SAP has recently updated SAP Note 1656099 – “SAP Applications on AWS: Supported DB/OS and AWS EC2 Products”, and it’s great news for AWS users. The update now includes SAPS ratings for the 8th generation of AMD CPU instances (r8a & m8a), giving us a clearer view of how these new machines perform in real-world SAP workloads.
A Closer Look: r8a.12xlarge Performance on AWS
When examining a popular instance type like r8a.12xlarge, running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) in a region such as Ohio (US-East-2), several interesting insights emerge.
While these instances are not certified for SAP HANA, they are fully supported for general SAP workloads—and the results are impressive.
Massive Performance Gains, Minimal Cost Increase
The jump from the 7th generation (r7a) to the 8th generation (r8a) shows a remarkable uplift in SAPS performance:
- 7th Gen: 108,245 SAPS
- 8th Gen: 159,504 SAPS
That’s a ~47% performance increase, all while the running cost only rose by less than 5%.
What This Means for SAP Customers
For SAP users running workloads on AWS, this represents an excellent opportunity to improve performance efficiency without significantly impacting costs. It also highlights how AMD’s continued evolution on AWS is paying off in terms of value and compute power.
In summary the r8a and m8a families are shaping up to be strong contenders for cost-effective, high-performance SAP environments.