First published on MSDN on Jun 06, 2018
Authored by datamigrationteam@microsoft.com
At the recent Microsoft \\Build 2018 conference, we announced that one of the key themes in the Data Modernization pillar is to showcase how easy it is to migrate existing apps to the cloud. Migrating your existing infrastructure, platform, services, databases, and applications to the cloud is much easier and more seamless today with the tools and guidance that Microsoft provides to help you migrate and modernize your applications.
To this end, you should definitely log in to the Microsoft Build Live site and take a look at the videos associated with the Playlist: Migrate existing apps to the cloud , which contains a great demo and sessions that discuss migrating applications and databases to the cloud.
One of the tools that Microsoft provides to our customers for migrating different database engines (including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL) to the cloud is Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) . One cool feature that we introduced for MySQL migrations is the continuous sync capability , which limits the amount of downtime incurred by the application. DMS performs an initial load of your on-premises to Azure Database for MySQL, and afterward continuously syncs any new transactions to Azure while the application remains running.
When the data catches up on the target Azure side, stop the application for a brief moment (minimum downtime), wait for the last batch of data (from the time you stop the application until the application is effectively unavailable to take any new traffic) to catch up in the target, and then simply update your connection string to point to Azure. There you have it, your application is now live on Azure! 
I delivered session, Easily migrate MySQL/PostgreSQL apps to Azure managed servic e, with a demo showing how to migrate MySQL apps to Azure Database for MySQL. 
DMS migration of MySQL sources is currently in preview. If you would like to try out the service to migrate your MySQL workloads, please sign up via the Azure DMS preview page to express your interest. We would love to have your feedback to help us further improve the service.
Thanks in advance!
Shau Phang
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft Database Migration Team