A Methodology for Seamless SAP on Azure Migrations
Considering an SAP cloud migration? You aren’t alone. Many organizations are adopting cloud strategies and Lemongrass has been right in the mix helping customers migrate their mission-critical SAP Applications to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform. Throughout these migrations, we have leveraged a proven methodology, our thorough knowledge of the SAP application, and our expertise on Azure infrastructure to facilitate seamless and minimal downtime migrations for our customers.
If there’s one thing you must know about SAP cloud migrations, it’s this: SAP cloud migrations can’t be treated as “any” other application migration. The complexity of SAP applications and the interdependencies between SAP components and other applications sets them apart from other applications when it comes to a cloud migration. This is why we utilize a methodical approach and take special care when migrating SAP landscapes to Azure.
Here is a broad overview of the different kinds of SAP cloud migration scenarios and our SAP Cloud Migration Methodology.
SAP Cloud Migrations Scenarios
Depending on your SAP landscape and its underlying on-premises infrastructure, your SAP migration will be categorized as an AS-IS migration or an SAP OS/DB migration.
AS-IS Migration: Your SAP landscape must be running on an Intel platform (virtual or physical) with Windows/Linux as the Operating System (OS) in an As-IS migration scenario. The migration approach for an AS-IS migration depends on these factors:
- The minimal downtime your organization can accept
- Upgrades (HANA / Any Database or OS upgrade)
- Accessibility to Source system
- Available bandwidth between source and target
- Available resources at the source data center (additional disk space, computing storage, etc.)
SAP OS/DB Migration: An OS/DB migration is required when the underlying OS or Database (DB) supporting the SAP landscape cannot be migrated to the cloud. In such a case, a change in OS or database is mandatory. Some examples that fit into this category: SAP applications running Solaris /HPUX/AIX Operating System, Oracle on SUSE or RHEL, etc.
Our SAP Migration Methodology
Whether you are undergoing an AS-IS Migration or an SAP OS/DB migration, a phased approach is critical to streamlining the process and avoiding any loss of data or other unwelcome surprises after the migration.
Here are the phases of our SAP Migration Methodology.
Phase 1: Planning
In the planning phase we review your current landscape, agree on the scope of the project and define these 3 things:
- Infrastructure solutions (AD, Firewall, Load Balancers etc.)
- The migration timeline that meets your business needs
- The success criteria
Phase 2: Design
In this phase, the entire Azure infrastructure solution supporting the SAP application and the migration methodology is presented to your organization with high-level detail design documents. Some other areas addressed during the design phase include SAP High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Back up & Recovery, and system copy.
Phase 3: Migration of Non-production Environment
In this phase, we create base infrastructure components in Azure if required. For AS-IS migrations, most of the tools replicate the entire on-premises server (physical or virtual) and at the time of cutover create an Azure instance and storage space based on the replicated image.
Phase 4: Migration of Production Environment
Based on non-production cutover, we notify you about the overall migration timeline and downtime requirements for production cutover. We also perform Technical and functional testing in the QA environment to minimize problems encountered after the production cutover.
Phase 5: Hypercare Support
After the migration, your systems are put in hyper care for a period of 2-3 weeks to monitor the production performance, provide hypercare support for post-GO-Live, plan to decommission on-premise server, and finally take the opportunity to further improve your SAP environment running in Azure.
Recommendations
SAP on Azure / Near-Zero Downtime SAP on Azure Migration eBook
