Enhanced Monitoring Agent for SAP workloads in Azure - Details and Installation

@20aman Jan 12, 2022

For any SAP deployment in the Microsoft Azure, you want to deploy the enhanced Azure Extension for SAP, which is available in the Azure Extension Repository in the global Azure datacenters. The new extension was built to be able to monitor all Azure resources of a virtual machine. It supports additional storage options, for example, Standard Disks and operating systems.

Pre-requisites

The pre-requisites are as follows:

This extension needs internet access to the URL "management.azure.com". If this is not set up or you have locked the access, please ensure that you open this access in your environment.
If you have already had an older version of the extension already installed, make sure to uninstall the older VM extension before switching between the standard and the new version of the Azure Extension for SAP.
Make sure you are using SAP Host Agent 7.21 PL 47 or higher.
You have SUSE SLES 15 or higher. Or you have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 or higher.
You are using Azure Ultra Disk or Standard Managed Disks for your SAP workloads

Installing on a single VM

Before proceeding, you want to ensure that you have the Azure PowerShell module installed. You can do so by simply running the below cmdlet. You can learn more here: Install the Azure Az PowerShell module.

Install-Module -Name Az -Scope CurrentUser -Repository PSGallery -Force

Installing on a single VM is as easy as running the "Set-AzVMAEMExtension" PowerShell cmdlet with the "InstallNewExtension" switch. Run the below script to install it on a specific VM.

#Set the Azure context
$env = Get-AzEnvironment -Name <name of the environment>
Connect-AzAccount -Environment $env
Set-AzContext -SubscriptionName <subscription name>

#Install the Azure Enhanced Monitoring Extension
Set-AzVMAEMExtension -ResourceGroupName <resource group name> -VMName <virtual machine name> -InstallNewExtension

Installing on multiple VMs

You can loop on the above script and can install the Monitoring extension on multiple VMs. I will also provide a code sample to do this easily and will post a blog about the same. You can view that post and the sample code here: Installing Enhanced Monitoring Agent for Multiple SAP workloads in Azure - Code Sample.

Testing the extension

You can test the extension by running the below PowerShell cmdlet.

Test-AzVMAEMExtension -ResourceGroupName "Your-Resource-Group-Name" -VMName "Your-VM-Name"

Validating and Troubleshooting the extension

You can validate the extension and troubleshoot it in this subsequent blog in detail: Troubleshooting & Validating - Enhanced Monitoring Agent for SAP workloads in Azure.

Supportability for this Extension

Support for the Azure Extension for SAP is provided through SAP support channels. If you need assistance with the Azure VM extension for SAP solutions, please open a support case with SAP Support. Microsoft support cases are generally closed for this reason. We also look at troubleshooting this extension in an upcoming blog.

Details on the Metrics provided

The detail of the metrics provided is documented in the SAP Note 2178632. You can find this note located here: 2178632 - Key Monitoring Metrics for SAP on Microsoft Azure - SAP ONE Support Launchpad.

Other References:

Azure Azure microsoft microsoftazure sap sap on azure