Azure Extended monitoring for SAP
As mentioned in the former blog, we are collecting some feedback from customers and different other sources about deployments of SAP instances on Azure. Another tendency is emerging. It is very important to deploy the Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP. This extension was developed to enable SAP to collect important performance counters and display those in SAP transactions ST06 and OS07. Data that very often helps to investigate performance experiences and also provide a great base for volume planning. Therefore it is very important to open this channel of performance counter collection. The important aspect about the Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP is that it collects performance counters which are collected on the Azure host and diagnostics framework. Data that is usually not available within a VM, but that can be highly important to analyze performance aspects.
As stated by SAP in SAP Note 2015553 – SAP on Microsoft Azure: Support Requirements the correct deployment and configuration of the Azure Monitoring extension is mandatory for a supported SAP configuration on Azure.
How does the Azure Monitoring Extension work?
The way how the Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP works is described in the Implementation Guide that can be downloaded here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dn745892.aspx. In the same location you find the deployment guide which describes deploying and configuring the extension. Our colleague Madhan also released a blog which describes how the Azure Monitoring extension works. The blog can be found here: https://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/06/04/azure-enhanced-monitoring-for-sap/
As you see the only direct interaction between the Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP and SAP are the SAP Host Agent components. The Host Agent components are standalone component which do NOT require a complete exchange of the SAP kernel when updating those components. Therefore it should not be a problem to exchange the existing SAP Host Agent components to the patch level of components necessary to support Azure. The exact patch level required for Azure is documented in SAP Note 1409604 – Virtualization on Windows: Enhanced Monitoring.
Call to action
· New customers, please follow exactly the instructions and deploy the Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP as described in the documentation mentioned earlier.
· Already deployed customers, please start to deploy the Azure Monitoring extension as described in the meanwhile released documentation. The documentation takes into consideration that there were system deployed at a point in time where e.g. the Azure Virtual Machine Agent was not automatically deployed.
· Update the SAP Host Agent components to the patch level required to make the monitoring data flow work.
Please keep in mind that the deployment of a VM for SAP is not done with the Azure Portal showing that the VM is running. The Azure Monitoring Extension for SAP needs to be deployed after the Azure portal shows the VM running. Only then you should continue with the next steps.