AZ-120 Interview Questions

Passing an interview session and grasping the job is indeed an ideal goal. Engineer for Azure for SAP Workloads is quite in demand. In this article, we are going to collect some interview questions which most probably will appear in your AZ-120 Interview Questions.

For the purpose of providing you with a summary, Exam AZ-120: Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads expertise and understanding of the SAP system landscape, as well as industry norms relevant to the long-term administration of an SAP solution on Microsoft Azure, are among the workloads. So, let’s begin with the interview questions that are most likely to be asked throughout the session.

Advanced Interview Questions

Can you explain how to plan and deploy an Azure environment for an SAP workload?

Planning and deploying an Azure environment for an SAP workload involves several key steps:

Assess your current SAP landscape: Understand the current configuration and usage of your SAP landscape, including the number of systems, their roles, the number of users, and the workloads they are running.
Identify the migration goals and requirements: Define the goals and requirements for the migration, such as high availability, disaster recovery, security, compliance, and performance.
Select the appropriate Azure services: Based on the migration goals and requirements, select the appropriate Azure services, such as virtual machines, storage, networking, and security, to support the SAP workloads.
Design the Azure environment: Design the Azure environment, including the network architecture, storage architecture, and security architecture, to support the SAP workloads.
Prepare the SAP systems: Perform pre-migration tasks such as configuring the SAP systems, creating backups, and testing the migration scenarios.
Perform the migration: Perform the migration of the SAP systems to Azure, including data migration, system replication, and system cutover.
Test and validate the Azure environment: Test and validate the Azure environment to ensure that it meets the migration goals and requirements.
Monitor and optimize the Azure environment: Monitor and optimize the Azure environment, including performance, security, and cost management, to ensure that it continues to meet the migration goals and requirements.

It’s also important to have a good understanding of SAP architecture and the Azure services that are best suited for SAP workloads. This could be a good opportunity to use Azure Migrate, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Arc, Azure NetApp Files, Azure Policy, Azure Blueprint among others.

How do you ensure high availability and disaster recovery for SAP workloads in Azure?

Ensuring high availability and disaster recovery for SAP workloads in Azure involves several key steps:

Implement redundancy: Implement redundancy in the Azure environment, including redundant virtual machines, storage, and networking, to ensure that the SAP workloads continue to run in the event of a failure.
Use Azure Site Recovery: Use Azure Site Recovery to replicate and failover the SAP systems to a secondary Azure region in the event of a disaster, ensuring that the systems are available and accessible even in the event of a regional outage.
Use Azure Arc: Use Azure Arc to manage and automate SAP workloads across multiple environments, including on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge, and ensures that the systems are always available and accessible.
Implement backup and restore: Implement backup and restore solutions, such as Azure Backup, to ensure that the data and configurations of the SAP systems can be easily restored in the event of a failure or disaster.
Test disaster recovery scenarios: Regularly test disaster recovery scenarios to ensure that the disaster recovery solutions are working as expected and that the systems can be quickly and effectively recovered in the event of a disaster.
Monitor and optimize disaster recovery: Monitor and optimize the disaster recovery solutions, including performance, security, and cost management, to ensure that they continue to meet the availability and recovery requirements of the SAP workloads.

It’s also important to have a good understanding of the SAP’s HA and DR requirements and how they can be met with Azure services. This could be a good opportunity to use Azure Site Recovery, Azure Arc, Azure Policy, Azure Blueprint among others.

Can you discuss your experience with migrating SAP workloads to Azure?

As a language model, I don’t have any personal experiences but I can provide you with general information about migrating SAP workloads to Azure.

Migrating SAP workloads to Azure involves several key steps:

Assess the current SAP landscape: Understand the current configuration and usage of the SAP landscape, including the number of systems, their roles, the number of users, and the workloads they are running.
Identify the migration goals and requirements: Define the goals and requirements for the migration, such as high availability, disaster recovery, security, compliance, and performance.
Select the appropriate Azure services: Based on the migration goals and requirements, select the appropriate Azure services, such as virtual machines, storage, networking, and security, to support the SAP workloads.
Design the Azure environment: Design the Azure environment, including the network architecture, storage architecture, and security architecture, to support the SAP workloads.
Prepare the SAP systems: Perform pre-migration tasks such as configuring the SAP systems, creating backups, and testing the migration scenarios.
Perform the migration: Perform the migration of the SAP systems to Azure, including data migration, system replication, and system cutover.
Test and validate the Azure environment: Test and validate the Azure environment to ensure that it meets the migration goals and requirements.
Monitor and optimize the Azure environment: Monitor and optimize the Azure environment, including performance, security, and cost management, to ensure that it continues to meet the migration goals and requirements.

It’s important to have a good understanding of SAP architecture and the Azure services that are best suited for SAP workloads and also have knowledge of migration tools like Azure Migrate, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Arc, Azure NetApp Files, Azure Policy, Azure Blueprint among others. Additionally, it’s also important to have a thorough understanding of the migration process and best practices for migrating large and complex SAP landscapes to Azure.

How do you troubleshoot and optimize the performance of SAP workloads running in Azure?

Troubleshooting and optimizing the performance of SAP workloads running in Azure involves several key steps:

Monitor and analyze performance metrics: Use Azure Monitor and other monitoring tools to collect and analyze performance metrics, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, network traffic, and storage IOPS, for the SAP systems and the Azure environment.
Identify performance bottlenecks: Identify the performance bottlenecks, such as high CPU utilization, low memory utilization, high network latency, or high storage IOPS, that are impacting the performance of the SAP systems.
Troubleshoot the performance issues: Troubleshoot the performance issues by analyzing the performance metrics and logs, identifying the root cause of the performance issues, and implementing corrective actions.
Optimize the Azure environment: Optimize the Azure environment, including the network architecture, storage architecture, and security architecture, to improve the performance of the SAP systems.
Scale the SAP systems: Scale the SAP systems, including the number of virtual machines, the amount of memory and storage, and the network bandwidth, to meet the changing performance and workload requirements.
Optimize the SAP systems: Optimize the SAP systems, including the ABAP and Java stacks, the database, and the operating system, to improve the performance of the SAP systems.
Test and validate the performance: Test and validate the performance of the SAP systems and the Azure environment to ensure that they meet the performance goals and requirements.
Monitor and optimize performance: Regularly monitor and optimize the performance of the SAP systems and the Azure environment, including performance, security, and cost management, to ensure that they continue to meet the performance goals and requirements.

It’s important to have a good understanding of SAP architecture, Azure services and good performance tuning techniques for SAP on Azure. Additionally, it’s also important to have a thorough understanding of the Azure services that can help with performance optimization such as Azure Monitor, Azure Autoscale, Azure NetApp Files, Azure Policy, Azure Blueprint among others.

Can you explain how to integrate Azure services such as Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, and Azure Monitor with SAP workloads?

Integrating Azure services such as Azure Backup, Azure Security Center, and Azure Monitor with SAP workloads can help ensure high availability, disaster recovery, security, and performance of the SAP systems.

Azure Backup: Azure Backup can be integrated with SAP workloads to create backups of the SAP systems, including the ABAP and Java stacks, the database, and the operating system. You can use Azure Backup to create backups of the SAP systems at regular intervals, and store the backups in Azure Blob storage or Azure Backup Recovery Services vault. You can use Azure Backup to recover the SAP systems from the backups in case of a disaster.
Azure Security Center: Azure Security Center can be integrated with SAP workloads to provide security for the SAP systems. Azure Security Center can provide security recommendations for the SAP systems, including the ABAP and Java stacks, the database, and the operating system. Azure Security Center can also provide security alerts for the SAP systems, and help you to identify and respond to security threats.
Azure Monitor: Azure Monitor can be integrated with SAP workloads to provide monitoring and analytics for the SAP systems. Azure Monitor can provide performance metrics, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, network traffic, and storage IOPS, for the SAP systems. Azure Monitor can also provide log analytics for the SAP systems, and help you to identify and troubleshoot performance issues.

To integrate these services, you can use Azure Policy, Azure blueprint, Azure Arc among other tools. It’s important to have a good understanding of SAP architecture, Azure services and good performance tuning techniques for SAP on Azure. Additionally, it’s also important to have a thorough understanding of the Azure services that can help with performance optimization such as Azure Monitor, Azure Autoscale, Azure NetApp Files, Azure Policy, Azure Blueprint among others.

How do you use Azure Policy and Azure Blueprint to manage and govern SAP workloads in Azure?

Azure Policy is a service in Azure that enables you to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies can be used to ensure that your Azure resources comply with organizational standards and service level agreements. Azure Blueprint is a service in Azure that enables you to create and manage Azure resource deployments that are based on a set of predefined policies and standards.

To use Azure Policy and Azure Blueprint to manage and govern SAP workloads in Azure, you can follow these steps:

Define the SAP-specific policies and standards that you want to enforce for your Azure resources. These policies and standards can include things like security and compliance requirements, networking configurations, and resource tagging.
Create an Azure Blueprint that defines the deployment of an SAP workload in Azure. This blueprint should include all of the policies and standards that you defined in step 1.
Assign the Azure Blueprint to the subscription or resource group where you want to deploy the SAP workload. This will automatically enforce the policies and standards defined in the blueprint.
Use Azure Policy to monitor and enforce compliance with the policies and standards defined in the blueprint. Azure Policy can be configured to send alerts or take automated actions when resources are found to be non-compliant.
Continuously monitor and evaluate the policies and standards in your Azure Blueprint. Make updates and changes as needed to ensure that your SAP workloads continue to comply with organizational standards and service level agreements.

Can you discuss your experience with implementing Azure NetApp Files for SAP workloads?

As a language model AI, I do not have any personal experience with implementing Azure NetApp Files for SAP workloads but I can provide you with a general overview.

Azure NetApp Files is a service that provides fast, high-performance file storage for use with Azure virtual machines. It can be used to host SAP workloads in Azure by providing a high-performance, low-latency storage solution for SAP data and logs.

To implement Azure NetApp Files for SAP workloads, you can follow these steps:

Create an Azure NetApp Files account in the Azure portal.
Create a new Azure NetApp Files volume and specify the desired performance level, capacity, and backup options.
Create an Azure virtual machine that will host your SAP workload.
Connect the Azure NetApp Files volume to your virtual machine. This can be done by creating a file share on the volume and then mounting it on the virtual machine.
Configure your SAP system to use the Azure NetApp Files volume for data and log storage.
Test the performance and availability of your SAP workload using Azure NetApp Files.
Monitor and manage your Azure NetApp Files storage and virtual machines using Azure Monitor and Azure Backup.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft and NetApp have a strategic partnership and they have integrated their solution to make it easy to use Azure NetApp Files with SAP workloads, and also NetApp has a specific solution for SAP HANA called NetApp HCI for SAP HANA.

How do you use Azure Arc to manage and automate SAP workloads across multiple environments?

Azure Arc is a service that enables you to manage resources across multiple environments, including on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge environments, using a single control plane in Azure. You can use Azure Arc to manage and automate SAP workloads across multiple environments by following these steps:

Install the Azure Arc agent on the servers that will host your SAP workloads. This agent allows Azure Arc to manage and automate the resources running on those servers.
Register the servers with Azure Arc by creating an Azure Arc resource for each server. This allows you to manage the servers using Azure Policy, Azure Resource Manager templates, and other Azure management tools.
Create Azure Policy definitions to enforce compliance and security standards for your SAP workloads. These policies can be used to ensure that your resources are configured according to your organization’s standards and service level agreements.
Assign Azure Policy definitions to the resources that host your SAP workloads. This automatically enforces the policies on the resources.
Create Azure Resource Manager templates to automate the deployment of your SAP workloads. These templates can be used to deploy resources in a consistent and repeatable manner.
Use Azure Arc to monitor and manage the resources hosting your SAP workloads. Azure Arc provides a unified view of your resources across multiple environments, making it easy to identify and troubleshoot issues.
Use Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes to deploy and manage containerized SAP workloads in a consistent way across on-premises and multi-cloud environment.
Use Azure Arc enabled Serverless to deploy and manage serverless SAP workloads in a consistent way across on-premises and multi-cloud environment.

By using Azure Arc, you can manage and automate SAP workloads across multiple environments in a consistent and centralized way. This helps to reduce management overhead, improve security and compliance, and ensure that your SAP workloads are deployed and configured according to your organization’s standards.

Can you explain how to use Azure Cost Management to optimize costs associated with running SAP workloads in Azure?

Azure Cost Management is a service that helps you optimize costs associated with running SAP workloads in Azure by providing you with visibility into your Azure usage and costs, and enabling you to identify and take action on cost optimization opportunities. You can use Azure Cost Management to optimize costs associated with running SAP workloads in Azure by following these steps:

Connect your Azure subscription to Azure Cost Management. This allows you to view your Azure usage and costs in the Azure Cost Management dashboard.
Create a budget for your SAP workloads in Azure. This allows you to set a spending limit for your SAP workloads and receive alerts when you are approaching or exceeding your budget.
Use the Azure Cost Management dashboard to view your SAP workloads’ costs and usage. The dashboard provides detailed information on your costs, including the resources that are consuming the most costs, and the costs associated with different resource types.
Identify cost optimization opportunities by analyzing your usage and costs. For example, you may find that you are paying for resources that are not being used, or that you can reduce costs by using reserved instances or spot instances.
Take action on cost optimization opportunities by modifying your resources or changing their configurations. For example, you may decide to shut down or delete resources that are not being used, or to resize resources that are over-allocated.
Use Azure’s tagging feature to tag your resources and cost center information, it will help you to track and allocate costs to specific teams, projects or business units.
Use Azure’s Cost Management tool to set up alerts, automate cost management, and create reports.
Continuously monitor and evaluate your costs and usage and make adjustments as needed to ensure that you are optimizing costs associated with running your SAP workloads in Azure.

By using Azure Cost Management, you can gain visibility into your Azure usage and costs, identify cost optimization opportunities, and take action to optimize costs associated with running SAP workloads in Azure. This helps to reduce your overall Azure spending and ensure that you are getting the most value out of your Azure investment.

How do you use Azure Lighthouse to manage and monitor SAP workloads for multiple customers or tenants?

Azure Lighthouse is a service that enables you to manage and monitor resources across multiple customers or tenants, using a single control plane in Azure. You can use Azure Lighthouse to manage and monitor SAP workloads for multiple customers or tenants by following these steps:

Create a service principal or use an existing service principal in your tenant. This will be used to authenticate your Azure Lighthouse management access to the customer tenant(s).
Invite your service principal as a delegated resource management (DRM) in the customer tenant(s). This allows you to manage and monitor the customer tenant(s) resources from your tenant.
Use Azure Policy and Azure Blueprint to define and enforce governance policies for the customer tenant(s) resources, including SAP workloads.
Use Azure Monitor to set up monitoring and logging for SAP workloads in the customer tenant(s), and use Azure Log Analytics to analyze the data and troubleshoot issues.
Use Azure Automation to automate management tasks across customer tenant(s) resources, including SAP workloads.
Use Azure Resource Manager templates to automate the deployment of SAP workloads in customer tenant(s) in a consistent and repeatable manner.
Use Azure Lighthouse to delegate access to specific resources or resource groups in customer tenant(s) to specific users or groups in your tenant, allowing them to manage and monitor the resources without giving them access to the entire tenant.
Use Azure Lighthouse to generate reports and view consolidated data across customer tenant(s) resources, which can be used for billing, compliance and governance purposes.

By using Azure Lighthouse, you can manage and monitor SAP workloads for multiple customers or tenants in a consistent and centralized way. This helps to reduce management overhead, improve security and compliance, and ensure that your SAP workloads are deployed and configured according to your organization’s standards.

Basic Interview Questions

What is Azure VMs?

Answer: Azure VMs make up the fundamental infrastructure as a service (IaaS) compute service offerings available in Azure. Azure VMs present the most elevated degree of control over the virtual machine’s configuration and operating system.

Can User configure a VM’s operating system manually?

Answer: Users can configure a VM’s operating system manually (or in an automated manner) by utilizing Virtual Machine Extensions (VM Extensions). VM Extensions rely on technologies such as Desired State Configuration (DSC), Windows PowerShell scripts, Chef, or Puppet.

What are the types of Azure VMs size?

Answer: The sizes are grouped into several categories, including the following categories:

General-purpose
Compute-optimized
Memory-optimized
Storage optimized
GPU
High-performance compute

Is it possible to change an Instance Size once the Virtual Machine has been made?

Answer: Yes, we can. This is possible by navigating to Size under settings option, we could be able to change the instance type to higher or lower configurations.

What do you understand by Azure Storage for SAP workloads?

Answer: Azure has multiple storage types that vary vastly in abilities, throughput, latency, and values. Some of the storage types are well suited or optimized for particular SAP workload scenarios while others are less so. Some Azure storage types got certified for usage with SAP HANA.

What are Azure managed disks?

Answer: Managed disks are a source type in Azure Resource Manager. They can be utilized instead of VHDs stored in Azure Storage Accounts. Also, managed disks automatically adjust with the availability set of the virtual machine they’re connected to. They enhance the availability of your virtual machine and the services that are working on the virtual machine.

What do you think is the maximum size of a single disk supported for Virtual Machine?

Answer: We could create Up-to 4 TB and attach it to the Virtual Machine for one disk.

What is the use of Gateway Subnet?

Answer: If one Virtual Network requires to establish a communication to another, Gateway Subnet is necessary.

Define Azure premium storage.

Answer: One of the Azure storage options suggested for SAP workloads in non-production and production systems is Azure premium storage. Database workloads are suitable for Azure premium storage.

Which application tier and database tier components does host by Azure VMs?

Answer: Azure VMs host the application tier and database tier components, grouped as follows:

SAP NetWeaver. The application tier runs SAP Central Services and SAP application servers.
AnyDB. The database tier runs AnyDB as the source database, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or IBM DB2.
Jumpbox. Also called a bastion host. This Azure VM runs a hardened operating system instance that administrators use to connect to the other virtual machines. It can run Windows or Linux. Use a Windows jump box to run tools such as HANA Cockpit or HANA Studio.
Active Directory domain controllers. Active Directory domain controllers provide authentication and authorization services for Windows and Linux operating systems.

What are the prerequisites for deploying HANA large instance units?

Answer: Microsoft requires the following information to deploy HANA large instance units:

Customer name
Business contact information (including email address and phone number)
Technical contact information (including email address and phone number)
Technical networking contact information (including email address and phone number)
Azure deployment region (for example, West US, Australia East, or North Europe)
SAP HANA on Azure (large instances) SKU (configuration)

What are the four methods for provisioning storage for SAP workloads in Azure?

Answer: The four methods for provisioning storage for SAP workloads in Azure are as follows:

Azure VM disks
Azure VM NFS storage
SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instance) storage
Azure VM SMB storage

Could you use the same Virtual Network Gateway for both VPN & Express Route?

Answer: No, Virtual Network Gateway requires to create separately for different types.

Explain Load balancers.

Answer: To assign traffic to virtual machines in the application-tier subnet, load balancers are applied. When using Azure Zones, practice the Standard Load Balancer. For high availability, utilize the built-in SAP Web Dispatcher, Azure Load Balancer, or other mechanisms, depending on the traffic type (such as HTTP or SAPGUI) or the required network services.

Can we add more than one Private IP Address for a single Virtual Machine?

Answer: Yes. by adding NIC, we can attach more than one Private IP Address for one Virtual Machine.

What is Proximity placement group?

Answer: This logical group puts a constraint on VMs deployed in an availability set or a Virtual Machine Scale Set. A proximity placement group chooses colocation, indicating that virtual machines reside in the identical data center to minimize application latency.

Explain the work of Availability sets?

Answer: To increase service availability, availability sets disperse servers to multiple physical infrastructure and update groups. To assist protect against downtime caused by Azure infrastructure maintenance and to satisfy service-level agreements, group virtual machines that execute the same task into an availability set (SLAs). To attain the greater SLA, you’ll need two or more virtual machines per availability set.

Define ExpressRoute FastPath?

Answer: Also known as Microsoft Edge Exchange (MSEE) v2, FastPath executes MSEE at the entry point of the Azure network. It decreases network hops for most data packets. FastPath lowers network latency, increases application performance, and is the default for new ExpressRoute connections to Azure.

What support options should an user use while operating SAP systems on Microsoft Azure VMs?

Answer: SAP suggests that users should pick one of the following support options when operating SAP systems on Microsoft Azure VMs:

Professional Direct: Provides the bare minimum support level, appropriate if you only require support from Microsoft for Azure itself.
Microsoft Premier Support: Recommended if SAP workloads are based on Windows Server and/or SQL Server. This offers the best enterprise-level support for Azure, Windows, and/or SQL Server.

Can we able to reduce the database port number to communicate only to the Application Server?

Answer: Yes, that could be possible in Network Security Group.

What are the functions sustained in an Application Gateway?

Answer: It maintains URL-based routing, Multiple-site hosting, Redirection, Web application firewall, Session affinity, SSL termination, WebSocket, and HTTP/2 traffic.

Questions related to Job Responsibilities

Which designation is allocated to the candidate who successfully clear the Exam AZ-120?

Answer: Exam AZ-120: Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads is a part of the requirement for Microsoft Certified: Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty. For Azure for SAP Workloads, the applicant can become a Microsoft Certified Architect or Engineer.

What skills does an Engineer for Azure for SAP Workloads have?

Answer: They have extensive expertise and understanding of the SAP system landscape as well as industry norms relevant to the long-term operation of SAP solutions on Microsoft Azure.

Also, extensive experience and knowledge of SAP applications: 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.

How does an Engineer for Azure for SAP Workloads operate?

Answer: Architects or engineers for Azure for SAP Workloads partner with cloud administrators, cloud DBAs, and clients to implement solutions.

What are the responsibilities of an Engineer for Azure for SAP Workloads?

Answer: Responsibilities for an architect or an engineer for Azure for SAP Workloads include making recommendations on services and adjust resources as appropriate for optimal resiliency, performance, scale, provision, size, and monitoring.

We at Testprep training hope that this article help the candidate to successfully clear the Exam AZ-120: Planning and Administering Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads Interview! The candidate can also refer to the AZ-120 practice test because Practice makes a man perfect!

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