Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads (AZ-120) Practice Exam

The AZ-120 exam validates your ability to design, implement, and manage SAP workloads on Microsoft Azure.  Earning this certification demonstrates your proficiency in migrating, deploying, and maintaining SAP solutions within the Azure cloud environment.

Who Should Take This Exam?

This certification is ideal for IT professionals with experience in both Microsoft Azure and SAP solutions, such as:

• Cloud Architects: Designing and implementing cloud architectures for SAP workloads on Azure.
• SAP Basis Administrators: Migrating and managing SAP systems on Microsoft Azure.
• Cloud Solution Architects: Specializing in SAP deployments within the Azure cloud.
• Microsoft Azure Administrators: Expanding their skillset to support SAP on Azure.

Prerequisites

There's no formal prerequisite for the AZ-120 exam. However, a foundational understanding of the following is recommended:

• Microsoft Azure: Familiarity with core Azure services like virtual machines, storage, networking, and identity management.
• SAP Solutions: Basic knowledge of SAP systems, deployment options, and administration tasks.
• Cloud Concepts: Understanding of cloud computing concepts like resource provisioning, scalability, and high availability.

While not required, experience with the AZ-104: Azure Administrator Associate certification can be beneficial as it validates core Azure administration skills.

Roles and Responsibilities 

• SAP Basis Teams: Collaborating with cloud specialists to migrate and manage SAP systems on Azure.
• Cloud Operations Teams: Providing ongoing support and maintenance for SAP deployments in Azure.
• SAP Security Specialists: Implementing security best practices for SAP on Azure.

Exam Details 

• Exam Duration 90 mins
• Exam Format Multiple Choice and Multi-Response Questions
• Number of Questions 40-60 Questions
• Pass Score 700 (on a scale of 1-1000)

Course Outline 

Module 1 - Describe Migrate SAP workloads to Azure (25–30%)

1.1 Explaining to identify requirements for target infrastructure

• Learning to estimate target sizing for SAP workloads
• Learning to identify supported scenarios for SAP deployments on Azure
• Learning to identify compute, storage, and network requirements for SAP workloads
• Learning to assess constraints imposed by subscription models and quota limits
• Learning to identify software licensing requirements for target workloads
• Learning to identify cost implications for target workloads
• Learning to specify an Azure support plan for the target infrastructure
• Learning to choose between lift and shift, lift-shift-migrate, and lift-shift-migrate to HANA
• Learning to choose an appropriate SAP workload migration strategy and tools

1.2 Explaining designing and implementing an Azure environment to support SAP workloads

• Learning to design and implement authorization and access control for SAP workloads
• Learning to design and implement governance and compliance by using Azure Policy
• Learning to design and implement authentication for SAP workloads
• Learning to design and implement authentication for SAP software as a service (SaaS) applications
• Learning to design and implement a management hierarchy, including management groups, subscriptions, and resource groups
• Learning to design Azure landing zones for SAP

Module 2 - Describe designing and implementing an infrastructure to support SAP workloads on Azure (35–40%)

2.1 Explaining designing and implementing a compute solution for SAP workloads

• Learning to select an SAP-certified Azure virtual machine for a given SAP workload
• Learning to configure the Azure VM extension for SAP solutions
• Learning to deploy an operating system by using an Azure Marketplace image
• Learning to create and deploy a custom image to an Azure virtual machine
• Learning to automate the deployment of Azure virtual machines by using IaC, including Bicep and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates
• Learning to automate deployment by using the SAP on Azure Deployment Automation Framework
• Learning to automate deployment by using Azure Center for SAP solutions

2.2 Explaining designing and implementing networking for SAP on Azure virtual machines

• Learning to design and implement virtual networks and subnets
• Learning to implement Accelerated Networking for Azure virtual machines
• Learning to design and configure proximity placement groups
• Learning to design networking to meet SAP workload latency requirements
• Learning to design and implement network flow control
• Learning to design and implement network security
• Learning to design and implement service endpoints and private endpoints for Azure Storage
• Learning to design name resolution for integration with Azure DNS
• Learning to design and configure ExpressRoute for hybrid connectivity
• Learning to design and configure load balancing for a reverse proxy

2.3 Explaining designing and implementing a storage solution for SAP on Azure virtual machines

• Learning to choose a storage type 
• Learning to specify when to use disk striping and simple volumes
• Learning to design for storage security considerations
• Learning to design and implement data protection
• Learning to design and implement caching for disks
• Learning to configure Write Accelerator
• Learning to configure encryption for storage, disks, and data
• Learning to design and implement disks by using Azure NetApp Files
• Learning to design and implement disks by using Azure Files

Module 3 - Describe designing and implementing high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) (15–20%)

3.1 Explaining designing and implementing a high availability solution for SAP on Azure virtual machines

• Learning to design for service-level agreement (SLA) considerations
• Learning to design and deploy SAP workloads into availability sets and availability zones
• Learning to design and implement load balancing for high availability
• Learning to configure clustering for HANA and SAP Central Services (SCS)
• Learning to configure clustering for SQL
• Learning to configure Pacemaker and STONITH
• Learning to configure an Azure fence agent or STONITH Block Device (SBD)
• Learning to design and configure storage-level replication for SAP workloads
• Learning to configure virtual machine restart

3.2 Explaining designing and implementing a disaster recovery solution for SAP on Azure virtual machines

• Learning to design and implement an Azure Site Recovery strategy for an SAP infrastructure
• Learning to design a disaster recovery solution with regional considerations
• Learning to specify network configurations for disaster recovery
• Learning to design a backup strategy to meet SLA requirements
• Learning to implement policies for backups and snapshots
• Learning to configure and validate snapshots and backups for SAP workloads
• Learning to perform backup and restore
• Learning to test disaster recovery

Domain 4 - Describe maintaining SAP workloads on Azure (10–15%)

4.1 Explaining to optimize performance and costs

• Learning to optimize performance and costs for an SAP workload by using Azure Advisor recommendations
• Learning to analyze and optimize network performance
• Learning to optimize costs by configuring snoozing and deploying reserved instances
• Learning to optimize performance and costs by resizing Azure virtual machines
• Learning to optimize storage costs
• Learning to optimize performance and costs of SAP application servers and databases

4.2 Explaining monitoring and maintaining SAP on Azure

• Learning to monitor Azure virtual machines by using Azure Monitor
• Learning to monitor high availability by using Azure Monitor
• Learning to monitor storage by using Azure Monitor
• Learning to monitor networking by using Azure Monitor and Azure Network Watcher
• Learning to configure Azure Monitor for SAP solutions
• Learning to manage backups by using Azure Backup
• Learning to start and stop SAP systems by using Azure Center for SAP solutions
• Learning to manage virtual instances by using Azure Center for SAP solutions
• Learning to implement the SAP LaMa connector for Azure