Introduction:
In the previous blog series Part 1 - SAP NetWeaver SOAP & RFC deep dive in Azure Monitor for SAP solutions and Part 2 - Configuring NetWeaver Provider, we have understood the architecture and configured successfully NetWeaver provider as part of AMS. The data collected and stored in Log Analytics is visualized in AMS through Azure workbooks. In this blog post we'll explore how the data is visualized and how customers can extend standard delivered visualizations.
Metrics in NetWeaver Workbooks:
There are many metrics that are collected using the AMS NetWeaver provider, below are some of the metrics which help in predicting the system out and help reduce unplanned downtimes.
- Performance metrics – This tab covers “CPU and Memory” utilization per application server.
Each metric has filters on Time Range, SID, and corresponding Application server.
Customers can also set alerts based on CPU and memory usage and take corrective actions.
- Process Utilization: This section has metrics about active work process types such as dialog, background, update and enqueue. This metric is useful in reducing the SAP Basis support efforts up to 30% and helps customers to fine tune and right size of the SAP system based on insights and data.
- Application Performance:
System Logs - This metric can be used to predict imminent system outages by looking into certain transactions such as SM21. Based on the severity type toggled whether it is Error/Warning the total number of messages captured are displayed, it also surfaces any security issue which might be there in the system.
Short Dumps - The short dumps inform you if any programs have failed to execute due to a bug. You can figure out which bug is the most prevalent cause of program termination, or which bug got caused by a recent transport change, resulting in a lock entry in the system.
NetWeaver Alerts:
NetWeaver provides 18 standard sets of “Alerts” which can be configured by clicking the “Alerts” button on the top of the workbook.
Steps to create Alert rules:
- Click on the “Create rule” button.
- Fill in the details as mentioned in the template and hit “Enable alert rule”.
We can create an “Action group” and associate alerts to them as an optional step.
Example: Above template is to set an alert if the SAP NetWeaver is not available. This alert will be sent as a notification to the contact provided in the action group. Alert generally runs as per the frequency defined in the template. Customers have flexibility to add additional alert templates apart from the standard templates provided in the NetWeaver workbook.
Editing AMS Workbooks:
1. Navigate to the NetWeaver workbook.
2. Click on the Edit button at the top of the workbook.
4. Now click on “Edit” button again to get the edit button below the subsequent query you want to edit or view.
5. Another “Edit” button should appear below the honeycomb query.
6. Kusto query should appear in the same window once you hit the “Edit” button.
7. To view the result data from the query and analyze it further, you can also click the button 
8. Once you edit the query and see the appropriate results by clicking the “Run Query” button, Click the “Done Editing” button and then click the “Save” button in the workbook to save the updated workbook in the specified location.
Similarly, by clicking the “Edit” button below any of the visualization in the workbook edit mode, we are providing flexibility to customers to extend standard delivered visualizations.
Conclusion:
When we have critical applications and business processes relying on Azure resources, we want to monitor those resources for their availability, performance, and reliability. We understood and recognized SAP monitoring, detection of incidents has been partially black box. AMS (Version 2) is an Azure native monitoring tool which helps customers collect telemetry information using standard delivered content by SAP. With the collection of metric information from SAP and ability to co-relate information using azure native tool, AMS provide ability for infrastructure, basis and developers solution to monitor SAP health check.
References:
- Latest over video of AMS: https://aka.ms/ams2video
- Latest announcement of AMS: https://aka.ms/amspreviewblog
- Share feedback & ideas: https://feedback.azure.com/d365community/forum/7d9bf169-4be5-ec11-bb3c-0022482baf2f
- Public documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/workloads/sap/monitor-sap-on-azure
- Maximizing Observability for SAP on Azure with Azure Monitor for SAP solution
- Part 1 - SAP NetWeaver SOAP & RFC deep dive in Azure Monitor for SAP solutions
- Part 2 - Configuring NetWeaver Provider