Azure Migrate: Comprehensive Documentation

Welcome to the official documentation hub for Azure Migrate. This guide provides detailed information, step-by-step instructions, best practices, and troubleshooting tips for migrating your on-premises workloads to Microsoft Azure.

Getting Started with Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate is a centralized service that helps you discover, assess, and migrate your on-premises applications, infrastructure, and data to Microsoft Azure. It simplifies the cloud migration process by providing a unified platform for various migration tools and services.

Core Components and Features

Azure Migrate offers a suite of tools to support your migration journey:

  • Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool: Provides an agentless, robust discovery and assessment of your on-premises VMware, Hyper-V, and physical servers.
  • Azure Migrate: Server Migration tool: Helps you migrate VMware, Hyper-V, and physical servers to Azure.
  • Azure Migrate: Database Migration tool: Supports assessment and migration of SQL Server databases to Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server on Azure VMs.
  • Azure Migrate: VMware vSphere migration tool: Facilitates the migration of VMware VMs with minimal downtime.
  • Azure Migrate: Hyper-V migration tool: Enables the migration of Hyper-V VMs to Azure.
  • Azure Migrate: Physical server migration tool: Assists in migrating physical servers to Azure.

Discovery

The first step in migrating to Azure is understanding your current environment. Azure Migrate helps you discover:

  • VMware vSphere virtual machines
  • Hyper-V virtual machines
  • Physical servers
  • SQL Server instances
  • Web applications
  • Databases

Detailed documentation on configuring discovery appliances and agents can be found here.

Assessment

Once discovered, your resources need to be assessed for Azure readiness and cost. Azure Migrate provides:

  • Machine-based assessment: Analyze individual machines for Azure readiness, performance-based sizing, and cost estimation.
  • Application-based assessment: Understand dependencies between machines to group them for migration.
  • SQL Server assessment: Identify compatibility issues and receive recommendations for migrating SQL Server to Azure.

Learn more about setting up assessments here.

Migration

Azure Migrate offers flexible migration strategies tailored to your needs:

  • Rehost (Lift-and-shift): Migrate servers as-is with minimal changes.
  • Refactor: Modify applications to take advantage of cloud-native services.
  • Rebuild: Redesign applications to be cloud-native.
  • Re-purchase: Replace existing applications with SaaS solutions.

Explore detailed migration guides for different scenarios here.

Best Practices and Advanced Topics

  • Network connectivity for migration
  • Security considerations during migration
  • High availability and disaster recovery for migrated workloads
  • Post-migration optimization