We are excited to be part of SAP TechEd Virtual 2024 as a diamond sponsor. Microsoft Azure continues to play a leading role in expanding SAP RISE deployments, enabling clients to seamlessly integrate their SAP assets on Azure with those in RISE. This integration covers data, business processes, and user interfaces, resulting in significant productivity improvements and cost savings for customers. In addition to infrastructure, the turnkey SAP specific solutions we are creating in AI, data, and security are resonating positively with customers. The SAP Sapphire announcement highlighted the integration of Microsoft Copilot and SAP Joule, showcasing our strong partnership with SAP to boost productivity, simplify collaboration around critical business processes.

When Accenture sought to transform its operations to enhance its innovative solutions and services for customers, it selected Azure managed through RISE with SAP to streamline its infrastructure management. This transition has provided Accenture with improved access to real-time data, enabling quick decision-making and predictive analysis for future outcomes, thereby enhancing performance and reducing process times.

“RISE with SAP on Azure puts Microsoft and SAP capabilities side by side, offering our clients security and interoperability while also simplifying management of the infrastructure—all with an eye towards AI innovation.” 

-Anand Raval, Director of SAP Digital Transformation, Accenture

We are pleased to announce product updates to further help our customers achieve the best outcomes for their businesses.

General Availability of Microsoft Sentinel solution for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to monitor and protect your cloud solutions.
Public Preview of Single Sign-On authentication support for the SAP ERP Connector and SAP OData Connectors harnessing the benefits of low-code development while maintaining the protection and compliance of their SAP environments.
Upcoming resiliency checks in Azure Center for SAP solutions and improvements to schedule start/stop automation to improve resiliency of your SAP environment and troubleshooting of automation failures.
Support for upcoming previews of Trusted Access and Dedicated SKU in Azure Monitor for SAP solutions to improve security and cost-efficiency.
SAP Deployment Automation Framework now supports SAP HANA Scale-out and shared Azure NetApp Files storage, enabling deployment scenarios like BW4/HANA scale-out with standby node architectures.
Protected Instance (PI) fees is now available at lower rates for Azure Backup for SAP HANA on Azure VM offering greater value at a lower total cost of ownership.
General Availability of Mv3 High Memory and Very High Memory series to provide faster insights, more uptime, and better price-performance.
The Well-Architected Assessment for SAP workloads and Inventory Checks for SAP Workbook in Azure Center for SAP Tools now include updated best practices such as VMSS Flex, AVG Zonal, Mv3, and the new ANF Volume Transfer Bytes metric for better data movement insights.

Let’s dive into the summary of product updates and services.

Extend and Innovate

Microsoft Sentinel Solution for SAP

The Microsoft Sentinel Solution for SAP offers cyber-threat detection for SAP workloads, including the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), whether they are running on Azure, other clouds, or on-premises. It is part of the Unified Security Operations Platform (USOP) experience, which integrates Microsoft Defender XDR and the cloud-native SIEM solution, Sentinel. We are pleased to announce the recent general availability of the Sentinel Solution for SAP BTP.

Additionally, we are announcing a private preview of integrating SAP LogServ with Sentinel to enhance threat detection in SAP RISE based on infrastructure-related logs. You can sign up for this through your SAP ECS Client Delivery Manager.

Furthermore, we are also announcing a private preview for Sentinel for SAP using agentless connectivity via the SAP Cloud Connector, which significantly simplifies the onboarding of SAP systems to Sentinel.

Microsoft Entra replaces SAP IDM

SAP recommends adopting Microsoft Entra as the primary identity provider and governance solution for SAP workloads. To support customers and partners in this transition, we have introduced the first set of new guidance to migrate from SAP IDM to Entra ID. Customers can begin to use Microsoft Entra features such as Conditional Access, to enforce Zero Trust access policies, and automatic provisioning. See the new blog series of tutorials for the most common migration scenarios.

Power Platform and API Management

We are announcing the availability of expanded Single Sign-On authentication support for the SAP ERP Connector (RFCs, BAPIs) and SAP OData Connector in public preview.

Apply SAP Principal Propagation to your Microsoft apps using Azure API Management with OData. This way the Microsoft Entra ID user gets mapped to the named SAP backend user retaining its authorizations. It is applicable to all SAP solutions that support SAP Principal Propagation (e.g. SAP S/4HANA, Business Suite, SuccessFactors, RISE, etc.). Find more info on this blog.

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Microsoft Universal Print

The solution enables cloud-native printing for SAP workloads to eliminate the need for legacy print servers and the associated overheads. See this Microsoft learn article detailing SAP front-end printing and follow its guidance on backend printing.

SAP on Azure Software Products and Services

Azure Center for SAP solutions

Azure Center for SAP solutions (ACSS) simplifies deployment and management of SAP workloads on Azure. One of the ways it does that is by periodically checking the SAP systems registered with ACSS for configuration drifts and providing recommendations in Azure Advisor.

We are currently working on adding recommendations that would help you improve resiliency of your SAP workloads. If you have not done so already, register your SAP systems with ACSS to take advantage of these checks when they come become available later this year.

ACSS enables customers to optimize costs and improve efficiency when managing SAP systems by automating Start, Stop and Snooze of SAP systems and their underlying VMs. We have enhanced the automation solution to make it easy to identify failures in start or stop operations and take the necessary action to remediate.

Please check out the product documentation to learn more or head over to the Azure Portal to try out the new features.

Azure Monitor for SAP solutions

We continue to invest in Azure Monitor for SAP solutions (AMS) with a host of new features designed to boost monitoring capabilities, security, and cost-efficiency.

With a focus on security, we have introduced trusted access capability to ensure that only authorized networks or resources can access AMS managed resources, like storage accounts and Key Vaults. By using system-assigned managed identities and private endpoints, Trusted Access eliminates the need for admin access or making resources public, significantly enhancing security.

By using Azure Functions dedicated SKU option, you can now greatly cut down the cost of operating AMS by optimizing resource usage. Public Preview of these features is planned for November 2024. If you are interested in trying these out right away, register for the preview by selecting the AMS Preview Feature Access under preview features in your subscription. More detailed instructions can be found here.

For general information on AMS, please refer to the product documentation, or visit the Azure Portal to get started using AMS today.

SAP Deployment Automation Framework

The latest updates to the SAP Deployment Automation Framework (SDAF) bring several exciting new capabilities aimed at enhancing SAP system deployment on Azure. We recently added support for SLES 15 SP5 and RHEL 9.2, alongside SLES simple-mount and Azure NetApp Files (ANF) pacemaker resource optimization. We have also enhanced the SAP HANA Scale-out use case with shared ANF. Dynamic BOM processing has been introduced to streamline deployments, offering greater flexibility and efficiency. The new post-deployment playbook feature allows customers to apply custom configurations, thereby tailoring deployments to meet specific business needs.

From a security perspective, we have upgraded the pipeline and extension to persist Terraform variable files (tfvars) in the storage account, enhancing their availability. The framework now supports Terraform v1.6, ensuring compatibility with the latest enhancements. Additional updates include optimized DevOps pipeline deployments, Azure Monitor for SAP deployment support, support for running Quality Checks, and the use of Managed Identities for deployment. These enhancements reinforce SDAF as a preferred solution for deploying SAP systems on Azure.

Azure Backup for SAP

We are thrilled to announce a significant update that will bring improved cost efficiency to our SAP HANA Database Backup service. Protected Instance (PI) fees for Azure Backup for SAP HANA on Azure VM is now available at reduced fees. This change is designed to deliver more value at a lower cost, making it easier for enterprises to protect their critical data without compromising on quality or performance.

New Pricing Structure: More Value, Lower Cost 

More details on HANA Backup TCO Savings can be found here – Azure Backup-SAP HANA DB Backup Delivers More Value at Lower TCO with Reduced Protected Instance Fee – Microsoft Community Hub.

As part of our commitment to enhancing backup support for SAP customers, we are excited to announce that the Public Preview of backup support for SAP ASE (Sybase) Database on Azure Backup will be available in November 2024. The key features of ASE DB Backup support include support for cost-effective backup policies, managed recovery services vault and 15-min RPO.

New SAP Certified Compute and Storage

High Memory and Very High Memory

Executing on our vision to have our third version of M-series (Mv3) powered by 4th generation Intel® Xeon® processors (Sapphire Rapids) across the board, we have announced the general availability of both our Mv3 High Memory (HM) and Very High Memory (VHM) virtual machines (VMs).

The Mv3 HM VMs are designed to scale for workloads ranging from 6TB to 16TB. They deliver between 40% and 250% more throughput compared to our Mv2 High Memory (HM) VMs with the same memory, which results in significantly faster SAP HANA data load times for SAP OLAP workloads and much higher performance per core for SAP OLTP workloads over the previous generation Mv2.

Powered by Azure Boost, the Mv3 HM VMs provide up to twice the throughput to Azure Premium SSD storage and up to a 25% improvement in network throughput over Mv2. These VMs are built from the ground up for increased resilience against failures in memory, disks, and networking, leveraging intelligence from past generations. They are available in both disk and diskless offerings, giving customers the flexibility to choose the option that best meets their workload needs.

The new Mv3 VHM VMs come with several key features that make them stand out. They offer unmatched memory capacity, with close to 32TB of memory in both the Standard_M896ixds_32_v3 and Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3 VMs, making them ideal for supporting very large in-memory databases and workloads. These VMs also boast high CPU power, featuring 896 cores in the Standard_M896ixds_32_v3 VM and 1792 vCPUs in the Standard_M1792ixds_32_v3 VM, designed to handle high-end S/4HANA workloads and providing more CPU power than other public cloud offerings.

Additionally, both VM types provide enhanced network and storage bandwidth, offering the highest network and storage bandwidth available in Azure for a full node VM, including up to 200-Gbps network bandwidth with Azure Boost. They are also certified for SAP HANA, adhering to the SAP prescribed socket-to-memory ratio, ensuring optimal performance for in-memory analytics and relational database servers. These features make the Mv3 VHM VMs a powerful and flexible option for various workload needs.

Azure Center for SAP solutions Tools and Frameworks   

In line with our commitment to continuous improvement, we have updated the Azure Center for SAP solutions Tools & Frameworks to ensure customers and partners can stay connected with the latest advancements in the SAP on Azure space. These updates are driven by our ongoing collaboration and learning from customers.

Notably, we have recently updated the Well-Architected Assessment for SAP workloads to incorporate the latest best practices for running SAP on Azure. Key additions include features like VMSS Flex, Azure NetApp Files AVG Zonal support, Mv3 VM types, and Capacity Reservations Group, among others. These updates are now available through the Microsoft Assessment Platform under the Azure Well-Architected Review.

The Inventory Checks for SAP Workbook offers customers and partners valuable insights into their Azure infrastructure deployments. We are excited to announce a new metric – Azure NetApp Files Volume Transfer Bytes. This feature enables customers and partners to monitor data transferred from their ANF Volumes, providing clearer insights into data movement, especially in configurations like Azure Files Backup. This helps users optimize ANF usage and make better decisions about capacity and performance management.

That wraps up the updates. To learn more, visit the Microsoft sessions at SAP TechEd Virtual 2024 and check out our SAP on Azure learning page.

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