What is Azure Center for SAP solutions?
Azure Center for SAP solutions is an Azure offering that makes SAP a top-level workload on Azure. It is an end-to-end solution that lets you create and run SAP systems as a unified workload on Azure. The management capabilities apply to both new and existing Azure-based SAP systems.
The guided deployment experience creates the compute, storage, and networking components needed to run your SAP system. Azure Center for SAP solutions then helps automate the installation of the SAP software according to Microsoft best practices.
At the center is the Virtual Instance for SAP solutions (VIS). It is created when you deploy a new SAP system or register an existing one, and it brings SAP awareness to Azure: it provides management capabilities such as seeing the status and health of your SAP systems, plus quality checks and insights that tell you when a system isn’t following documented best practices and standards.
Core Features
- Guided deployment of SAP systems as single server, distributed, or distributed with high availability
- Registration of existing SAP systems running on Azure through a simple registration experience
- Virtual Instance for SAP solutions (VIS) with the SID as parent resource and ASCS, database, and application server instances as child resources
- Overview of the entire SAP system and its metadata
- Latest status and health check for the SAP system
- Starting and stopping the SAP application tier
- Quality checks and insights against documented best practices
- Monitoring Azure infrastructure metrics such as CPU percentage for ASCS and application server VMs or disk IOPS
- Cost analysis for running the SAP system on Azure VMs, disks, and load balancers
Typical Use Cases
Standing up new SAP systems
The guided deployment handles compute, storage, and networking and automates SAP software installation according to Microsoft best practices, including high-availability variants.
Bringing existing systems in
SAP systems already running on Azure can be registered and from then on managed and monitored through the same experience.
Maintaining operational quality
Quality checks and insights surface where a system deviates from documented best practices and standards.
Monitoring infrastructure and analyzing cost
Azure infrastructure metrics for the SAP system resources and cost analysis for VMs, disks, and load balancers give a picture of operations and spend.
Benefits
- SAP becomes a workload type in its own right in Azure rather than a collection of individual resources
- A unified view across new and existing SAP systems
- Automated installation according to Microsoft best practices reduces manual steps
- Quality checks surface deviations from standards early
- Operational capabilities such as starting and stopping the application tier directly from Azure
- Cost transparency for the underlying Azure resources
Integration with innFactory
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, innFactory supports SAP workloads on Azure: choosing the right system type, building the landing zone, registering existing systems, setting up monitoring and quality checks, and analyzing cost.
We also advise on securing, connecting, and making your SAP environment highly available. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
Typical Use Cases
Technical Specifications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Azure Center for SAP solutions?
Azure Center for SAP solutions is an Azure offering that makes SAP a top-level workload on Azure. It enables you to create and run SAP systems as a unified workload on Azure and provides management capabilities for both new and existing Azure-based SAP systems.
What is a Virtual Instance for SAP solutions (VIS)?
The VIS is the logical representation of an SAP system on Azure. It is created whenever you deploy a new SAP system through Azure Center for SAP solutions or register an existing one, and it contains the metadata for the entire SAP system. It consists of the SAP System Identifier (SID) as parent resource plus an ASCS instance, a database instance, and one or more application server instances.
Which SAP system types can be deployed?
Microsoft names single server, distributed, and distributed with high availability. A standalone system has all three instances mapped to a single VM; a distributed system has one ASCS and one database instance each mapped to a VM; HA deployments map the ASCS and database instances to multiple VMs.
Which existing systems can I register?
You can register SAP systems that run on SAP NetWeaver or ABAP stack, run on Windows, SUSE, or RHEL Linux operating systems, and use HANA, DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, Max DB, or SAP ASE databases.
What can I do after creating a VIS?
Microsoft lists: an overview of the entire SAP system, viewing system metadata, the latest status and health check, starting and stopping the SAP application tier, quality checks and insights, monitoring Azure infrastructure metrics such as CPU percentage for ASCS and application server VMs or disk IOPS, and analyzing the cost of running your SAP system on Azure VMs, disks, and load balancers.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of Azure (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by Azure.
