AZ-120 · Question #85
Case Study 1 - Litware, Inc Overview Litware, Inc. is an international manufacturing company that has 3,000 employees. Litware has two main offices. The offices are located in Miami, FL, and Madrid…
The correct answer is A. SAP HANA system replication and Azure Availability Sets. SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) combined with Azure Availability Sets is the correct answer because it addresses high availability at two distinct layers simultaneously. HSR continuously replicates data to a standby HANA node, enabling near-instant failover with minimal data…
Question
Case Study 1 - Litware, Inc Overview Litware, Inc. is an international manufacturing company that has 3,000 employees. Litware has two main offices. The offices are located in Miami, FL, and Madrid, Spain. Existing Environment Infrastructure Litware currently uses a third-party provider to host a datacenter in Miami and a disaster recovery datacenter in Chicago, IL. The network contains an Active Directory domain named litware.com. Litware has two third-party applications hosted in Azure. Litware already implemented a site-to-site VPN connection between the on-premises network and Azure. SAP Environment Litware currently runs the following SAP products:
- Enhancement Pack6 for SAP ERP Central Component 6.0 (SAP ECC 6.0)
- SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM)
- SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM)
- SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI)
- SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW)
- SAP Solution Manager
All servers run on the Windows Server platform. All databases use Microsoft SQL Server. Currently, you have 20 production servers. You have 30 non-production servers including five testing servers, five development servers, five quality assurance (QA) servers, and 15 pre-production servers. Currently, all SAP applications are in the litware.com domain. Problem Statements The current version of SAP ECC has a transaction that, when run in batches overnight, takes eight hours to complete. You confirm that upgrading to SAP Business Suite on HANA will improve performance because of code changes and the SAP HANA database platform. Litware is dissatisfied with the performance of its current hosted infrastructure vendor. Litware experienced several hardware failures and the vendor struggled to adequately support its 24/7 business operations. Requirements Business Goals Litware identifies the following business goals:
- Increase the performance of SAP ECC applications by moving to SAP
HANA. All other SAP databases will remain on SQL Server.
- Move away from the current infrastructure vendor to increase the
stability and availability of the SAP services.
- Use the new Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) in Recipe
Management function.
- Ensure that any migration activities can be completed within a 48-
hour period during a weekend. Planned Changes Litware identifies the following planned changes:
- Migrate SAP to Azure.
- Upgrade and migrate SAP ECC to SAP Business Suite on HANA Enhancement
Pack 8. Technical Requirements Litware identifies the following technical requirements:
- Implement automated backups.
- Support load testing during the migration.
- Identify opportunities to reduce costs during the migration.
- Continue to use the litware.com domain for all SAP landscapes.
- Ensure that all SAP applications and databases are highly available.
- Establish an automated monitoring solution to avoid unplanned
outages.
- Remove all SAP components from the on-premises network once the
migration is complete.
- Minimize the purchase of additional SAP licenses. SAP HANA licenses
were already purchased.
- Ensure that SAP can provide technical support for all the SAP
landscapes deployed to Azure. Litware is evaluating whether to add high availability after the migration. What should you recommend to meet the technical requirements?
Options
- ASAP HANA system replication and Azure Availability Sets
- BAzure virtual machine auto-restart with SAP HANA service auto-restart.
- CAzure Site Recovery
How the community answered
(52 responses)- A48% (25)
- B19% (10)
- C33% (17)
Explanation
SAP HANA System Replication (HSR) combined with Azure Availability Sets is the correct answer because it addresses high availability at two distinct layers simultaneously. HSR continuously replicates data to a standby HANA node, enabling near-instant failover with minimal data loss at the database level. Azure Availability Sets distribute VMs across separate fault and update domains, protecting against hardware failures and planned maintenance at the infrastructure level - directly addressing Litware's dissatisfaction with their current vendor's hardware failures.
Option B is wrong because auto-restart is a recovery mechanism, not a high availability solution. Restarting a failed VM or service still incurs meaningful downtime, which violates the requirement to "ensure all SAP applications and databases are highly available" in a 24/7 operation.
Option C is wrong because Azure Site Recovery is a disaster recovery tool designed for regional failover scenarios with tolerable RPO/RTO - not the near-zero-downtime HA that the requirement demands. DR ≠ HA.
Memory tip: Think of it as two shields - HSR shields the database (data layer), Availability Sets shield the VM (infrastructure layer). You need both shields for true HA on Azure SAP HANA. If you only see "auto-restart" or "Site Recovery," those are recovery tools, not prevention tools.
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