Question 101 - AZ-120 discussion

Box 1: A proximity placement group

Azure offers proximity placement groups. Proximity placement groups can be used to force grouping of different VM types into a single Azure datacenter to optimize the network latency between these different VM types to the best possible. In the process of deploying the first VM into such a proximity placement group, the VM gets bound to a specific datacenter. Note: SAP applications based on the SAP NetWeaver or SAP S/4HANA architecture are sensitive to network latency between the SAP application tier and the SAP database tier. This sensitivity is the result of most of the business logic running in the application layer. Because the SAP application layer runs the business logic, it issues queries to the database tier at a high frequency, at a rate of thousands or tens of thousands per second. In most cases, the nature of these queries is simple. They can often be run on the database tier in 500 microseconds or less.

Box 2: Enable Accelerated Networking

To further reduce network latency between Azure VMs, we recommend that you choose Azure Accelerated Networking. Use it when you deploy Azure VMs for an SAP workload, especially for the SAP application layer and the SAP DBMS layer. Incorrect Answers:

Azure Write Accelerator is a functionality that is available for Azure M-Series VMs exclusively. As the name states, the purpose of the functionality is to improve I/O latency of writes against the Azure premium storage. For SAP HANA, Write Accelerator is supposed to be used against the /hana/log volume only. Therefore, the /hana/data and /hana/log are separate volumes with Azure Write Accelerator supporting the /hana/log volume only.

Box 3: Network Performance Monitor

Network Performance Monitor (NPM) - a cloud-based network monitoring solution for cloud-only, on-premises, and hybrid networking environments.

Network Performance Monitor offers three broad capabilities:

Performance Monitor: You can monitor network connectivity across cloud deployments and on-premises locations, multiple data centers, and branch offices and mission-critical multitier applications or microservices. With Performance Monitor, you can detect network issues before users complain. Service Connectivity Monitor

ExpressRoute Monitor

Note 2: Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions is an Azure-native monitoring product for anyone running their SAP landscapes on Azure. It works with both SAP on Azure Virtual Machines and SAP on Azure Large Instances.

Incorrect Answers:

Apache JMeter is a free and open source tool for performance testing of web applications.

SAP application server to database server latency can be tested with ABAPMeter report /SSA/CAT. Latency between SAP application server and DBMS server can be tested using TCPPing (Ping is not an accurate tool on Azure) or the SAP ABAP report /SSA/CAT -> ABAPMeter – columns DB Access and

E. DB Access.

Reference:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/workloads/sap/sap-proximity-placement-scenarios https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/workloads/sap/dbms_guide_general

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/running-sap-applications-on-the/sap-on-azure-general-update-march-2019/bap/377456