Enterprises are adopting cloud computing at a faster rate than ever before. Many innovative offerings from public cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, continue to revolutionize enterprise cloud use. One of Microsoft Azure’s unique offerings is AZ-120 – the ability to migrate SAP workloads to Microsoft Azure cloud platforms. As a result, the demand for professionals capable of managing Microsoft Azure for SAP workloads has risen significantly in recent years.
Let us know How difficult is the Microsoft Azure AZ-120 exam!
About Microsoft Azure AZ-120
An architect or engineer’s responsibilities for Azure for SAP Workloads include making recommendations on services and adjusting resources as needed for optimal resiliency, performance, scale, provision, size, and monitoring. Azure for SAP Workloads architects and engineers collaborate with cloud administrators, cloud DBAs, and clients to implement solutions.
Audience for the exam
Candidates taking the Microsoft AZ-120 certification exam should have prior knowledge of/work in the field of architects or engineers with extensive experience and knowledge of the SAP system landscape and industry standards specific to the long-term operation of an SAP solution on Microsoft Azure. These skills, however, are not required.
Recommended Knowledge
A candidate should have extensive experience and knowledge of SAP applications, including SAP HANA, S/4HANA, SAP NetWeaver, SAP BW/4HANA, OS servers for SAP applications and databases, Azure portal, ARM templates, operating systems, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, storage structures, high availability design, disaster recovery design, data protection concepts, and networking.
In addition to SAP HANA and Linux certifications, having an Azure Administrator Associate or Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification is strongly recommended for the Microsoft Azure AZ-120 exam. These certifications, however, are not required.
AZ-120 Exam Details
The AZ-120 exam consists of 40-60 questions. In addition, the AZ-120 exam lasts 180 minutes. The exam costs $165 in the United States, but prices may vary depending on location. Furthermore, The exam is offered in four languages: English, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), and Korean. The exam has a passing score of 700 points out of 1000. You can expect multiple-choice questions as well as case studies.
Have a look at the table:
| Name of the exam | Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads |
| Code of the exam | AZ-100 |
| No. of questions | 40-60 |
| Format of questions | multiple-choice, case studies |
| Cost of exam | $165 |
| Duration of exam | 180 minutes |
| Languages available | English, Korean, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese |
| Scheduling platform | Pearson VUE |
Let us now move on to the course structure of this exam for more clarity.
Course outline
1. Migrate SAP workloads to Azure (25—30%)
Identify requirements for target infrastructure
- Estimate target sizing for SAP workloads (Microsoft Documentation: SAP workloads on Azure: planning and deployment checklist)
- Identify supported scenarios for SAP deployments on Azure
- Identify compute, storage, and network requirements for SAP workloads
- Assess constraints imposed by subscription models and quota limits (Microsoft Documentation: Azure subscription and service limits, quotas, and constraints)
- Identify software licensing requirements for target workloads
- Identify cost implications for target workloads
- Specify an Azure support plan for target infrastructure (Microsoft Documentation: Configure infrastructure)
- Choose between lift and shift, lift-shift-migrate, and lift-shift-migrate to HANA
- Choose an appropriate SAP workload migration strategy and tools
Design and implement an Azure environment to support SAP workloads
- Design and implement authorization and access control for SAP workloads (Microsoft Documentation: SAP workloads on Azure: planning and deployment checklist)
- Design and implement governance and compliance by using Azure Policy (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Policy)
- Design and implement authentication for SAP workloads
- Design and implement authentication for SAP software as a service–based (SaaS-based) applications (Microsoft Documentation: integrating SaaS applications with Azure Active Directory)
- Design and implement a management hierarchy, including management groups, subscriptions, and resource groups
- Design Azure landing zones for SAP
2. Design and implement an infrastructure to support SAP workloads on Azure (35—40%)
Design and implement a compute solution for SAP workloads
- Choose an SAP-certified Azure virtual machine for a given SAP workload (Microsoft Documentation: Use Azure to host and run SAP workload scenarios)
- Configure the Azure VM extension for SAP solutions (Microsoft Documentation: Implement the Azure VM extension for SAP solutions)
- Deploy an operating system by using an Azure Marketplace image (Microsoft Documentation: Find and use Azure Marketplace VM images with Azure PowerShell)
- Create a custom image and deploy it to an Azure virtual machine (Microsoft Documentation: Create a golden image in Azure)
- Automate the deployment of Azure virtual machines by using IaC, including Bicep and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates (Microsoft Documentation: Use infrastructure automation tools with virtual machines in Azure)
- Automate deployment by using the SAP on Azure Deployment Automation Framework
- Automate deployment by using Azure Center for SAP solutions
Design and implement networking for SAP on Azure Virtual Machines
- Design and implement virtual networks and subnets (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Virtual Network)
- Implement Accelerated Networking for Azure Virtual Machines (Microsoft Documentation: Create a Linux virtual machine with Accelerated Networking using Azure CLI)
- Design and configure proximity placement groups (Microsoft Documentation: Proximity placement groups)
- Design networking to meet SAP workload latency requirements
- Design and implement network flow control (Microsoft Documentation: Traffic flow security in Azure)
- Design and implement network security (Microsoft Documentation: Design and implement network security)
- Design and implement service endpoints and private endpoints for Azure Storage (Microsoft Documentation: Use private endpoints for Azure Storage)
- Design name resolution for integration with Azure DNS (Microsoft Documentation: Name resolution for resources in Azure virtual networks)
- Design and configure Azure ExpressRoute for hybrid connectivity (Microsoft Documentation: Extend an on-premises network using ExpressRoute)
- Design and configure load balancing for a reverse proxy (Microsoft Documentation: Set up and configure reverse proxy in Azure Service Fabric)
Design and implement a storage solution for SAP on Azure Virtual Machines
- Choose a storage type
- Specify when to use disk striping and simple volumes (Microsoft Documentation: Volume Object)
- Design for storage security considerations (Microsoft Documentation: Security recommendations for Blob storage)
- Design and implement data protection (Microsoft Documentation: Data protection considerations)
- Design and implement caching for disks (Microsoft Documentation: Caching guidance)
- Configure Write Accelerator (Microsoft Documentation: Enable Write Accelerator)
- Configure encryption for storage, disks, and data (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Storage encryption for data at rest)
- Design and implement volumes by using Azure NetApp Files
- Design and implement volumes by using Azure Files
3. Design and implement high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) (15—20%)
Design and implement a high-availability solution for SAP on Azure Virtual Machines
- Design for service-level agreement (SLA) considerations (Microsoft Documentation: Using business metrics to design resilient Azure applications)
- Design and deploy SAP workloads into availability sets and availability zones (Microsoft Documentation: SAP workload configurations with Azure Availability Zones)
- Design and implement load balancing for high availability (Microsoft Documentation: High Availability and Disaster Recovery)
- Configure clustering for HANA and SAP Central Services (SCS) (Microsoft Documentation: Cluster an SAP ASCS/SCS instance on a Windows failover cluster)
- Configure clustering for SQL
- Configure Pacemaker and STONITH (Microsoft Documentation: Set up Pacemaker on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in Azure)
- Configure an Azure fence agent or STONITH Block Device (SBD)
- Design and configure storage-level replication for SAP workloads (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Storage types for SAP workload)
- Configure restart of SAP systems, instances, and HANA databases
Design and implement a disaster recovery solution for SAP on Azure Virtual Machines
- Design and implement an Azure Site Recovery strategy for SAP infrastructure (Microsoft Documentation: Set up disaster recovery for a multi-tier SAP NetWeaver app deployment)
- Design a disaster recovery solution with regional considerations (Microsoft Documentation: Create business continuity and disaster recovery solutions with Azure Data Explorer)
- Specify network configurations for disaster recovery (Microsoft Documentation: Set up disaster recovery for Azure VMs)
- Design a backup strategy to meet SLA requirements
- Implement policies for backups and snapshots (Microsoft Documentation: Backup cloud and on-premises workloads to cloud)
- Configure and validate snapshots and backups for SAP workloads (Microsoft Documentation: Perform backups and restores for SAP workloads on Azure)
- Perform backup and restore (Microsoft Documentation: Back up and restore environments)
- Test disaster recovery (Microsoft Documentation: Run a test failover (disaster recovery drill) to Azure)
4. Maintain SAP workloads on Azure (10—15%)
Optimize performance and costs
- Optimize performance and costs for an SAP workload by using Azure Advisor recommendations (Microsoft Documentation: Introduction to Azure Advisor)
- Analyze and optimize network performance (Microsoft Documentation: Plan and optimize network performance for Teams Phone)
- Optimize costs by configuring snoozing and deploying reserved instances
- Optimize performance and cost by resizing Azure Virtual Machines (Microsoft Documentation: Optimize costs from recommendations)
- Optimize storage costs (Microsoft Documentation: Optimize storage performance and costs using Blob storage tiers)
- Optimize performance and cost of SAP application servers and databases (Microsoft Documentation: SAP workloads on Azure: planning and deployment checklist)
Monitor and maintain SAP on Azure
- Monitor Azure virtual machines by using Azure Monitor (Microsoft Documentation: Monitor Azure virtual machines)
- Monitor high availability by using Azure Monitor (Microsoft Documentation: Azure Monitor overview)
- Monitor networking by using Azure Monitor and Azure Network Watcher
- Configure Azure Monitor for SAP solutions
- Manage backups by using Azure Backup
- Start and stop SAP systems by using Azure Center for SAP solutions
- Manage virtual instances by using Azure Center for SAP solutions
- Implement the SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) connector for Azure
How difficult is the Microsoft Azure AZ-120 exam?
AZ-120 is an associate-level exam with an ‘Intermediate’ difficulty level when compared to other Microsoft exams. This exam will include questions from the modules listed above, and you can prepare for the certifications based on the weightage of each module.
Based on the exam syllabus and format, we can conclude that obtaining the certification will necessitate effort and strategy.
You will have a better chance if you are well prepared. This will necessitate the use of learning resources as well. The selection of genuine resources, on the other hand, is a critical step. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of resources that you can use to confidently prepare for and take the exam.
Microsoft Azure Exam AZ-120 – Preparation Resources
There are numerous resources available to help you prepare for the exam. All you have to do is choose the best resources based on your comfort and level of understanding. The resources you choose will determine how well you qualify for your exam. Let us take a look at a few resources:
Online tutorials
Online tutorials supplement your knowledge and help you understand exam concepts thoroughly. They also discuss exam details and policies. Nonetheless, these online tutorials provide comprehensive exam information. You will be better prepared for the exam as a result. As a result, learning with Online Tutorials will assist you in better preparing.
Microsoft Documentation
Microsoft documentation is a trustworthy source for preparation. The list of topic-specific documentation can be found in the course outline section listed above.
Online Community
Exam AZ-120 has its own online community. You are free to ask your questions on this platform. This platform is made up of various candidates who have already taken this exam. There is no better guidance than that provided by an experienced individual. You can also learn about their study schedule and the strategy they used to pass the exam. As a result, you can join Microsoft’s official community.
Practice tests
Practice tests are one method that will assist you in better understanding the concepts and passing the exam with a high score. This exam assesses your ability to get a job, so practicing will provide you with practical knowledge of the subject while also developing clear concepts. So put in as much practice time as you can. Above all, this will provide you with an idea of how the exam will look in terms of questions and format. Now is the time to try a free AZ-120 exam practice test!
Instructor-led training
There are numerous trustworthy websites that offer online classes and instructor-led training. This is one of the best resources for clearing up the conceptual parts of the syllabus. Additionally, Professionals with in-depth knowledge of the subject create these classes. They also provide notes, which can be very helpful in understanding the concepts.
Expert Advice
Candidates must have an Azure Architect or Azure Administrator certification, as well as Linux and SAP HANA certifications. The official documentation for SAP-certified Azure offerings and Planning Azure for SAP workloads may be your best options. Candidates should also make reasonable efforts to refer to appropriate AZ-120 exam preparation resources.
The importance of online training courses and practice tests in certification preparation is something else that candidates should keep in mind. Testpreptraining offers best-in-industry Azure certification training courses as well as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for professional excellence.
