Microsoft Azure provides the industry’s most scalable and performant infrastructure and services to host SAP workloads replete with a lot of capabilities to maximize return on investment.

However, deploying and managing SAP workloads on public cloud platforms can be more complex with its own challenges. The challenges that can eat up time including capacity planning and sizing (choosing the right cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) resources), deploying SAP with best practices (deploying cloud resources and installing/configuring SAP on it), and then managing and optimizing it (monitor infrastructure and app layers, backup, security, managing costs, etc.).

Additionally, partners are looking beyond simple tools, frameworks and automations that current cloud providers are offering to deploy, manage and optimize their SAP workloads.

To address these needs, Microsoft has launched the Azure Center for SAP Solution (ACSS).

Introducing the Azure Center for SAP Solution (ACSS)

ACSS is a first-party, native Azure service which allows Microsoft partners to deploy SAP workloads in Azure by providing simple unified experience with seamless management fabric, as well as in concert an innovation foundation to accelerate the cloud migration journey. ACSS acts as a single pane of glass by pinning together first-party Azure services, tools, and framework for SAP workloads to get full return of investment from SAP deployments.

To begin, partners should leverage the ACSS provided full guided and automated option to deploy SAP workloads in Azure. And then, from the same ACSS experience window, partners can utilize first-party SAP-specific Azure services like monitoring, backup, security, threat protection and cost optimization to manage and optimize SAP workloads.

At this time of this writing, ACSS is a completely free service with no licensing cost (customers only pay for Azure infrastructure consumption). Below is more detail on how partners can get started with ACSS for deploying their SAP workloads as well as a top-level capability summary.

Getting started with Azure Center for SAP Solution: Make Azure aware of your SAP workload by leveraging the Guided Deployment Experience

When deploying a SAP workload in Azure, the workload gets deployed on Azure virtual machines (VMs) and Azure will not be aware these VMs are running SAP. Because of that, Azure will not automatically apply its own intelligence to manage and optimize the SAP layer of these VMs.

But what if we can tell Azure the new/existing VMs are running SAP? And this is what ACSS does for us. Partners can go to ACSS and register new/existing SAP deployments in Azure making Azure aware that the deployments are SAP-specific.

Below are two scenarios for partners to leverage ACSS capabilities:

1. In the case of a new deployment, ACSS provides a simple form-based registration process by capturing information about the SAP system that is being deployed (e.g., SAP product, database type, deployment location, Operating System detail, etc.) along with a high availability option (vs standalone).

This new deployment registration process also provides a guided deployment experience by asking performance requirements (e.g., SAPS, memory, etc.) and recommending right-sized VMs and storage disks. Upon registration completion, the system will confirm and deploy the SAP infrastructure and install/configure the SAP software automatically with single click of button.

The registration process will create logical representation of your deployment called a Virtual Instance for SAP solution (VIS). The VIS makes Azure aware about SAP, allowing Azure to apply its own SAP specific native management and optimization capabilities. To learn more about the ACSS registration process and VIS, view this documentation.

It should also be noted that for new deployments, instead of choosing the guided deployment option, partners can bring their own automation OR utilize the Microsoft provided opensource and customizable automation scripts (SAP Deployment Automation Framework) to first deploy the SAP workload in Azure and then register it as an existing system by going to ACSS.

2. In the case of a partner already running SAP based VMs in Azure, they can still register them by going to ACSS and choosing the “Register existing SAP system” option.

Post-Deployment: Manage, Optimize and Innovate with Azure Center for SAP Solution

 Once partners have deployed an SAP workload(s) with ACSS by registering it as Virtual Instance for SAP Solution (VIS), partners can leverage ACSS provided all native SAP-specific management and optimization services for their SAP workload. ACSS also provides a foundation for innovation allowing partners to create custom solutions on top of ACSS to extend their SAP workload to the next level.

Stay tuned! All ACSS management, optimization and innovation capabilities will be covered in part two of this blog series.

Learn More

• Azure Center for SAP Solution Documentation
• Explore: SAP Solutions on Azure
• Visit: SAP on Azure Partner Page
• Watch: SAP Center for SAP Solution Demo
• Learn: SAP on Azure training