Turn-key and feature-rich technical monitoring for SAP on Azure
SAP applications are mission critical, and migrations to hyperscale cloud require methodical planning to ensure important pillars such as security, performance, availability, and run operations are duly considered. Microsoft has announced the public preview of Azure Center for SAP solutions which brings together an expansive portfolio of products, tools, and frameworks to help our customers deploy and run SAP on Azure with quality.
An important dimension of the run experience of Azure Center for SAP solutions is a reliable and feature-rich technical monitoring solution. Back in 2020, we announced the public preview of Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions which is a native monitoring product that provides end-to-end SAP technical monitoring at one place within the Microsoft Azure Portal. Customers across industries adopted Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions. Our customers appreciated the collection and visualization of end-to-end telemetry for rapid root cause analysis, and they valued the simplicity of turn-key technical monitoring and the rich set of metrics offered by the product. We also listened to opportunities to enhance and optimize Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions and today we’re thrilled to announce the next generation of the product – Azure Monitor for SAP solutions (version 2) which has been developed based on direct feedback from our broad SAP customer base.
Going forward, the new product version launched today will be referred to as Azure Monitor for SAP solutions. The previous version of the product will be referred to as Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (classic)
Diagram: Architecture of Azure Monitor for SAP solutions
Key features
Technical monitoring solutions need to be reliable and Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is offered with a Service Level Availability of 99%.
The key features of Azure Monitor for SAP solutions are:
- Reduced maintenance overheads: Azure Functions is used as collector unit instead of a virtual machine as was the case in Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (classic). Azure Functions is responsible for connecting to the SAP system, pulling the telemetry data, and pushing the data to Azure Log Analytics to enable detailed analysis
- New DBMS Support for IBM Db2 monitoring: A new Provider type is available which enables customers to monitor their IBM Db2 databases and define the appropriate alerting thresholds
- Support for service tags, private endpoints, and route-all: Many customers restrict outbound internet access from their Azure Virtual Network for security reasons. Customers can now add service tag rules, deploy private endpoints or simply push a button to disable route-all in Azure Functions which eliminates exposure to the public internet
- Support for editing and updating Provider configuration: The Provider refers to a set of connection properties for SAP instances that customers wish to monitor. Provider settings can now be edited and updated after deployment of Azure Monitor for SAP solutions. This is useful in scenarios where customers want to switch from text-based passwords to Azure KeyVault for securely managing keys and secrets
- ‘Pin to Grafana’ via Azure Managed Grafana: Customers who leverage Azure Managed Grafana in conjunction with Azure Monitor for SAP solutions can pin visualizations from Azure Monitor for SAP solutions to their Grafana dashboards for flexibility and refined customization.
- Support for customizing the name of the monitoring managed resource group: Customers can now define a custom name for the Monitoring Resource Group to match their configuration management policies
- Microsoft Azure Regional expansion for Azure Monitor for SAP solutions: Now includes Australia Central, Australia East, Southeast Asia, and East Asia
“Working with the Microsoft team over the past few months to integrate our Lemongrass Cloud Platform (LCP), with its discovery and migration tools and near-zero downtime automation orchestration, with the Microsoft Cloud has been a great experience. We focused heavily on Azure Monitor for SAP solutions and adapting Microsoft’s proven technology to deliver our managed services to our customers. We’re also aligning our technology roadmaps to allow for the integration of future releases. The integration of Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is a high priority for us, and it has resulted in an offering that has accelerated Lemongrass’s ability to provide marketing-leading SAP Managed Services on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.”
- Eamonn O’Neill, Chief Technology Officer at Lemongrass
In addition to these enhancements, Azure Monitor for SAP solutions has all the best features of Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (classic). Customers can deploy Azure Monitor for SAP solutions with a few clicks of the mouse and within minutes collect and visualize SAP telemetry. Azure Monitor for SAP solutions stores telemetry data in Azure Log Analytics with Azure Workbooks powering the visualization experience. Visualizations can be customized with a data retention period of up to 730 days (about 2 years); and directly, within the Microsoft Azure Portal, our customers benefit from a broad set of telemetry spanning SAP Application, Databases, and Infrastructure which includes:
Application
- SAP NetWeaver: Instance availability, work process availability, enqueue & queue statistics, SDF/SMON, ST03, work process utilization, user statistics, lock entries, failed updates, short dumps, batch jobs, change & transport, etc.
Databases
- SAP HANA: Instance availability, utilization, database growth, top tables, file system utilization, backup status, backup age, replication modes for high availability including async buffer, license status, MVCC, save points, delta merges, static alerts, etc.
- Microsoft SQL Server: Utilization, compilation/recompilation, IO latency, batch requests, top statements, top tables, recorded errors, blocking processes, AlwaysOn overview, failovers, queues information, wait stats, backups, etc
- IBM Db2: Availability, utilization , overview of SQL statements, number of connections, connected applications, logical reads, physical read, lock information, lock-waits, transaction rate, transaction time, top runtime and execution, failed SQL statements, expensive SQL statements, buffer pools, etc.
Infrastructure
- High-Availability Linux Pacemaker Cluster : Support for both SUSE Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Cluster node status, resource status, managed/unmanaged resources, location constraints, failure count, etc.
- Operating system (Linux): CPU/memory utilization, process count, forks count, memory distribution, swap usage, paging rate, swap rate, mountpoint utilization, read/write byte, I/O count, network inbound/outbound traffic, network packets, etc.
Alerts
- Predefined alert templates are available
- Integration with Azure Monitor alerts and Azure action groups
- Integration with IT Service Management (ITSM) tools via connectors
“Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is a great product for getting detailed insights into our SAP deployments on Azure. From visibility into the Linux OS, SAP HANA, SAP NetWeaver and having the added insights for Linux Pacemaker for High-Availability cluster monitoring has been truly nice. Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is a turn-key and comprehensive technical monitoring solution to support the needs of our customers”
- Bryan Long, Avanade, Director Cloud Architecture and Automation.
Customers can also combine telemetry from Azure Monitor for SAP solutions with Azure Monitor to create a single-pane-of-glass across both SAP and non-SAP dimensions. For example, if you wanted to troubleshoot high transaction response times of a specific SAP transaction – you can visually correlate monitoring telemetry from SAP NetWeaver, SAP HANA, Premium Managed Disks and Express Route all in one place for cohesive problem analysis.
IMPORTANT & URGENT: Microsoft is targeting all new investments within the SAP monitoring domain in Azure Monitor for SAP solutions exclusively. Therefore, it is recommended that Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions (classic) customers migrate to Azure Monitor for SAP solutions as soon as possible. Our customer can find documentation for enabling the migration on our AMS-Migration GitHub repository.
Pricing and regions
There is no licensing fee for Azure Monitor for SAP solutions. Customers simply pay for the infrastructure components that are deployed as part of the managed Azure Resource Group. Standard Azure prices are applicable for Azure Functions (Premium Linux), Azure Log Analytics, Storage, Key Vault, alerts, and notification groups.
Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is available in East US, East US 2, West US, West US 2, West US 3, Central US, South Central US, North Central US, West Central US, West Europe, North Europe, Australia Central, Australia East, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.
Support
Standard support via Microsoft Azure Portal is available.
Learn more
To learn more read our documentation and watch video in SAP on Azure YouTube channel.
To get started, head over to Microsoft Azure portal and create your first resource.
Share your thoughts and feedback with us in our community page.
