On February 17th, 2023, SAP has released a new kernel release 7.54 that can be used as downward-compatible kernel for SAP systems based on SAP NetWeaver releases 7.40, 7.50, 7.51 or 7.52. The supported operating system and database environments are documented in SAP Note 3156866. It offers the same functionality as kernel release 7.53 but is being built with newer compilers and runtime libraries, so that it can be optimized for more current hardware.
For IBM i, the kernel release 7.54 is being built with the XL C/C++ 16 compiler and is supported with IBM i 7.5. Based on experiences with earlier releases, the following profile parameters have new defaults with kernel release 7.54:
ES/TABLE defaults to SHM_SEGS (SAP Note 808607).
as4/MAXSHR64 defaults to 2048 (SAP Note 808607).
dbs/db4/max_hostvars defaults to 5000 (SAP Note 3081632).
dbs/db4/prefer_join_with_fda defaults to 1 (SAP Note 2502377).
All these profile parameters are also available for kernel release 7.53, so even if you are not planning to upgrade to kernel release 7.54 right away, you may want to consider some of them to optimize your current system landscape.
To learn more about SAP kernel release 7.54 and the new profile parameter defaults, we invite you to the next SAP on IBM i webcast: Release Updates for Spring 2023. It is scheduled for Wednesday March 29th, 2023, at 4 pm CEST, 10 am EDT, 7:30 pm IST. Besides the new SAP kernel, we will also cover general SAP and IBM i release news that may be interesting for users of SAP software on IBM i. As usual, questions are welcome during the session. Some general Q&A time is also reserved at the end of the webcast for whatever else you may have in mind, and for your suggestions about possible topics for future webcasts. To get more information and register for the webcast, please go to the registration page at https://ibm.biz/ibmi-sap-March2023. After the webcast, the slide deck and a recording will be made available for participants.
