The Microsoft AZ-120 exam is one of the latest and most in-demand tests offered by Microsoft. The exam measures an individual’s knowledge and skills required to plan and administer Microsoft Azure for SAP workloads. The candidates for this exam are required to have a good comprehension of the SAP system landscape as well as industry standards which determine the primary integration and migration along with the sustainable operation of an SAP solution based on Microsoft Azure.

Who Should Take The Microsoft AZ-120 Exam?

The target audience for the Microsoft AZ-120 exam includes engineers and architects with sound experience and knowledge of SAP and Azure. These individuals should have extensive knowledge of the SAP applications such as S/4HANA, SAP HANA, SAP NetWeaver, as well as SAP BW/4HANA. They are also required to be conversant with OS servers for SAP databases and applications, cloud infrastructure, networking, virtualization, storage, data security, and disaster recovery, Azure Portal and Marketplace, ARM templates. The applicants for the Microsoft AZ-120 exam are strongly recommended to have an Azure Solutions Architect Expert or Azure Administrator Associate certification alongside SAP accreditations. This will provide a great foundation for the exam and ease the preparation process.

What Is The Microsoft AZ-120 Exam?

The Microsoft AZ-120 exam evaluates professionals’ ability to provide guidance on services and adjust resources for best performance, size, scale, resilience, monitoring, and provision. The evaluation consists of 40 to 60 questions and test-takers will need to reach a minimum passing score of 700 points out of 1000 available to succeed in it. While registering for the evaluation, candidates will be charged $165 as an exam fee. However, this sum can vary depending on the country where the evaluation is proctored.

The completion of the Microsoft AZ-120 test leads to the Microsoft Certified: Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty certification. This designation validates a professional’s ability to perform a variety of tasks on Microsoft Azure for SAP Workloads and is widely recognized in the IT industry.

Overview of The Microsoft AZ-120 Exam Content

The Microsoft AZ-120 exam measures an individual's knowledge and technical skills required to perform the tasks detailed below:

• SAP Workloads migration to Microsoft Azure

  Within this subject area, candidates need to demonstrate that they are able to design and implement a migration strategy, including selecting an appropriate migration method and migration scenario, as well as setting up storage for migration. Besides, the candidates’ ability to develop and implement authorization, access control and authentication for SAP workloads will be tested. Test-takers should also be able to administer access permissions for SAP systems. Furthermore, candidates should possess skills to identify infrastructural requirements such as target database size in addition to compute, storage, and network requirements for the target database, among others. They must also be able to assess quota limit and subscription model constraints as well as components such as Azure Data Lake, Microsoft Power BI, Azure Data Factory, and SAP Cloud.

• Development and implementation of SAP Workloads support infrastructure

  Candidates are expected to be familiar with creating and implementing compute solutions for SAP workloads, including identifying a compute platform, connecting to an Azure HLI, using Azure Marketplace to deploy an OS, implementing ARM templates to automate deployment, developing and deploying a custom image, and configuring Accelerated Networking, Enhanced Monitoring, snapshot, VMs for Availability Zones and Sets, license registration and OS updates for Azure HLI. Additionally, candidates must be able to design and configure a network topology for SAP on Azure HLI or Azure Virtual Machines. The examinees should be also capable of designing and implementing proximity placement groups, load balancing for a reverse proxy, and networking and routing for Azure HLI. Apart from that, candidates should possess skills to identify SAP subnets and zones and design for network security and latency considerations. Lastly, test-takers are expected to be familiar with designing and configuring a storage solution for SAP on Azure VMs or Azure HLI, including identifying appropriate disk options, configuring encryption and Write Accelerator, as well as designing for data protection and security.

• High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) development and configuration

  To answer the question related to this topic, candidates must be able to develop a HA/DR solution that includes Azure Site Recovery strategy, HANA system replication, Availability Set and Availability Zone plan for SAP workloads and load balancing. Applicants must also be proficient in configuring HA/DR solutions, including clustering, STONITH, Azure Site Recovery, database-level replication, SBD, storage-level replication, load balancing for SAP HA. And finally, they should be proficient in carrying out backup and restore, and disaster recovery testing.

• SAP Workloads maintenance on Microsoft Azure

  Candidates must be able to monitor networking and SAP workloads using Azure Monitor and Log Analytics. Furthermore, they must be familiar with performance and cost optimization techniques using various tools such as SAP application servers, SAPS benchmark tool, and Azure Advisor. Candidates should be able to optimize the cost of storage and bandwidth. Lastly, test-takers must also be able to optimize the performance and cost of Azure HLI, SAP HANA virtual hardware, SAP HANA Hardware, and HCMT.

Career Pathway And Future Career Prospects

The Microsoft AZ-120 exam is a popular exam that opens the door to an exciting career in IT. There is a massive demand for Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty certified professionals in the IT industry. Certified professionals have the opportunity to work as SAP Technical Consultants, Project Managers, Business Analysts, Cloud Network Engineers, Solution Architects, and many more. Companies around the world offer amazing salaries and benefits for certified specialists. The average salary of the Microsoft Certified: Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty certification holder is $103,361 per year, according to ZipRecruiter.

Certified professionals add great value to an organization. The certification is only the first step in the career journey. Certified professionals can progress further in their careers by obtaining Azure associate- and expert-level certifications provided by Microsoft. They can also widen their exposure to the subject area by obtaining other SAP cloud certifications such as SAP Global certifications.