15 lessons Microsoft learned migrating SAP to Azure
Microsoft runs 100% of their SAP applications on Azure and is now in the process of moving the company to S/4HANA.
S/4HANA is short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, meaning that it is the fourth version of SAP Business Suite, but is designed to run only on SAP HANA
The lessons Microsoft teams learnt while moving SAP to Azure are documented in the free ebook "15 lessons learned migrating SAP to the cloud"
Key points:
1. Understand suitability and migration efforts. Before performing an IaaS migration, a best practice is to assess the complexity of your SAP workloads, the underlying infrastructure, the size of each workload and related databases (in terms of velocity, volume, and variety), and the requirements for seasonal elasticity.
2. Clean out your closet. Moving to the cloud is an opportunity to throw out the stuff you’re not using. When you owned that old on-premises server, it didn’t matter how much old stuff you had buried in there. When you’re on the cloud, the cost of carrying around a lot of dead weight can add up fast.
Look for systems that you can replace with software as a service (SaaS) offerings. For example, SAP has SaaS solutions like Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, and others. Microsoft has SaaS products—like Dynamics CRM Online—that provide integration into SAP business processes
3. Ensure that you don’t overprovision your virtual machines. It’s important to make sure that you provision enough resources so that you don’t have to keep increasing your system weekly.
4. Determine an Azure region strategy before moving. Azure regions have truly global reach, so make sure that your resources are hosted in an Azure region or regions that provide the best connectivity for your company.
5. Consider moving low-risk systems to Azure with the vertical strategy right away. In evaluating when to use a vertical strategy, keep in mind that a low-risk end-to-end system might be a good candidate for testing this strategy and gaining experience with a production environment in Azure.
6. Consider building new systems in Azure from the start. When building new systems, consider building low–business impact systems in Azure. This might save you money and help you learn about production environments in Azure.
7. Understand migration strategies and how they can be best applied to your environment. Understanding what to move and when to move it is a big part of moving SAP to Azure.
8. Predict known business events. Don’t move systems when they’re highly critical. Consider scheduling around events like product releases, quarterly financial reporting, and big projects that go live in the production environment.
9. Monitor technology advances. Azure technology and available virtual machine sizes and features always advance. Keep up-to-date with new capabilities and use them to achieve the best possible benefits for your business.
10. Consider optimizing your SAP environment before and after moving to Azure. You can optimize your environment before migrating by ensuring that retired systems aren’t migrated, that your SAP infrastructure inventory is accurate, and that your disaster recovery plan is tested and in place. You don’t want to waste migration time on systems or data that you don’t need.
11. Design for high availability in your production systems with Windows Server Failover Clustering, SQL Server Always On, and SAP features like logon groups, remote function call groups, and batch server groups.
12. Snooze so you don’t lose. Slash your costs by taking advantage of one of the cloud’s best benefits: snooze your usage of Azure when your teams are out of the office on nights and weekends.
13. Always keep security in mind. Protecting business data is a top priority. When migrating SAP workloads to Azure, consider all the compliance and data security aspects of hosting data in the public cloud.
Enable user access via web or mobile devices—ensuring users can perform only the activities for which they’re authorized—by using the Fiori Gateway user interface.
Use HANA’s role-based access architecture to deploy privileges to your user base, restrict actions that specific users can perform in the HANA database, and restrict data that specific users can view through reports
14. Balance security needs with the ability to troubleshoot. In a cluster installation, consider how you balance security with the ability to troubleshoot. A best practice is to open only the ports that are really needed. You might want the environment to be somewhat open to help with troubleshooting, but you don’t want it to be too open.
15. Capture all application and data legal requirements during planning. Because complying with legal requirements for data safety and security can be complicated, it’s a good idea to work with the stakeholders and data owners for each application to capture all corporate and legal compliance needs. Plan for this up front.
S/4HANA is short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, meaning that it is the fourth version of SAP Business Suite, but is designed to run only on SAP HANA
The lessons Microsoft teams learnt while moving SAP to Azure are documented in the free ebook "15 lessons learned migrating SAP to the cloud"
Key points:
1. Understand suitability and migration efforts. Before performing an IaaS migration, a best practice is to assess the complexity of your SAP workloads, the underlying infrastructure, the size of each workload and related databases (in terms of velocity, volume, and variety), and the requirements for seasonal elasticity.
2. Clean out your closet. Moving to the cloud is an opportunity to throw out the stuff you’re not using. When you owned that old on-premises server, it didn’t matter how much old stuff you had buried in there. When you’re on the cloud, the cost of carrying around a lot of dead weight can add up fast.
Look for systems that you can replace with software as a service (SaaS) offerings. For example, SAP has SaaS solutions like Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba, and others. Microsoft has SaaS products—like Dynamics CRM Online—that provide integration into SAP business processes
3. Ensure that you don’t overprovision your virtual machines. It’s important to make sure that you provision enough resources so that you don’t have to keep increasing your system weekly.
4. Determine an Azure region strategy before moving. Azure regions have truly global reach, so make sure that your resources are hosted in an Azure region or regions that provide the best connectivity for your company.
5. Consider moving low-risk systems to Azure with the vertical strategy right away. In evaluating when to use a vertical strategy, keep in mind that a low-risk end-to-end system might be a good candidate for testing this strategy and gaining experience with a production environment in Azure.
6. Consider building new systems in Azure from the start. When building new systems, consider building low–business impact systems in Azure. This might save you money and help you learn about production environments in Azure.
7. Understand migration strategies and how they can be best applied to your environment. Understanding what to move and when to move it is a big part of moving SAP to Azure.
8. Predict known business events. Don’t move systems when they’re highly critical. Consider scheduling around events like product releases, quarterly financial reporting, and big projects that go live in the production environment.
9. Monitor technology advances. Azure technology and available virtual machine sizes and features always advance. Keep up-to-date with new capabilities and use them to achieve the best possible benefits for your business.
10. Consider optimizing your SAP environment before and after moving to Azure. You can optimize your environment before migrating by ensuring that retired systems aren’t migrated, that your SAP infrastructure inventory is accurate, and that your disaster recovery plan is tested and in place. You don’t want to waste migration time on systems or data that you don’t need.
11. Design for high availability in your production systems with Windows Server Failover Clustering, SQL Server Always On, and SAP features like logon groups, remote function call groups, and batch server groups.
12. Snooze so you don’t lose. Slash your costs by taking advantage of one of the cloud’s best benefits: snooze your usage of Azure when your teams are out of the office on nights and weekends.
13. Always keep security in mind. Protecting business data is a top priority. When migrating SAP workloads to Azure, consider all the compliance and data security aspects of hosting data in the public cloud.
Enable user access via web or mobile devices—ensuring users can perform only the activities for which they’re authorized—by using the Fiori Gateway user interface.
Use HANA’s role-based access architecture to deploy privileges to your user base, restrict actions that specific users can perform in the HANA database, and restrict data that specific users can view through reports
14. Balance security needs with the ability to troubleshoot. In a cluster installation, consider how you balance security with the ability to troubleshoot. A best practice is to open only the ports that are really needed. You might want the environment to be somewhat open to help with troubleshooting, but you don’t want it to be too open.
15. Capture all application and data legal requirements during planning. Because complying with legal requirements for data safety and security can be complicated, it’s a good idea to work with the stakeholders and data owners for each application to capture all corporate and legal compliance needs. Plan for this up front.
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