A solution is provided for configuring a server farm (for example, to run a SAP application). The SAP application sets corresponding operational constraints for the server farm (defined by a required processing power and a required memory for the application instances and the DBMS instance of the SAP application). A mathematical model of the server farm is defined, so as to allow selecting the optimal configuration thereof that minimizes its total cost. For this purpose, the servers are chosen with a memory proportional to the corresponding power. More complex models are then provided for a high-reliability scenario, a scalability scenario, and a consolidation scenario.