 18-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3 CPUs, 256 GB of main memory, and a Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1225. The server ran both the SAP software and the 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition in a bare-metal configuration. Check out the Performance Brief and the detailed official benchmark disclosure report for additional information on the benchmark configuration.

Let's see, what does this latest result mean for our customers?

• This result proves that Cisco UCS servers make anexcellent foundation for any standards-based infrastructure solution.
• Cisco UCS dramatically reduces the number of physical componentsneeded to support demanding SAP landscape applications, enabling IT departments to make effective use of limited space, power, and cooling resources.
• By deploying SAP on Cisco UCS, IT departmentscan support more users and accelerate response times.Many users can be supported-up to 16,025 in the benchmark configuration-with little hardware
• IT departments can choose from a broad range of Cisco UCS blade and rack server modelsto scale deploymentsfurther by using larger servers or by adding servers to createscale-out deployments with small footprints.

It is interesting to note that although all vendors have access to same Intel processors, only Cisco UCS unleashes their power todeliver high performance to applicationsthrough the power of unification. The unique, fabric-centric architecture of Cisco UCS integrates the Intel Xeon processors into a system with a better balance of resources that brings processor power to life. For additional information on Cisco UCS and Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure solutions please visit Cisco Unified Computing & Servers web page.

Disclosure

The statement of comparison is based on highest-performing system using two Intel Xeon processors and running SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition in a two-tier configuration.Results referenced are available from the SAP website at: http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx and are current as of December 1, 2014.