Azure AZ-120 cheat sheet

Azure Migrate appliance discovery collects on-premises SAP inventory and dependency maps; Azure Migrate: Server Assessment sizes target VMs and flags readiness blockers.

SAP-certified Azure VM families for NetWeaver/ABAP workloads: M-series (memory optimized), Mv2, Msv2, Edsv4/Edsv5 for SAP HANA, and Dasv4/Ddsv4 for application servers.

HANA Large Instances (HLI) are bare-metal, certified for up to 24 TB single-node and scale-out; they are provisioned outside the standard VM API and require a support ticket.

Azure Site Recovery supports SAP application-consistent replication via pre/post scripts that quiesce the SAP database; RPO depends on replication frequency (minimum 30 seconds for ASR).

SAP Note 1928533 lists supported Azure VM types, OS versions, and SAP kernel releases; SAP Note 2015553 covers support prerequisites for Azure.

Network prerequisite: ExpressRoute or S2S VPN for hybrid migration; ExpressRoute FastPath reduces latency for large database transfers.

Migration sequence rule: lift-and-shift the database tier first or run a homogeneous system copy (SWPM) with the target DB on Azure; heterogeneous migrations use SUM/DMO.

Storage for migrated SAP: Premium SSD or Ultra Disk for DB logs; Azure NetApp Files for shared /sapmnt and /usr/sap/trans; Blob storage for backups.

Use an Azure hub-and-spoke topology: hub hosts ExpressRoute/VPN gateways, Azure Firewall, and DNS; SAP spokes host workload subnets with NSGs and UDRs.

SAP HANA on Azure VMs requires write accelerator or Premium SSD v2/Ultra Disk for /hana/log; /hana/data and /hana/shared use Premium SSD or Azure NetApp Files.

Accelerated networking must be enabled on all SAP VMs; it requires a supported VM size and is mandatory for HANA-certified configurations.

Azure NetApp Files volumes for SAP must be in a delegated subnet; use the ANF volume placement rules and export policies restricted to the SAP VNet.

Proximity placement groups reduce inter-VM latency to sub-millisecond for ASCS/ERS and DB tiers; they constrain VM sizes to those available in the same datacenter.

SAP application server sizing rule: one app server per 2 vCPUs of the database tier is a starting heuristic; validate with SAP Quick Sizer output.

Use Azure Files or ANF for /sapmnt/ and /usr/sap/trans to share across ASCS, ERS, and app servers; NFS 4.1 is required for Linux SAP shares.

DNS design: private DNS zones for sap.; ASCS virtual hostname resolves to the cluster frontend IP; SAPLOCALHOST and SAPGLOBALHOST configured per instance.

SAP HANA HA on Azure uses two-node scale-up with Pacemaker and the SAPHana resource agent; the cluster requires a STONITH device (fence_azure_arm or SBD on a shared disk).

ASCS/ERS HA uses a Pacemaker cluster with the SAPInstance and SAPDatabase resource agents; Azure requires an internal Standard Load Balancer with HA ports for the cluster frontend IP.

HANA System Replication (HSR) modes: SYNC (zero data loss, same region), ASYNC (low RPO, cross-region), and SYNC with logreplay for near-zero RPO within a region.

Azure paired regions are the DR target for cross-region replication; HSR ASYNC to the paired region with a secondary VM in the DR region provides the standard SAP DR pattern.

Site Recovery for SAP app servers uses replication groups and recovery plans that orchestrate DB and app tiers in the correct order (DB first, then ASCS, then app servers).

Quorum rule: Pacemaker clusters require an odd number of nodes or a witness; two-node clusters use a disk-based SBD or Azure fence agent to avoid split-brain.

RTO/RPO design: SYNC HSR gives RPO≈0 within region; ASYNC HSR cross-region gives RPO in minutes; ASR gives RPO of 30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on replication policy.

Load balancer health probe for SAP clusters must use a custom probe port (e.g., 62500) that the cluster manages; the probe must not target the SAP application port directly.

Azure Backup for SAP HANA uses the Backint interface (Azure Backup plugin for HANA) and supports full, differential, and log backups with a 15-minute log backup interval option.

SAP monitoring on Azure: Azure Monitor Agent collects guest metrics; SAP Solution Manager or SAP Focused Run can consume Azure Monitor data via the SAP Azure Monitoring extension.

Patch orchestration: use Azure Update Manager or maintenance configurations to schedule OS patching; SAP kernel and DB patches follow SAP maintenance planner cycles.

Azure Advisor and Azure Service Health alerts should be routed to the SAP operations team; Resource Health reflects platform incidents affecting SAP VMs.

Scale operations: resize SAP VMs by stopping the VM, changing the size, and restarting; HANA-certified sizes must be revalidated against SAP Note 1928533 after resize.

Cost maintenance: use Azure Hybrid Benefit for Windows/SQL and the SAP-certified reserved instances; stop/deallocate non-production SAP systems outside business hours.

Backup retention: configure Azure Backup vault retention per SAP tier; HANA log backups require a separate policy from data backups to meet RPO.

Disaster recovery testing: run ASR test failovers into an isolated VNet, and validate HSR takeover with a planned takeover at least quarterly.