Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP WorkloadsStudy guide
The specialty certification for migrating, designing infrastructure, HADR, and operating SAP workloads (HANA/NetWeaver) on Azure (AZ-120).
About Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads (AZ-120)
Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads (AZ-120) is a Specialty-level certification from Microsoft. This page organizes the exam scope into a 5-chapter, 13-section study guide and lets you check your understanding with exam-style practice questions. A good flow is to read the chapters below in order, then test yourself via "Practice questions."
Exam domains (approximate weighting)
- Migrate SAP workloads to Azure~27%
- Design and implement an infrastructure to support SAP workloads on Azure~28%
- Design and implement high availability and disaster recovery (HADR)~23%
- Maintain SAP workloads on Azure~22%
Weights are approximate guidance for the live exam. Each domain is covered in detail in the chapters and sections below.
Official exam information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/resources/study-guides/az-120
1SAP migration and Azure environment
- 1.1Target requirements, sizing, and migration strategy
Understand estimating target sizing, supported scenarios, compute/storage/network requirements, licensing/cost, and choosing between lift-and-shift and migration approaches for SAP workloads on Azure.
- 1.2Azure environment and governance
Understand authorization and access control for SAP workloads, governance via Azure Policy, authentication, management hierarchy, and Azure landing zones for SAP.
- 1.3Integration with SAP RISE
Understand integrating RISE with SAP (managed SaaS-style SAP) with Azure: networking, compute/network/storage, data archiving, and identity/security design and implementation.
2Infrastructure: compute, networking, and storage
- 2.1Compute (SAP-certified VMs and automated deployment)
Understand choosing SAP-certified Azure VMs, the Azure VM extension for SAP solutions, image deployment, Bicep/ARM templates, the SAP Deployment Automation Framework, and automated deployment via Azure Center for SAP solutions.
- 2.2Networking
Understand VNets/subnets, Accelerated Networking, proximity placement groups, designing for SAP latency requirements, Private/Service Endpoints, Azure DNS, and ExpressRoute for hybrid connectivity.
- 2.3Storage
Understand choosing storage types, disk striping, disk caching, Write Accelerator, encryption, and SAP storage design with Azure NetApp Files and Azure Files.
3High availability and disaster recovery (HADR)
- 3.1High availability (HA)
Understand SLA considerations, availability sets vs availability zones, load balancing, clustering for HANA/SAP Central Services, and Pacemaker with STONITH (Azure fence agent / SBD).
- 3.2Disaster recovery (DR)
Understand Azure Site Recovery strategy, region-aware DR design, DR networking, backup strategy meeting RPO/RTO, snapshots, backup/restore, and DR testing.
4Optimization
- 4.1Optimizing performance and cost
Understand Azure Advisor performance/cost recommendations, Azure Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, VM resizing, storage cost optimization, and data optimization via archiving.
- 4.2Network and app/DB optimization
Understand analyzing/optimizing network performance, identifying latency/throughput bottlenecks, and continuously tuning/scaling SAP application servers and databases.
5Monitoring and maintenance
- 5.1Monitoring (Azure Monitor and AMS)
Understand monitoring VM/HA/storage/network with Azure Monitor, network monitoring with Azure Network Watcher, and integrated SAP-specific monitoring with Azure Monitor for SAP solutions.
- 5.2Backup management
Understand managing backup policies, snapshots, and restore (including SAP/HANA) with Azure Backup and a Recovery Services vault.
- 5.3SAP operations (Azure Center for SAP and LaMa)
Understand starting/stopping SAP systems and virtual-instance management via Azure Center for SAP solutions, and operations integration via the SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) connector for Azure.