AZ-120 Exam Guide: Planning and Administering Azure for SAP Workloads
AZ-120 validates the ability to plan, migrate, design, implement, and maintain SAP workloads on Azure. It serves architects and engineers responsible for SAP landscapes, including professionals working with Azure infrastructure, SAP applications, databases, and operational resilience. This guide helps you make a practical decision: whether your current Azure and SAP experience is strong enough to schedule the assessment, or whether you should first close specific knowledge and hands-on gaps using the official study guide, training, readiness videos, and practice resources.
What does AZ-120 validate?
AZ-120 is titled “Planning and Administering Azure for SAP Workloads” and is associated with the Microsoft Certified: Azure for SAP Workloads Specialty certification. The assessment focuses on applying Azure infrastructure and SAP knowledge together, rather than testing Azure administration or SAP concepts as isolated subjects.
Microsoft describes the target professional as an architect or engineer who designs and manages the SAP landscape on Azure. The work includes implementing standards for migrations and integrations, sustaining SAP operations in Azure, and recommending resources for resiliency, performance, scale, provisioning, sizing, and monitoring.
That profile matters when deciding how to study. Someone who knows Azure virtual machines but has limited SAP HANA or NetWeaver experience should not treat AZ-120 as a conventional Azure administration exam. Likewise, a SAP specialist who has not designed storage, networking, backup, or high-availability solutions in Azure will need more than product-name memorization.
The certification is classified as Intermediate, with Azure as the product, Solution Architect as the role, and Technical infrastructure as the subject. Microsoft strongly recommends holding the Azure Administrator Associate certification, but the broader profile also expects substantial SAP and infrastructure experience.
Who should take this exam?
AZ-120 is best suited to professionals who already work across SAP and Azure design or operations. It is not an ideal first Azure exam because the expected profile combines SAP application knowledge with cloud infrastructure, migration, resiliency, and ongoing administration.
The official profile names SAP High-performance Analytic Appliance (HANA), SAP Business Suite, and SAP NetWeaver as expected areas of SAP application and database knowledge. It also identifies virtualization, cloud infrastructure, storage structures, high availability, backup, disaster recovery, data protection, and networking as relevant experience.
The role involves collaboration. Microsoft describes these professionals as partners to cloud administrators, cloud database administrators, and clients when implementing solutions, including RISE with SAP. Preparation should therefore include architectural trade-offs and operational responsibilities, not just the sequence of portal actions.
Use this readiness test before booking: can you explain how an SAP workload’s compute, storage, network, identity, backup, monitoring, and recovery requirements influence one another on Azure? If several of those areas are unfamiliar, start with the relevant Azure administration and SAP fundamentals before concentrating on exam-specific revision.
When Azure Administrator Associate should come first
Microsoft strongly recommends the Azure Administrator Associate certification for AZ-120 candidates. Treat that recommendation as a useful sequencing signal: if core Azure administration is weak, first build competence with compute, networking, storage, identity, monitoring, governance, and operational troubleshooting before adding SAP-specific architecture.
This does not mean that a certification badge alone proves readiness. Use the recommendation diagnostically. If you can administer Azure resources confidently but need SAP workload design practice, focus on the AZ-120 objectives. If ordinary Azure administration still requires constant reference to basic documentation, strengthen that foundation first.
Which skills are measured?
The supplied Microsoft study guide groups AZ-120 into four assessed areas: migrating SAP workloads to Azure; designing and implementing infrastructure to support SAP workloads on Azure; designing and implementing high availability and disaster recovery; and maintaining SAP workloads on Azure. The guide identifies these as the organizing domains, but the supplied research does not provide percentage weights for them.
Do not create a study plan from unlabeled percentages or from assumptions about which domain is “worth more.” The official study guide is the controlling reference for the skills measured, and Microsoft says exam objectives can be updated periodically to reflect role requirements. Review the version that applies when you plan to sit the assessment.
The study guide also notes that bullets under each measured skill illustrate how the skill may be assessed and that related topics may appear. That means a narrow checklist approach is risky. Learn the decision behind a configuration, the dependency it creates, and the operational result it is intended to achieve.
Migrate SAP workloads to Azure
Migration preparation should connect SAP discovery and dependency analysis with Azure landing-zone decisions. Study how workload requirements affect subscriptions, resource organization, connectivity, compute selection, storage, identity, security, and cutover planning. A useful revision exercise is to map an existing SAP landscape to its Azure target design and document every dependency that could disrupt migration.
Do not study migration as a single tool or command sequence. The exam domain is about planning and implementing migration, so practise explaining why a design supports the workload’s scale, performance, availability, and operational constraints. Include hybrid connectivity and the relationship between on-premises sites and Azure in your study notes.
Design and implement SAP infrastructure
This domain requires a joined-up view of Azure infrastructure. Microsoft identifies the Azure portal, Azure Marketplace, Azure Resource Manager, and Bicep templates as ways to manage SAP infrastructure. Revise both portal-based administration and infrastructure-as-code concepts so that you understand repeatability, resource dependencies, configuration consistency, and change control.
The related AZ-120T00-A course covers virtual machines, virtual networks, storage accounts, Azure identity, subscriptions, scaling, backup, data sharing, hybrid connectivity, traffic management, security, and monitoring. Use that scope to build a service map, but always verify detailed objectives in the current study guide rather than assuming every course topic has identical exam emphasis.
Design high availability and disaster recovery
HA and DR preparation should begin with business and workload requirements, then move to architecture and operations. Study the difference between keeping a service available during component failure and restoring service after a larger disruption. For each design, record the protected components, dependencies, replication or backup approach, recovery process, monitoring signals, and the actions required during a failure.
Avoid reducing this domain to a list of Azure services. A resilient SAP design is only useful when its storage, network, compute, database, identity, and operational procedures work together. Practise evaluating a proposed design against performance, recovery, security, and maintenance requirements rather than choosing a service because its name appears familiar.
Maintain SAP workloads on Azure
Maintenance includes the operational loop after deployment: monitoring, sizing, performance management, backup, security, scaling, and adjustment. Microsoft describes the role as recommending services and adjusting resources for resiliency, performance, scale, provisioning, size, and monitoring. Prepare to reason from symptoms and requirements to an appropriate administrative response.
Create troubleshooting notes that begin with an observable condition and end with a justified action. For example, connect a performance concern to the relevant compute, storage, network, database, or monitoring evidence before proposing a change. This method is more durable than memorizing isolated settings and better reflects the responsibilities described in the certification profile.
Conclusion
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