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Get quality checks and insights for a Virtual Instance for SAP solutions (preview)

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Important

Azure Center for SAP solutions is currently in PREVIEW. See the Azure Center for SAP solutions - Legal Terms for legal notices applicable to Azure Center for SAP solutions.

The Quality Insights Azure workbook in Azure Center for SAP solutions provides insights about the SAP system resources. The feature is part of the monitoring capabilities built in to the Virtual Instance for SAP solutions (VIS). These quality checks make sure that your SAP system uses Azure and SAP best practices for reliability and performance.

In this how-to guide, you'll learn how to use quality checks and insights to get more information about virtual machine (VM) configurations within your SAP system.

Prerequisites

Open Quality Insights workbook

To open the workbook:

  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 Virtual Instances for SAP solutions.

  4. On the Virtual Instances for SAP solutions page, select the VIS that you want to get insights about.

    Screenshot of Azure portal, showing the list of available virtual instances for SAP in a subscription.

  5. On the sidebar menu for the VIS, under Monitoring select Quality Insights.

    Screenshot of Azure portal, showing the Quality Insights workbook page selected in the sidebar menu for a virtual Instance for SAP solutions.

There are multiple sections in the workbook:

Get Advisor Recommendations

The Quality checks feature in Azure Center for SAP solutions runs validation checks for all VIS resources. These quality checks validate the SAP system configurations follow the best practices recommended by SAP and Azure. If a VIS doesn't follow these best practices, you receive a recommendation from Azure Advisor.

The table in the Advisor Recommendations tab shows all the recommendations for ASCS, Application and Database instances in the VIS.

Screenshot of the Advisor Recommendations tab, showing overview of recommendations for all instances in the VIS.

Select an instance name to see all recommendations, including which action to take to resolve an issue.

Screenshot of detailed advisor recommendations for an instance and which actions to take to resolve each issue.

The following checks are run for each VIS:

  • Checks that the VMs used for different instances in the VIS are certified by SAP. For better performance and support, make sure that a VM is certified for SAP on Azure. For more details, see [SAP note 1928533] (https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/1928533).
  • Checks that accelerated networking is enabled for the NICs attached to the different VMs. Network latency between Application VMs and Database VMs for SAP workloads must be 0.7 ms or less. If accelerated networking isn't enabled, network latency can increase beyond the threshold of 0.7 ms. For more details, see the planning and deployment checklist for SAP workloads on Azure.
  • Checks that the network configuration is optimized for HANA and the OS. Makes sure that as many client ports as possible are available for HANA internal communication. You must explicitly exclude the ports used by processes and applications which bind to specific ports by adjusting the parameter net.ipv4.ip_local_reserved_ports to a range of 9000-64999. For more details, see SAP note 2382421.
  • Checks that swap space is set to 2 GB in HANA systems. For SLES and RHEL, configure a small swap space of 2 GB to avoid performance regressions at times of high memory utilization in the OS. Typically, it's recommended that activities terminate with "out of memory" errors. This setting makes sure that the overall system is still usable and only certain requests are terminated. For more details, see SAP note 1999997.
  • Checks that fstrim is disabled in SAP systems that run on SUSE OS. fstrim scans the filesystem and sends UNMAP commands for each unused block found. This setting is useful in a thin-provisioned system, if the system is over-provisioned. It's not recommended to run SAP HANA on an over-provisioned storage array. Active fstrim can cause XFS metadata corruption. For more information, see SAP note 2205917 and Disabling fstrim - under which conditions?.

Note

These quality checks run on all VIS instances at a regular frequency of 12 hours. The corresponding recommendations in Azure Advisor also refresh at the same 12-hour frequency.

If you take action on one or more recommendations from Azure Center for SAP solutions, wait for the next refresh to see any new recommendations from Azure Advisor.

Get VM information

The Virtual Machine tab provides insights about the VMs in your VIS. There are multiple subsections:

Azure Compute

The Azure Compute tab shows a summary graph of the VMs inside the VIS.

Screenshot of Azure Compute tab, showing a pie chart of running virtual machines.

Compute List

The Compute List tab shows a table of information about the VMs inside the VIS. This information includes the VM's name and state, SKU, OS, publisher, image version and SKU, offer, Azure region, resource group, tags, and more.

You can toggle Show Help to see more information about the table data.

Select a VM name to see its overview page, and change settings like Boot Diagnostic.

Screenshot of Compute List tab, showing a table of details about the virtual machines inside of a virtual Instance for SAP solutions.

Compute Extensions

The Compute Extensions tab shows information about your VM extensions. There are three tabs within this section:

VM + Extensions

VM+Extensions shows a summary of any VM extensions installed on the VMs in your VIS.

Screenshot of the VM plus Extensions tab, showing a table of virtual machines with the names of virtual machine extensions installed on each resource.

VM Extensions Status

VM Extensions Status shows details about the VM extensions in each VM. You can see each extension's state, version, and if AutoUpgrade is enabled.

Screenshot of the VM extensions status tab, showing the states of each virtual machine extension per virtual machine.

Failed VM Extensions

Failed VM Extensions shows which VM extensions are failing in the selected VIS.

Screenshot of the Failed VM Extensions tab, showing no failed extensions for the selected VIS.

Compute + OS Disk

The Compute+OS Disk tab shows a table with OS disk configurations in the SAP system.

Screenshot of the Compute plus O S Disk tab, showing a table with operating system disk configurations within the system.

Compute + Data Disks

The Compute+Data Disks tab shows a table with data disk configurations in the SAP system.

Screenshot of the Compute plus Data Disks tab, showing a table with data disk configurations within the system.

Run configuration checks

The Configuration Checks tab provides configuration checks for the VMs in your VIS. There are four subsections:

Accelerated Networking

The Accelerated Networking tab shows if Accelerated Networking State is enabled for each NIC in the VIS. It's recommended to enable this setting for reliability and performance.

Screenshot of the Accelerated Networking tab, showing a table of virtual machines with their accelerated networking statuses.

Public IP

The Public IP tab shows any public IP addresses that are associated with the NICs linked to the VMs in the VIS.

Screenshot of the Public I P tab, showing a notice that there are no public I P addresses associated with the virtual machines in the system.

Backup

The Backup tab shows a table of VMs that don't have Azure Backup configured. It's recommended to use Azure Backup with your VMs.

Screenshot of the Backup tab, showing a table of which virtual machines in the system don't have Azure Backup enabled.

Load Balancer

The Load Balancer tab shows information about load balancers connected to the resource group(s) for the VIS. There are two subsections: Load Balancer Overview and Load Balancer Monitor.

Load Balancer Overview

The Load Balancer Overview tab shows rules and details for the load balancers in the VIS. You can review:

  • If the HA ports are defined for the load balancers.
  • If the load balancers have floating IP addresses enabled.
  • If the keep-alive functionality is enabled, with a maximum timeout of 30 minutes.

Screenshot of the Load Balancer tab, showing a table with an overview of information for the standard load balancers in the system.

Load Balancer Monitor

The Load Balancer Monitor tab shows monitoring information for the load balancers. You can filter the information by load balancer and time range.

Load Balancer Key Metrics, which is a table that shows important information about the load balancers in the subscription where the VIS exists.

Screenshot of the Load Balancer Key Metrics section, showing a table of basic visualized information about load balancers in the system.

Backend health probe by Backend IP, which is a chart that shows the health probe status for each load balancer over time.

Screenshot of the Backend health probe section, showing a graph of load balancer statuses over the selected time range.

Next steps