How to use ACSS Inventory Checks to review your SAP workload

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: New blog articles in Microsoft Community Hub.

Organizations using SAP for business-critical operations understand the complexity and significance of managing the system. Adjusting the configurations of SAP workload for performance and reliability is important. Microsoft's unmatched expertise in this field stems from helping numerous customers migrate their SAP applications to the Microsoft cloud.

We've created tools and frameworks in the Azure Centre for SAP Solutions (ACSS) to support our customers and partners running SAP workload on the Microsoft Cloud. These tools improve customers visibility at both platform and SAP system levels.

ACSS Tools & Framework - Customer Journey

In this blog post, we're highlighting the Azure Inventory Checks for SAP, which facilitate health checks at the subscription level. Azure Inventory Checks for SAP is a health check capability for SAP Workloads which aims to provide our customers and partners with a holistic view of the quality of their SAP deployment at a subscription level. It is based on Azure workbooks and integrated within the Azure Portal.

Inventory Checks for SAP provide insights into your SAP workload through the following aggregated views:

• Overview – High level counts of deployed resources such as virtual machines.
• Virtual Machines – Compute List, SKUs, Extensions, Disk Configuration and more
• Storage – Backup and Storage Account configuration.
• Network – Information about Private Endpoints, DNS Zones and Network Monitoring.
• Orphaned Resources – Helping with Cost Optimization by surfacing unused resources such as unattached disks.
• Configuration Checks – To creating awareness of resources that do not align with Azure Best Practices.
• Azure NetApp Files - Capacity Pool, Volume usage.
• SAP System detail (With VIS registration) - SAP System Type, Instance number, Kernel release, Patch version, Region of deployment.
• Monitoring - Compute Key Metrics and Resource Health

Here’s what some of our customers have to say about Azure Inventory Checks for SAP:

"Inventory checks of ModusLink’s SAP Azure and non-SAP Azure environments provides us reporting which enables us to effectively manage assets/resource utilization and make appropriate configuration changes. We have visibility to identify orphaned resources, configuration drifts from best practices which in turn helps us optimize the environment and cost.”   Gita Karle, Director Cloud and emerging Technologies & Alejandro Flores, Director IT Infrastructure

"Inventory Checks for SAP is a brilliant and easy-to-use tool that immediately provides insights into areas to improve the quality of the SAP workload. My team have been using it on all our mission-critical (SfMC) SAP customers, and it's a clear value-add for Microsoft customers & partners." Paul Enns, Senior Cloud Solution Architect-Engineering

Overview

To provide customers with a rich experience, we continue to expand these health checks continuously, and over time these are also integrated back into the main workbook within ACSS Quality Insights.  

There are user options based on customer/partner preference on how to access the information. Irrespective of the user options,

Customers are advised to register SAP system in ACSS to access other management capabilities and receive the appropriate support from Microsoft for those capabilities.

User Option #1 - ACSS Integrated Quality Insights

With ACSS, customers can either deploy new SAP systems or register their existing ones to use Quality Insights, a key feature of the ACSS product. Quality Insights lets customers compare their Azure resources and Operating System settings with the best practices. Quality Insights uses Azure Resource Graph Queries to get information from the Azure Subscription about the configuration and health of Azure resources that are important for the SAP Workload.

Pre-requisites

• The SAP System needs to be onboarded to ACSS via a registration process for brownfield (existing) deployments. Refer to this link for more information - Register Existing SAP system to ACSS 
• RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to the Azure Subscription where SAP systems are deployed.

How to access the Quality Insights for SAP Workbook from Azure Center for SAP solutions

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Search for and select Azure Center for SAP solutions in the Azure portal search bar.

3. On the Azure Center for SAP solutions page's sidebar menu, select Quality Insights.

ACSS - Quality insights Workbook

User option #2 – Access Inventory Checks for SAP via Azure Monitor

The standalone version of Azure Inventory Checks for SAP is accessible as a workbook within Azure Monitor. With this standalone workbook, customers can tailor their experience by customizing views and selections using Azure Resource Graph Queries according to their preferences.

Pre-requisites

• The SAP System needs to be onboarded to ACSS via a registration process for brownfield (existing) deployments. Refer to this link for more information - Register Existing SAP system to ACSS. Recommended for VIS specific view.
• RBAC (Role Based Access Control) / minimum Read-Only to the Azure Subscription where SAP systems are deployed.

How to access the Inventory Checks for SAP Workbook from Azure Monitor

1. Browse to shortcut https://aka.ms/ACESInventoryCheckSAP.

Option#2

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
2. Browse to Monitor --> Insights Hub --> Workloads --> Inventory Checks for SAP Workbook.

Inventory Checks for SAP via Azure monitor

Once the workbook opens; it will provide a selection criteria by <Subscription>, <Resource_Group> or <VIS>.

It is recommended to use a filter by Subscription & Resource_Filter where the SAP workload deployed.

Resource_Filter = ResourceGroup

Resource_Filter = ResourceGroup

Resource_Filter = VIS

Resource_Filter = VIS

Each tab will provide an additional option to download the data into CSV.

Inventory Checks for SAP showing SAP Kernel & patch details

User Option #3 - Community Edition - Standalone

We also provide our customers a standalone Inventory Checks for SAP, that can be used for Resource Group / VIS (ACSS - Virtual instance for SAP) views and is continuously updated.

Pre-requisites

• The SAP System needs to be onboarded to ACSS via a registration process for brownfield (existing) deployments. Refer to this link for more information - Register Existing SAP system to ACSS. Recommended for VIS specific view.
• Users must have at least READ-ONLY permission on the subscription or Resource Group they wish to assess.
• Write access to an Azure Resource Group, where the workbook is persisted.

How to import workbook template from GitHub into Azure Monitor

The Azure Inventory Checks also available on GitHub as opensource for collaboration. To use the GitHub template of ACSS Inventory Checks for SAP, please follow steps from GitHub.

https://github.com/Azure/SAP-on-Azure-Scripts-and-Utilities/tree/main/Tools&Framework/InventoryChecksForSAP 

The ACSS Inventory Checks offer an invaluable capability, providing profound insights into your workloads. Through aggregated views, it offers a holistic approach, integrating Operating System, Workload, and Azure Platform metrics. This ensures clarity in running and maintaining your SAP System on Azure.

Authors

Authors are members of Azure Engineering team for SAP workload at Microsoft, part of the Customer Solutions & Incubation team, responsible for helping customers achieve the most out of their cloud investment by identifying and unblocking customers of technical issues and incubate products to connect SAP Workload deployment with best practices on Azure.