Specifications and Best Practice for On-Premise SAP Business One MS SQL Landscapes

Server(s) Specification and Configuration

Refer to the attached Hardware Requirements Guide for SAP Business One.pdf[1]

ProjectLine can provide consultation to your third-party IT provider, or be involved directly with the configuration of your SAP Business One Server (B1 Server) or Terminal Application Server. Please contact your account manager if you would like to know more about these services. 

Did you know ProjectLine also provides private cloud hosting for SAP Business One? For more information visit https://www.projectline.ca/cloud or Contact ProjectLine Support.

SAP Business One Server running on Microsoft SQL

• SAP B1 Server – Microsoft Windows Server[1]
• It is recommended that SAP B1 server be virtualized, hypervisor is your choice. We have had good success with Windows Hyper-V. One copy of Windows Server does permit 2 VM licenses.
• Microsoft SQL Server[1] with SQL CAL’s matching the number of SAP B1 users.
  • SQL maintenance plan should be in place, including backups and database optimization.
  • SQL Server Collation settings for SAP Business One are quite specific, please consult the documentation before installing Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Contact ProjectLine Support if you would like assistance installing Microsoft SQL, or setting up your SQL maintenance plan.
• Database VM should exist on a RAID 10 volume with minimum SAS 10k drives (SAS 15k drives are preferred).
  • SSD drives may also be used, which match or exceed the performance of 15k SAS. 
  • 2 disk volumes  - one for OS and one for SQL data which are appropriately sized for your environment.
• RAM is dependent on database size and user counts but generally 16GB as a recommended minimum.
  • Performance should be periodically assessed, and resources allocated as needed.
  • SQL memory usage should be monitored and capped if required, as it will often use as much as it is allocated.
• vCPU – minimum of 2-4 vCPU’s dependent on number of SAP B1 users
  • Performance should be periodically assessed, and resources allocated as needed.
• To best provide support and consulting services, ProjectLine may require remote access to your SAP B1 Server for consulting and support services. The means of remote access to your SAP B1 Server VM is your choice. However, windows remote desktop access with enhanced security measures, and no VPN login requirement, is preferred.
  • For enhanced security, in the absence of VPN, ProjectLine recommends tailoring access for our team using IP ‘white-listing’ strategies. ProjectLine consulting and support will connect to your RDP services through 1 centralized IP address which will be shared upon request.

Terminal Application Server for SAP Business One

• It is recommended that the Terminal Application Server be virtualized on a second, separate VM from your SAP B1 Server. This will depend on your preferred delivery method of the SAP B1 client to end-users.
  • As general rule we allocate 1.5  to 2 GB of RAM per SAP B1 user

Performance Tuning

• Physical Hardware BIOS setting
  • On Dell and HP servers running SQL Server virtualized workload power settings must be set to Performance

  • For more information please refer to the following VM Knowledge Base Article

Best Practices for Running SQL Server for SAP (as of 2023/06/13)

1. SQL Server Standard Edition is required for SAP Business One. SAP Business One does not require any of the SQL Server Enterprise Edition features. Remember that all users that access the database, in any way, must be properly licensed.  
2. SQL Server Memory – Starting point for allocated memory for SQL Server is 16GB for a typical SAP installation. For smaller systems it's possible to run with 8GB and for larger systems you should allocate 64GB of RAM to SQL Server.  
3. The Windows server should always have enough free memory so that it says below the 90% memory allocation.  
4. SQL Server should have at least 4 cores. If vCPU is increased, then adjust the MaxDOP setting to match the assigned vCPU on SQL 2019 and higher.   
5. Keep the operating system and the SQL Server application updated with latest patches. 
6. Always add at least one additional drive for the SQL databases. Additional disk volumes can be added to store logs and tempdb. 
7. Database disks should always be redundant (RAID) regardless of which RAID type is selected.  We only suggest companies use SSD Drives and specifically NVMe drives in a RAID level with redundancy.  We don’t recommend the use of magnetic drives, however, if you must use magentic drives, we recommend RAID 10 configuration with 10K SAS / 15K SAS preferably.
8. Don’t allow the SQL Server ports to be accessible over the internet. If you must expose ports externally whitelist IPs or use a proxy server. 
9. It’s best to not run other programs on the SQL Server.  
10. Production Databases should be set to Full Recovery Mode. 
11. Database backups should be run nightly and written to a different drive. A SQL aware backup utility is preferred over a SQL Maintenance Plans for backups. Some good tools are MS DPM, Commvault, and Veeam.  
12. Log Backups should be run every 15 min to 30 min and written to a separate drive. 
13. A routine maintenance plan should be run to perform the following task: Integrity DB Check – nightly, Rebuild Indexes – weekly.  When a maintenance plan failure occurs emails should be sent to the administrators of the SQL Server. 
14. Periodic manual backup checks should be performed.
15. The Server resources should be monitored and automated alerts be sent when thresholds have been reached.  
16. For additional protection, database backups should be stored on a different physical server and then transferred offsite. 

[1] See attachments below