Microsoft is headed to VMware Explore 2023 in Las Vegas
VMware Explore is back in Las Vegas for 2023! If you want to know about Azure, the work we are doing with VMware, or just have a great conversation, don’t be shy and reach out to say hello. We'd love to talk to you so stop by our booth! We may even have some cool stickers too. This year we will have a bunch of sessions with Microsoft employees on stage, so if you're building out your schedule check them out: Microsoft Keynote: Transform your VMware Workloads with Microsoft Azure Speakers: Brett Tanzer, VP of Product Management, Microsoft Jeff Woolsey, Principal PM Manager, Microsoft Date/Time: Wednesday, August 23 @ 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM PDT Brett and Jeff will share how customers can transform their on-prem VMware environments using Microsoft Azure. Keynote attendees will learn how to: Learn about everything that’s new in Windows Server 2022 and address end of support for Windows Server 2012 Use familiar VMware skills to migrate or extend your VMware environment to the cloud, including hybrid cloud options with Azure VMware Solution and Azure Arc Modernize hybrid work with Azure Virtual Desktop and Horizon Cloud Learn how Azure VMware Solution could be the ideal landing spot for those looking to migrate their SQL Server workloads to Azure, but still want to use Unlimited Virtualization In addition, here are some other Microsoft Azure-related sessions that we highly recommend for learning more about Azure + VMware: Day, Time, Topic Session Title Monday, August 21 1:30-3:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Azure VMware Solution: New Guidance for Networking and Security CEIT3041LVS Monday, August 21 4:30-4:50 PM Azure VMware Solution Integrate Azure VMware Solution with Azure Native Services, Workbooks CODE1933LV - VMware {code} Theater Tuesday, August 22 10:30-11:15 AM Azure Virtual Desktop & Windows 365 Horizon DaaS and Microsoft Virtualization Solutions: The Path to the Cloud EUSB2734LV Tuesday, August 22 10:30-11:15 AM Azure VMware Solution Modernize Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environments - NetApp Customer Case Studies CEIB2924LVS Tuesday, Aug 22 2:00-2:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Ask me anything about Azure VMware Solution CEIM3039LVS Wednesday, Aug 23 9:00-9:45 AM Microsoft Azure Microsoft Executive Keynote: Transform your VMware workloads with Azure CEIB3042LVS Wednesday, August 23 10:15-11:00 AM Azure VMware Solution Azure VMware Solution Lessons Learned: Designing, Migrating, and Operating EIB3043LVS Wednesday, August 23 10:15-10:30 AM Azure VMware Solution Embracing Hybrid Cloud: Azure VMware Solution for Innovation and Growth VMTN2829LV - VMTN TechTalk Wednesday, Aug 23 12:00-12:45 PM Windows Server & Azure Arc Pave the way to innovation with Azure, Azure Arc, Windows & SQL Server! EIB3044LVS Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:20 PM Azure VMware Solution Availability and Resilience of Azure VMware Solution CEIB2540LV Wednesday, Aug 23 12:45-1:30 PM Azure Arc Bring Azure to your VMware vSphere environment on premises and in the cloud CEIB3045LVS Wednesday, Aug 23 12:45-1:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Speed Your Azure Migration with the Latest Azure VMware Solution Features CEIB2549LV Wednesday, August 23 1:15-2:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Migrate and Modernize with Cloud Solutions from Azure VMware Solution CEIB3038LVS Wednesday, August 23 1:15-2:00 PM Azure VMware Solution Accelerate Your Public Cloud Strategy with VMware Cloud CEIB2557LV Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:45 PM Azure Virtual Desktop & Windows 365 Extending Windows in the Cloud with VMware Horizon EUSB3046LVS Wednesday, August 23 2:00-2:20 PM Azure VMware Solution Learn How to Leverage Automation and Azure VMware Solution CODE1932LV - VMware {code} Theater Wednesday, Aug 23 2:00-2:30 PM Azure VMware Solution Ask me anything about Azure VMware Solution CEIM3040LVS Thursday, August 24 12:30-1:15 PM Azure VMware Solution State of Alaska: Rapid Cloud Migration from the Last Frontier CEIB2447LV Thursday, August 24 12:30-1:15 PM Azure VMware Solution The Enterprise Playbook for Operational Readiness for Azure VMware Solution CEIB1433LVBuild business case with Azure Migrate - Do More with Less (DMWL)
Justifying the move to cloud is a crucial decision for a business and it could be difficult to know where to start. To make an informed decision to move to cloud, customers are looking into all available migration strategies and associated costs. They are also looking for ways to build and validate such proposals to be able to decide quickly. With the current economic situation, it is becoming much more important to address cashflow challenges, add capacity and prevent security attacks while ensuring business continuity. Microsoft is committed to helping you navigate this journey with confidence and eliminate the guess work involved in the cost planning process with Azure Migrate’s new data driven business case capability. With this feature, you can conduct financial analysis with just a few clicks and create customized proposals, which can then be shared with decision makers for quick decisions. Azure Migrate Azure Migrate is Microsoft’s unified platform for migrating to and modernizing in Azure. It provides discovery, assessment, planning, migration, and modernization capabilities for various workloads on your premises. Azure Migrate allows you to run and manage your migration and modernization projects from a unified, secure portal. About Business Case Capability The Azure Migrate business case in preview helps you to understand the return on investment for migrating your servers, SQL Server deployments and ASP.NET web apps running in your datacenter to Azure. Till April 2023, this feature was available only for servers and workloads running in your VMware environment. To continuously keep supporting our customers accelerate their decision-making process to Azure, we have added some of the enhancements this month: You will also be able to build business cases on servers and workloads discovered from your Microsoft Hyper-V and Physical/ Bare-metal environments as well as IaaS services of other public clouds. If you are looking for a quick business case, without the need to deploy an appliance to collect your server inventory, you can now also use .csv-based import and build a quick business case. Learn more You can build business cases for SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster Instances and Always On Availability Groups. Learn more The business case can be created with just a few clicks and can help you understand how Azure can bring the most value to your business. It highlights: On-premises vs Azure total cost of ownership and year on year cashflow analysis. Resource utilization-based insights to identify servers and workloads that are ideal for cloud and right-sized recommendations in Azure. Azure Hybrid Benefits savings by bringing your existing Windows and SQL Server licenses to Azure Quick wins for migration and modernization including end of support Windows OS and SQL versions. Long term cost savings by moving from a capital expenditure model to an Operating expenditure model, by paying for only what you use. How to get started? Please refer to the steps below: If you have an existing Azure Migrate project: 1. The Business Case feature is already enabled on your existing Azure Migrate projects once the discovery from Azure Migrate appliance has been completed. If you already have a business case with VMware servers and workloads scoped in, you can recalculate the business case to scope in servers and workloads from Hyper-V or Physical environments. To create a new business case, simply click on ‘Build business case’ to get started: 2. Build a business case using minimal inputs 3. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 4. Get buy-ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. If you are new to Azure Migrate: You will first need to set up an Azure Migrate project. Once you have created a project, you can choose to use one of the two discovery sources: 1. To use more accurate data insights collected via Azure Migrate appliance, you need to deploy and configure the Azure Migrate appliance. This appliance enables you to perform discovery from your datacenter. 2. To build a quick business case using existing server inventory available, you can import the server details via a .csv file Click here to learn more to understand the two discovery sources. After the discovery, you can build and review the business case reports. Create an Azure Migrate project from the Azure Portal, and download the Azure Migrate appliance or download the Azure Migrate template to import. Customers who already have an active Azure Migrate project can start using the feature directly. Based on your use case and chosen discovery source: Deploy a new Azure Migrate appliance for discovery . To enable you to discover your datacenter easily, the appliance lets you enter multiple credentials – Windows authentication (both Domain and non-Domain) and SQL Server authentication. The Azure Migrate appliance will automatically map each server to the appropriate credential when multiple credentials are specified. These credentials are encrypted and stored on the deployed appliance locally and are never sent to Microsoft. For import via .csv, you need to populate the template with the server inventory and import the .csv View the summary of the discovered IT estate from your Azure Migrate project and click on ‘Build business case’. You can view details of the discovered servers such as their configurations, software inventory (installed apps), dependencies, count of SQL instances and ASP.NET web apps etc. Click on 'Build business case' 5. Build a business case using minimal inputs 6. Review the Business Case reports including the Overview, on-premises vs Azure, Azure IaaS and Azure PaaS reports. You can also create different what-if scenarios by editing the assumptions that went into the calculations. 7. Get buy ins from stakeholders and start your migration and modernization journey with confidence. Learn more Check out our demo to see the preview in action. Check out this documentation for more details. Learn more about Azure Migrate. Get migration assistance from the Azure migration and modernization program (AMMP). AMMP is now a comprehensive program for all migration and modernization needs of our customers. Join AMMP today.Migrate or modernize your applications using Azure Migrate
Introduction The journey to the cloud is an essential step for modern enterprises looking to leverage the benefits of security, innovation (AI), scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. To help unlock these benefits migration or modernization to Azure is critical for reasons such as colocation of IT assets. A crucial part of this transformation is understanding the current state of your IT infrastructure, including workloads, applications, and their interdependencies. Often, organizations aim to set their migration goals based on the applications they want to move to the cloud, rather than focusing on individual servers or databases in isolation. In our endeavour to both simplify and enrich your cloud adoption journey. We are introducing new capabilities in Azure Migrate to help you achieve your goals. About Azure Migrate Azure Migrate is Microsoft’s free platform for migrating to and modernizing in Azure. It provides IT resource discovery, assessment, business case analysis, planning, migration, and modernization capabilities in a workload agnostic manner. You can run and monitor your migration/ modernization journey from a single, secure portal. Currently, Azure Migrate's application aware experience supports the discovery of following workloads: Windows Server, Linux, SQL Server, .NET webapp on IIS, and Java on Tomcat running on various platforms including, VMware, Microsoft, Bare-metal, AWS EC2, GCP CE, and Xen. Further, it will support migration assessments for Azure VM, Azure VMware Solution (AVS), Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure SQL Database, App Service Code, App Service Containers, and Azure Kubernetes Service. Last, it will support in-line Lift and Shift migration to Azure VM. Note: MySQL discovery and assessment is available in the classic experience only. Introducing Application awareness in Azure Migrate A key step in any cloud transformation plan is a current state analysis of the entire IT estate covering workloads and applications, and relationships/ dependencies among them. We are excited to announce the preview of application aware experiences in Azure Migrate – across every phase of the migration journey. This allows you to gain insights into the total cost of ownership, identify suitable IaaS and PaaS targets, and receive tailored migration and modernization guidance. To get started with Azure Migrate, simply create an Azure Migrate project on Azure portal, and leverage Azure Migrate’s wide-ranging discovery capabilities, including the Azure Migrate appliance or importing inventory via RVTools to discover your environment. Azure Migrate allows you to explore inventory across Infra-Data-Web tiers and use the updated dependency analysis to identify application boundaries. As part of the application aware experiences, we are introducing the concept of tags within Azure Migrate. So once dependencies are identified, you can group the dependent workloads comprising an application via tags. “Tagging has significantly streamlined the assignment of applications name and its environment associations with discovered servers. We consider this feature to be highly advantageous, as it will assist in generating an application-based inventory and assessment. Furthermore, it will be instrumental in organizing a high-level migration move group.” - Tata Consultancy Services (Engineering Practice (Azure) | AI.Cloud) Next, Azure Migrate can be used to create application-specific business cases to identify savings and ROI, assess ideal migration strategies, and get recommendations for Azure services, SKUs, resource costs, and migration/modernization tools. Further, as part of executing the migration and onboarding to Azure, customers can use the recommended tools to modernize via re-platform and refactor (out of band) techniques or use the integrated rehost migration experience to rehost to Azure VM. Complemented with a refreshed user experience As part of delivering application awareness and sustainability insights, Azure Migrate will also feature a refreshed user interface. The new experience is designed to help you in every step of your migration journey – across Decide, Plan and Execute phases. The experience provides you with a new intuitive table of contents and overview page to allow easy navigation. You can explore discovered workloads and their relationships through effective search, sort, and seamless transition from Azure Migrate to other specialized migration tools, depending on your specific goals and requirements. Finally, you can quickly create and visualize different migration and modernization strategies side-by-side. “There has been a notable improvement in User Experience, where with the help of Overview page I can Explore and run assessment, Business case once I access Azure Migrate. Action Centre feature will be highly beneficial to track the issues, which was quite useful in our customer validation.” - Tata Consultancy Services (Engineering Practice (Azure) | AI.Cloud) Interested in trying the new feature-set and experience? The capabilities described above are currently in preview. You can try the new feature-set and experience by selecting the banner shown below from the classic Azure Migrate experience, or by using the URL https://aka.ms/AzureMigrate/Preview. These enhancements in Azure Migrate underscore our commitment to providing comprehensive, user-friendly, and efficient migration solutions. Curious to learn more? Here are key links – Documentation - https://aka.ms/AzureMigrate/Documentation Training videos - Seismic - https://aka.ms/AzureMigrate/Recipes* YouTube - https://aka.ms/AzureMigrate/QuickBytes* *Training videos will be available shortly on the respective sites/ applications.Announcing more Azure VMware Solution enhancements
Announcing more Azure VMware Solution enhancements Greetings from Barcelona, where the Microsoft team is thrilled to be part of VMware Explore 2023. My team and I will be presenting and are eager to meet with customers and partners in person! Having been at Microsoft for over two decades, I have recently taken the helm of the Azure VMware Solution team and I am excited to hear about your thoughts and experiences using our product. Here is some of what I have already heard from customers about how Azure VMware Solution is helping their organizations: “As a public institution, we were very sensitive to the security implemented by Azure VMware Solution in terms of data protection. Our data is hosted in the European Union. On one hand, there is protection for the container that hosts our data, on the other hand, data transmission between SOLIDEO and the Microsoft servers. There's really a portability between the VMware-based SOLIDEO virtual machines, and the Azure cloud. It's a perfect match.” —Dominique Renard, Director of Information Systems Security, SOLIDEO “As a large, mature organization, we couldn’t undertake a greenfield implementation, but we were able to quickly migrate and stand up our environment in the cloud with Azure VMware Solution” and “Our migration to Azure VMware Solution extended compliance to workloads approaching end of service because of Microsoft support.” —Mark Wiltshire, IT Director, Kier Group These stories underscore the versatility and efficiency of Azure VMware Solution in addressing diverse organizational needs. We’re eager to hear your experiences too! Please stop by our booth and connect with me and the team. Check out what’s new in Azure VMware Solution I am also excited to share some of the recent updates we’ve made to Azure VMware Solution. Azure Elastic SAN, in preview, is a cloud-native managed SAN offering scalability, cost-efficiency, high performance, and security. It now supports snapshots, enhanced security, and integrates with Azure VMware Solution. Furthermore, as a VMware Certified datastore, Elastic SAN allows you to independently scale your storage and performance, optimizing your total cost of ownership and scalability. Learn more. Azure VMware Solution in Microsoft Azure Government was approved to be added as a service within the Azure Government Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) High Provisional Authorization to Operate (P-ATO). Azure VMware Solution is already available in Azure Commercial and included in the Azure Commercial FedRAMP High P-ATO. With this latest approval, customers and their partners who require the data sovereignty that Azure Government provides can now meet FedRAMP requirements with Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government. Learn more. Azure NetApp Files for Azure Government All Azure NetApp Files features available on Azure public cloud are also available on supported Azure Government regions. For Azure Government regions supported by Azure NetApp Files, see the Products Available by Region page. Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere is now available. Customers can start their onboarding with Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere, install agents at-scale, and enable Azure management, observability, and security solutions, while benefitting from the existing lifecycle management capabilities. Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere VMs will now show up alongside other Azure Arc-enabled servers under ‘Machines’ view in the Azure portal. Learn more. Five-year Reserved Instance promotion is available for Azure VMware Solution until March 31, 2024 for customers looking to lock-in their VMware costs for multiple years. Contact your sales representative for details. Visit our pricing page. vSphere 8.0 will be rolled out starting at the end of November. If you would like to stay up to date with the latest releases from Azure VMware Solution, please follow Azure updates. Learn more If you are here at VMware Explore Barcelona, check out all our Azure Breakout Sessions during the event, and stop by the Microsoft booth #303 for our hourly in-booth theater sessions. Later this month you can also attend Microsoft Ignite Online: November 15–16, 2023 Learn more. As always, you can visit the Azure VMware Solution website or documentation for more information.Powering application migration and modernization with Azure Migrate and CAST
Microsoft and CAST partner together to automate migration and modernization of custom applications with Azure Migrate and CAST used together, under the Azure Migrate & Modernize Program, complementing the current Azure tooling capabilities.
Migration planning of MySQL workloads using Azure Migrate
In our endeavor to increase coverage of OSS workloads in Azure Migrate, we are announcing discovery and modernization assessment of MySQL databases running on Windows and Linux servers. Customers previously had limited visibility into their MySQL workloads and often received generalized VM lift-and-shift recommendations. With this new capability, customers can now accurately identify their MySQL workloads and assess them for right-sizing into Azure Database for MySQL. MySQL workloads are a cornerstone of the LAMP stack, powering countless web applications with their reliability, performance, and ease of use. As businesses grow, the need for scalable and efficient database solutions becomes paramount. This is where Azure Database for MySQL comes into play. Migrating from on-premises to Azure Database for MySQL offers numerous benefits, including effortless scalability, cost efficiency, enhanced performance, robust security, high availability, and seamless integration with other Azure services. As a fully managed Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), it simplifies database management, allowing businesses to focus on innovation and growth. What is Azure Migrate? Azure Migrate serves as a comprehensive hub designed to simplify the migration journey of on-premises infrastructure, including servers, databases, and web applications, to Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) targets at scale. It provides a unified platform with a suite of tools and features to help you identify the best migration path, assess Azure readiness, estimate the cost of hosting workloads on Azure, and execute the migration with minimal downtime and risk. Key features of the MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate The new MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate (Preview) introduces several powerful capabilities: Discover MySQL database instances: The tool allows you to discover MySQL instances within your environment efficiently. By identifying critical attributes of these instances, it lays the foundation for a thorough assessment and a strategic migration plan. Assessment for Azure readiness: The feature evaluates the readiness of your MySQL database instances to migrate to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server. This assessment considers several factors, including compatibility and performance metrics, to ensure a smooth transition. SKU recommendations: Based on the discovered data, the tool recommends the optimal compute and storage configuration for hosting MySQL workloads on Azure Database for MySQL. Furthermore, it provides insights into the associated costs, enabling better financial planning. How to get started? To begin using the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate, follow this five-step onboarding process: Create an Azure Migrate Project: Initiate your migration journey by setting up a project in the Azure portal. Configure the Azure Migrate Appliance: Use a Windows-based appliance to discover the inventory of servers and provide guest credentials for discovering the workloads and MySQL credentials to fetch database instances and their attributes. Review Discovered Inventory: Examine the detailed attributes of the discovered MySQL instances. Create an Assessment: Evaluate the readiness and get detailed recommendations for migration to Azure Database for MySQL. For a detailed step-by-step guidance check out the documentation for discovery and assessment tutorials. Documentation: Discover MySQL databases running in your datacenter Assess MySQL database instances for migration to Azure Database for MySQL Share your feedback! In summary, the MySQL Discovery and Assessment feature in Azure Migrate enables you to effortlessly discover, assess, and plan your MySQL database migrations to Azure. Try the feature out in public preview and fast-track your migration journey! If you have any queries, feedback or suggestions, please let us know by leaving a comment below or by directly contacting us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com. We are eager to hear your feedback and support you on your journey to Azure.
