SAP Business One is available not only on LiveApps but also announcements have shown that clients are free to deploy SAP Business One to various Cloud Service Providers.
The network infrastructure you need to deploy in Azure depends on whether you deploy a single Business One system for yourself. Or whether you are a hoster who hosts dozens of Business One systems for customers. There also might be slight changes in the design on whether how you connect to Azure. Going through different possibilities, one design where you have a VPN connectivity into Azure and where you extend your Active Directory through VPN or ExpressRoute into Azure.
The simplified configuration presented introduces several security instances that allow to control and limit routing. It starts with
A more sophisticated version of an Azure network configuration is based on the Azure documented best practices of hub and spoke architecture. The architecture pattern of hub and spoke would change the first simplified configuration to one like the image.
For cases where the users are connecting through the internet without any private connectivity into Azure, the design of the network in Azure should be aligned with the principles documented in the Azure reference architecture for DMZ between Azure and the Internet.
For the database type, SQL Server and SAP HANA are available. Independent of the DBMS, you should read the document Considerations for Azure Virtual Machines DBMS deployment for SAP workload to get a general understanding of DBMS deployments in azure VMs and the related networking and storage topics.
Though emphasized in the specific and generic database documents already, you should make yourself familiar with:
These documents should help you to decide on the selection of storage types and high availability configuration.
In principle you should:
For deploying SQL Server as DBMS for Business One, go along the document SQL Server Azure Virtual Machines DBMS deployment for SAP NetWeaver.
Rough sizing estimates for the DBMS side for SQL Server are:
Number of users |
vCPUs |
Memory |
Example VM types |
up to 20 |
4 |
16 GB |
D4s_v3, E4s_v3 |
up to 40 |
8 |
32 GB |
D8s_v3, E8s_v3 |
up to 80 |
16 |
64 GB |
D16s_v3, E16s_v3 |
up to 150 |
32 |
128 GB |
D32s_v3, E32s_v3 |
The sizing listed above should give an idea of where to start with. It may be that you need less or more resources, in which case an adaption on Azure is easy. A change between VM types is possible with just a restart of the VM.
Using SAP HANA as DBMS the following sections you should follow the considerations of the document SAP HANA on Azure operations guide.
For high availability and disaster recovery configurations around SAP HANA as database for Business One in Azure, you should read the documentation SAP HANA high availability for Azure virtual machines and the documentation pointed to from that document.
For SAP HANA backup and restore strategies, you should read the document Backup guide for SAP HANA on Azure Virtual Machines and the documentation pointed to from that document.
For these components, storage considerations are not the primary concern. nevertheless, you want to have a reliable platform. Therefore, you should use Azure Premium Storage for this VM, even for the base VHD. Sizing the VM, with the data given in SAP Business One Hardware Requirements Guide. For Azure, you need to focus and calculate with the requirements stated in chapter 2.4 of the document. As you calculate the requirements, you need to compare them against the following documents to find the ideal VM for you:
Compare the number of CPUs and memory needed to what is documented by Microsoft. Also, keep network throughput in mind when choosing the VMs.
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