Table of Contents
Well Architected Framework for SAP Assessments
Track Continuous Improvements using the Milestone Assessments Feature
Reviewing the results of the Well-Architected for SAP Assessment
Summary
Operational excellence is about creating efficient processes that support a SAP workload. Since operations will be the longest phase of the SAP workload lifecycle, teams must be equipped with operational best practices to manage the day-to-day changes - failure to do so can impact the success of an organization and therefore it’s critical to ensure operations evolve with the platform to support the SAP workload in Azure.
SAP Assessments
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are documented processes for managing and maintaining workloads. In this case, SAP workloads should also have SOPs to govern operations and drive consistency. Without these procedures, operations teams can deviate from management best practices and spend excessive time firefighting operational issues. We therefore recommend using our SAP assessments to review and develop SOPs for your SAP workload.
We have three SAP assessments, and they are designed specifically for different stages in the SAP workload lifecycle.
1. SAP on Azure Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA)
2. Deployment Checklist for SAP
3. Well-Architected Framework for SAP assessment
For Operational excellence, focus on the AzSAP Well-Architected Framework assessment.
Well-Architected Framework for SAP assessment
AzSAP for Well Architected Framework for SAP assessment compares your operations against Industry best practices. It encourages continuous improvement by iterating on each previous assessment. The initial assessment creates a baseline, and the next iteration of assessment uses the previous assessment for comparison. This means you don’t have to start from scratch each time but rather have a point in time assessment to refer against. Because the assessment builds on itself, you can track improvements over time.
The outcomes of the selections from the baseline assessment help to create an actionable roadmap when assessed against one or more of the Well Architected Framework pillars. The goal of the assessment is to improve technical and platform capability throughout the lifecycle of the SAP workload.
With the results of the assessment, you can create and update SOPs for each SAP workload to continuously drive Operational Excellence. The assessment identifies areas of strength and weakness that help you improve and iterate your Standard Operating Procedures.
Assessment Milestones – Tracking Continuous Improvement
The assessment milestone is an essential part of continuous improvement as it helps you track the progress and improvements as well as
connect with the latest innovation/guidance on Azure for SAP Workloads.
How it works
- Initial assessment is carried out for the respective pillars, to create the baseline for WAF for SAP Assessment.
- The next iteration of assessment is milestone builds on top of initial assessment. The selections from last assessment are preserved to give you option to review/assess as well as providing other options to track against the original assessments and other milestones.
How to work on the outcomes of the Well-Architected for SAP Assessments
There are several ways you can consume the output instead of just looking at the output bar chart
- Integrate actions into DevOps Implementing recommendations - Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework | Microsoft Learn
- Convert the output into a ppt using scripts available on GitHub WellArchitected-Tools/WARP/devops at main · Azure/WellArchitected-Tools (github.com)
- Manually review the csv file that can be exported from the outcome screen and action accordingly.
Useful resources
Is your SAP environment optimized? Assessments for SAP on Azure can help - Microsoft Community Hub
SAP workload - Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework | Microsoft Learn
Authors
Tedman Lee is a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, part of the Customer Success team, responsible for helping customers achieve the most out of their cloud investment and have a channel for direct feedback to the Product team.
Jitendra Singh is a Program Manager at Microsoft, part of Customer Solutions & Incubation team, responsible with unblocking customer scenarios and helping achieve the most out of their cloud investment.
