Extend the Management of SAP on Azure with SAP LaMa

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It has been awhile since my last publication on the SAP blog space, heavily involved in SAP and cloud spaces; I have decided to relight the candle and take some time to share knowledge gathered and experience since this passed time

In this article I will talk about how SAP LaMa can be combined with Azure to extend the SAP instance and landscape management capabilities by leveraging the Azure features such as blog storage and Azure template with custom extension to deploy single system or custom complete landscape catalog.

 

What is the value added for customers?

As we know SAP LaMa helps to centralize the management of operation in SAP landscape, but besides the operation tasks such as stop/start, HA takeover, system cloning and more … Combined with Microsoft Azure by its connector, customers whom are running SAP system on Azure can use all features powered by SAP LaMa, but even better by using it to deploy system or landscape via custom Azure Template or 3^rd party backup tool integration.

Because ARM Template are highly customizable to match yours or customer needs, this marriage will help to scale SAP environment almost on the fly and thus reduce cost and time deployment.

What and how to articulate it?

In my previous blog SAP Hana 2.0 hybrid Landscape Management with LaMa 3.0 & Solution Manager 7.2 I have already explain how to configure SAP LaMa to run with Azure in the context of hybrid landscape management, which include the setup portion; here I will focus on the different case where to articulate and position it.

As mentioned previously, Azure provides a very flexible manner to deploy VM and resource in an automated way by using ARM templates.

These templates can be used to deploy either flat VM or declare the reuse custom VM images for example.

So, as you may have already understood, the key element of the process in term of deployment,is the preparation and the location of the ARM template to be used for SAP LaMa.

 

A very important point that you should keep in mind, when I talk about the location of your template, is  the fact that SAP LaMa for Azure supports only Blob storage location; in other word you will not be able to pass a Github repository directly from the interface.

If you have decided to build and store your ARM template in Github, you will need to link the value from the main template read by SAP LaMa

The values to input for the deployment of your cloud infrastructure will show up in SAP LaMa in the same manner as you use the ARM template deployment tool; however because you run SAP LaMa here, mandatory value needs to be declared in order to be able to run it.

Azure ARM skeleton

SAP LaMa view once ready to deploy

While the process is happening, you can track the progress of the resource’s deployment from LaMa monitoring activities and map it with Azure

Once available, SAP LaMa Map visualization allows you to see all the relation between server component and database component.

Integration for backup process

Often while I am providing workshop and training on SAP on Azure, people ask me if it is possible while using SAP LaMa for Azure to perform backup as part of operation process by leveraging backup solution.

The answer is “Yes we can” Not too long ago I have published an article with the different backup options that can be used with Microsoft Azure for SAP.

One of these options was CommVault; a combination of SAP LaMa and CommVault allows you to have a full management cycle process to include resilient backup as part of your SAP LaMa operation in conjunction with refresh operation too.

More than just an administrative tool for SAP solutions; SAP LaMa combined with Microsoft Azure service helps organization to improve the management and the efficiency of their SAP landscape resources.