When it comes to deploying virtual machines to Azure, you have several options. Manually creating the VM resource through the portal, which may be easy as a one-off exercise, but has no way to enforce compliance to specifications. However, this method does allow you to create an Azure Resource Manager template of the compute resource that can be reused to deploy multiple machines. ARM templates are the preferred method of resource creation as they can be used to deploy any and all resource types. Azure offers automation and repository services specifically designed to support template deployments. Except for HANA Large Instances, all Azure resources are defined as Infrastructure as Code. The infrastructure as code paradigm can be extended to enforce compliance using policies defined in JSON notation and deployed using ARM templates. Azure Marketplace and GitHub have a large selection of pre-defined ARM templates you can use as-is or modify. Azure supports deploying VM images that you create through Azure or from your on-premises machines. Once a VM is deployed, the SAP extension software must be properly installed and verified.

ExpressRoute is a fundamental component of any SAP deployment with features such as FastPath, and Global Reach that enable high performance and flexibility. Accelerated networking which is only available on a subset of virtual machines, is another high-performance feature that should be utilized in an SAP production environment. This feature can be enabled with PowerShell scripts or deployed with ARM templates and Azure Automation like any other resource. Once assets have been deployed, it is essential that their configuration doesn't change in unexpected ways, either through human error or as the by-product of other system processes. Compliance can be monitored through Desired State configuration, Azure Automation State Configuration, and policy compliance. Many landscape deployments will still be non-HANA, so storage and disk configuration is the primary element to ensure maximum database performance. Understanding the interactions between disk types, the number of disks, and how different VM SKUs support different disk configurations is crucial to maximizing overall database performance. The fact that VM SKUs differ in the maximum number of attached disks and I/O operations per second means you may have to over provision one element to achieve the required performance on another metric. Naturally enough, each database management system has its quirks and idiosyncrasies that should be accounted for during deployment and configuration. When it comes to migrating the data, SQL Server Migration Assistant is a comprehensive and useful tool to aid in that task.