By Laurent Montaron and Jim Pinto, SAP product managers
We're pleased to share an important milestone for our clients, partners, and the broader SAP on Power community:
The full IBM Power11 server family has now been officially validated for SAP HANA workloads.
This validation, which is really a certification, spans every model in the Power11 lineup, from the 2‑socket scale‑out servers to the midrange systems and the high‑end 16‑socket E1180. This comprehensive approval underscores both the technical robustness of the platform and IBM’s longstanding commitment to delivering resilient, high‑performance infrastructure for SAP environments.
Power11: Fully Validated Across Configurations
Securing SAP validation requires meeting stringent performance, reliability, and configuration criteria. The Power11 portfolio successfully achieved approval across all supported processor configurations, including:
Up to 30 cores per socket on scale‑out and midrange systems
Up to 256 cores on the Power E1180 high‑end server
Full support for both scale‑up and scale‑out SAP deployment models
Certification for OLTP and OLAP workloads
Please note the certification includes SMT8, the first time we have seen this since Power9. This is very important as many of our clients need SMT8 for their workloads. Power11 meets the new stringent standards for intra-partition interference. Power11 continues our superiority in performance highlighting our design for data. The heart of all AI is Data and Power can move more data than any other open system in the marketplace. Power11 is also the heart of IBM Power Virtual Server in the IBM Cloud.
If you are on the RISE Journey with SAP, Power11 can be the foundation of your continuous innovation journey. You can rest assured that Power the leader in performance, reliability, and security for decades will be there with you.
Advanced Features That Enhance SAP HANA Operations
Beyond baseline validation, several advanced Power11 capabilities are also fully supported for SAP workloads, including:
- Live Partition Mobility for non‑disruptive workload movement
- Dynamic memory operations enabling SAP HANA memory resizing without restart
- Shared Processor LPAR (SPLPAR) enhancements
- Virtual Persistent Memory (vPMEM) for significantly faster SAP HANA restarts
vPMEM is especially impactful: because data remains memory‑resident, HANA can restart in minutes rather than hours on large deployments, reducing downtime and accelerating recovery.
Updated Sizing Methodology: Transitioning from SAPS to aSAPS
Along with the announcement, we are updating our Power11 sizing tools and documentation, which are available through our business partner and IBM seller channels. At the moment we are using SAPS to estimate compute, but we intend to update the tools to reflect the new SAP benchmark metric: aSAPS, derived from SAP’s Quote‑to‑Cash benchmark running on SAP HANA.
Why This Matters for Clients and Partners
This certification gives organizations confidence that Power11 provides the performance, scalability, and reliability required for modern SAP landscapes, including SAP S/4HANA. It also validates IBM’s commitment to maintaining platform excellence as the SAP ecosystem evolves.
With these certifications and tool updates, clients can:
- Scale SAP landscapes with flexibility
- Leverage advanced Power virtualization and reliability technologies
- Minimize downtime for SAP HANA operations
- Plan capacity using a modern and future‑aligned sizing methodology
What This Means for Sales Teams
✔ Stronger competitive positioning: You now have new data points to reinforce Power’s performance advantage in high-volume SAP environments.
✔ Support for current sizing efforts: Use these results immediately in customer discussions until the new SAP standard is released.
✔ Value for upgrade and consolidation opportunities: These benchmarks help validate Power11 for customers evaluating platform refreshes, private cloud transformation, or SAP HANA consolidation.
Go Get them!
Our clients have been waiting, now is the time to act. Please get with the SAP on Power Offering Team if you need help with your projects and opportunities.
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