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Announcing an Azure Migrate AMA on January 19!
We are very excited to announce an Azure Migrate AMA! We'll be answering your questions on how to migrate your datacenter using Azure Migrate. The AMA will take place on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT in the Azure AMA space. Add the event to your calendar and view in your time zone here. An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with Microsoft product experts who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback.Calculate virtual machine costs with Azure Migrate (often underestimated) and much more!
Hi Azure friends, Costs are an omnipresent topic. No matter what industry you are in. For this reason, I often ask myself when it comes to costs in Azure (explicitly for virtual machines), why not use the Azure Migrate tool. Sure, the Azure price calculator is also a great tool. It gives you a first overview of the costs. In combination with Azure Migrate, the costs can be calculated even better. Again and again I am asked the following question. What is the cost of the migrated virtual machine in Azure? I ask then have you already used Azure Migrate for the cost calculation? The answer: No, we don't want to migrate right away, but we want to compile the costs first. I then ask again...have you used Azure Migrate for the cost calculation. Many people don't know that Azure Migrate can also be used to calculate costs without having to migrate right away. The next question that often needs to be answered is what VM size do I need to select for the migrated machine. I then ask again have you deployed Azure Migrate yet...and again this is answered with "no". Exactly the same with: "does the system work in Azure when migrated" (Azure Ready) and again I ask the same question (OK, I won't write it again now ;-). First of all, in this link you will find all the information about Azure Migrate. Very important, creating a project in Azure Migrate does not generate additional costs. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/migrate-services-overview Let's take a closer look at Azure Migrate with an example. I have a local test environment based on Hyper-V. Now I want to know what the costs would be if I migrate, are the systems Azure ready and what VM size should I plan for the migrated systems. Let's rock n' roll. I logged into the Azure Portal and started Azure Migrate. Click on "Discover, asses and migrate" if you want to create a project. I had already created a project. If I want to create a new one I have to click "change". A new blade appears. Now click on the link "click here" so you can create a new project. The first step is now to perform the discovery. All steps are super described. Take enough time to set everything up. Once you have set up the virtual appliance (this is the system that examines your on-premises infrastructure), wait a few days to create the assessment in Azure. The more time you give the system, the more accurate the result will be. I strongly believe that you can set up the assessment in the Azure portal without my guidance. I will now show you the result of my assessment in a shortened way. The "Confidence rating" is very positive. With a next click on the assessment I already get first great results! Now I also know which VM Size I have to plan. I also know if the systems are Azure ready. And the best thing at the end, I know what costs I have to expect! We have only seen "half" of Azure Migrate. I haven't written anything about migrating, yet (I'll do that in another article). But what I really wanted to show you is how helpful the Discover and Assessment section in Azure Migrate can be. I hope I succeeded in doing this? I am absolutely aware that this was nothing spectacular at all. But I really wanted to share a few experiences with you. I hope this article was useful. Best regards, Tom WechslerWelcome to the Azure Migration Tech Community
Welcome to the new Azure Migration IT Forum. Here we will discuss, disclosure and talk about all things migration. Migrating to Azure is not simply lifting and shifting your existing VM’s (although you can easily do this if you want), there are many tools and services available to help you discover, right-size and optimize your VM’s before they more to Azure – saving you time and money. However, migration is not all about Virtual Machines. Much of the time you are looking at an end-to-end Application, including app services, data, and infrastructure tiers. Azure migration services are there to help you for all scenarios – app migration, data migration and VM migration with new tools, services and a strong partner ecosystem. To kick start your journey, on April 12 th we released a new Azure TCO calculator. The tool enables you to understand initial cost comparison in migrating your on-premises workloads to Azure. Through one of three input mechanisms, you can model the cost of your on-premises physical and virtual servers. Further inputs for storage and networking usage offers deeper costing analysis, providing an initial comparison report to identify savings when moving your on-premises environment to Azure. Getting stated is easy, simply choose the best way to input your sever and workload data Manual Import - the manual assessment enables you to enter in information about your server environment such as procs, cores and memory directly into the Azure TCO analysis tool. Custom Import - custom inventory assessment enables you to use your existing discovery tools output, providing the Azure TCO calculator with the required data to enable the assessment. In this scenario, you would use the custom inventory template provided by the Azure TCO tool, and import your existing data to this. Automated discovery and import - the automated inventory assessment uses the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit to automatically collect your server hardware configuration, and enable this for input into the Azure TCO tool. You can access the new TCO tool at http://tco.microsoft.com/. Check out the complete https://aka.ms/migrate_tcodoc for a step-by-step screen captured walkthrough for using the TCO tool, including discovery and analysis. Also you can view this in action with our https://aka.ms/migrate_tcovideo. If you have any questions, issues or problems with the new TCO tool, make sure you post them here. We have experts on standby awaiting your question and will get back to you promptly! I hope you see terrific value in the tools for migration to Azure. In the coming weeks, we will delve more into existing migration tools such as Azure Site Recovery, excellent partner offerings for discovery and right-sizing, as well as new serviced we are on the verge of announcing! Many thanks Michael LeworthyAnnouncing Azure Migrate
Migrating to the cloud doesn’t have to be difficult. But many organizations struggle to get started — to get deep visibility into the environment and the tight interdependencies between applications, workloads, and data. Without that visibility, it can be difficult to plan the path forward. Without detailed information on what’s required for a successful migration, you can’t have the right conversations within your organization. You don’t know enough about the potential cost benefits, or whether workloads could just lift-and-shift or would require significant rework to migrate successfully. No wonder many organizations hesitate. Today, we are pleased to announce Azure Migrate, a new service that provides the guidance, insights, and mechanisms needed to assist you in migrating to Azure. Read about it in the Azure blog.Have a question, issue or problem with the Cloud Migration Assessment or Azure TCO tool?
If you have any questions, or finding issues in using the Cloud Migration Assessment and Azure TCO tool for discovery or analysis, this community forum will provide you with the aid you need. You can easily search previous posts to see if the question you have has been answered, or simply post a new question to the board. We have experts on stand-by to assist you quickly! Thanks Michael Leworthy
Effortlessly Migrate Your VMWare Workloads with Azure Migrate
VMWare is one of the most popular server virtualization solution broadly adopted in many on-premises data centers. With the increasing cloud adoption nowadays, it is very common for enterprises to have the need to migrate VMWare-based workloads to public cloud such as Microsoft Azure. Migrating your applications and services to the cloud can be a daunting task, but with the right tools and resources, it can be made much simpler. Previously, the company I worked at helped a supply chain company migrate hundreds of VMWare servers to Microsoft Azure and another public cloud. The whole project involves extensive use of Azure Migrate, which is a service is designed to help businesses move their existing workloads to the Azure cloud. Azure Migrate provides a comprehensive solution for assessing and migrating VMware virtual machines to Azure. With Azure Migrate, you can discover, assess, and migrate your on-premises applications, infrastructure, and data to Azure. I would like to share our overall migration methodology, which consists of two distinct stages, namely assessment and planning, and actual migration. Stage 1: Assessment and Planning Before you can migrate your virtual machines to Azure, you need to assess your current infrastructure to determine which workloads are suitable for migration. Azure Migrate simplifies this process by providing a unified platform for discovering and assessing your VMware virtual machines. With Azure Migrate, you can discover your VMware virtual machines, and assess their compatibility with Azure. The service provides a comprehensive assessment of your infrastructure, including VM configuration, dependencies, and performance. This information helps you identify any issues that may arise during migration and provides a roadmap for successful migration. Stage 2: Actual Migration Once you have assessed your virtual machines and identified any issues, you can begin the migration process. Azure Migrate simplifies this process by providing a unified platform for migrating your VMware virtual machines to Azure. The migration process is designed to be non-disruptive, so your users can continue to work without interruption. Azure Migrate provides a variety of migration options, including agentless migration, agent-based migration, and self-service migration. You can choose the migration option that best suits your needs. During the migration process, Azure Migrate replicates your virtual machines to Azure, and then performs a cut-over to the Azure environment. The service provides continuous monitoring and replication to ensure a seamless migration. Technical Steps – Derived from Our Migration Experience Here are the technical steps we discovered during our own migration journey, to help you navigate the process at ease. Server Discovery Supports migration from VMWare / Hyper-V / physical server For VMWare / Hyper-V Deploy a migration appliance (VM image) in the hypervisor environment Input vCenter / Hyper-V hosts credential & connection info to establish the connection to the on-prem environment For Physical server Install the Azure Migrate appliance on any server with connectivity to all servers to be migrated Input IP address and credential of each server one by one The appliance will start collecting data including server IP, OS, hardware specification, software inventory, performance data, dependency data and app & db configuration data The server inventory will be available on Azure Portal (Azure Migrate) Migration Assessment Azure Migrate supports migration assessment for migration to Azure VM, Azure SQL, Azure App Service and Azure VMWare Solution Assessment can be created for a single server for a group of servers. Several options to be selected when creating assessment: Sizing Criteria: Performance-based (recommended for potential cost-saving) : Recommend the sku based on the actual utilization of CPU, Memory and Disk As-is on-premises: Recommend the sku based on the on-premises VM / Server size Performance History: the data duration on which you want to base the assessment (recommend at least 1 week to capture the utilization of the server in different time e.g. peak / non-peak) Percentile Utilization: the percentile value you want to use for the performance sample Comfort factor: The buffer reserved for additional resources to cater for spikes such as seasonal peak Let the assessment tool run for the during set for performance history After some time, the assessment report will be available for viewing, and contain the following information Azure readiness Ready for Azure: Used when Azure Migrate recommends a VM size and cost estimates, for VMs in the assessment. Ready with conditions: Shows issues and suggested remediation. Not ready for Azure: Shows issues and suggested remediation. Readiness unknown: Used when Azure Migrate can't assess readiness, because of data availability issues. Monthly cost estimation Monthly storage cost estimation The above two are calculated based on the VM size and disk size recommend by Azure Migrate Migration Agentless Migration can be conducted if Azure Migration appliance is deployed to VMWare environment As the server inventory has been discovered in step 1 already, the servers available for migration will show up automatically Before performing actual migration, need to replicate the server to Azure. Configure the target setting of the VM post-migration, including subscription, resource group, virtual network, subnet, availability zone if applicable, disk encryption, VM size, disk size and resource tag Azure Portal will show the replication status. When the status is "Delta Sync", it means the initial replication has completed and you can trigger test migration and actual migration. Running a test migration checks that migration will work as expected, without impacting the on-premises machines, which remain operational, and continue replicating. Test migration simulates the migration by creating an Azure VM using replicated data. This allows you to validate the migration approach such as checking whether the server boots normally, conducting application testing and connectivity testing. After the test is done, you can clean up the test migration to delete the Azure VM created temporarily After you've verified that the test migration works as expected, you can proceed to actual migration. When prompted the option "Shut down virtual machines and perform a planned migration with no data loss", select "Yes" if you have confirmed that the on-premises server can be shut down. Select "No" if you prefer to have both on-premises and Azure servers running concurrently for a transitional period but you will have to manually synchronize the data between both servers. After the migration is done, click Complete migration on Azure Migrate. This stops replication for the on-premises machine and cleans up replication state information for the VM. Conclusion In summary, Azure Migrate provides a comprehensive solution for assessing and migrating VMware virtual machines to Azure. With its assessment and planning features, as well as its actual migration capabilities, Azure Migrate simplifies the migration process and helps businesses move to the cloud with ease References https://www.plainconcepts.com/azure-migrate-introduction/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/agent-based-migration-architectureHow to Host a Web Site in Azure VM - Complete Video Series
Introduction, After watching this two (02) videos you will have a better knowledge in hosting a web site in Azure VM. In this video, we discuss about, Creating a VM in Azure Configuring CPanel Configure VM and Security Setting Host a Web Site.
