You plan to deploy an SAP production landscape on Azure. You need to recommend a solution to minimize latency between the application servers and the SAP HANA database server. What should you…

Question

Options

• ADeploy the virtual machines to a proximity placement group.
• BRoute all traffic between the virtual machines through an Azure Standard Load Balancer.
• CRoute all traffic between the virtual machines through load-balanced network virtual appliances
• DDeploy the virtual machines to the same subnet.

• B
  90% (18)
• C
  5% (1)
• D
  5% (1)

Explanation

Important note: The stated correct answer (B) appears to be incorrect. Based on Microsoft's Azure documentation for SAP workloads, the actual correct answer is A - Proximity Placement Groups (PPG).

Why A is correct: A Proximity Placement Group is an Azure construct that pins VMs to the same physical datacenter rack or cluster, ensuring minimal physical network distance between them. Microsoft explicitly recommends PPGs for SAP on Azure specifically to reduce latency between the application tier and the SAP HANA database tier - it's the primary supported mechanism for this scenario.

Why B is wrong: Routing traffic through an Azure Standard Load Balancer adds a hop in the network path, which increases latency rather than reducing it. Load balancers serve availability and traffic distribution purposes, not latency optimization.

Why C is wrong: Network Virtual Appliances (NVAs) introduce additional processing hops (firewalls, routers), making latency significantly worse, not better.

Why D is wrong: Placing VMs in the same subnet ensures logical network grouping and avoids routing overhead, but it gives Azure no instruction about physical placement. Two VMs in the same subnet can still reside on hosts far apart in the datacenter.

Memory tip: Think "latency = physical distance." Only a Proximity Placement Group controls physical co-location. Everything else (load balancers, subnets, NVAs) is a logical/traffic construct that doesn't move the machines closer together.

You may want to verify this question's answer key - option B is a common distractor in SAP-on-Azure questions, not the solution.

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