Migrate to Azure SQL Database, including Hyperscale, straight from Azure Arc (public preview)
The challenge Most organisations do not run in one place. Estates stretch across on-premises datacentres, hybrid deployments and the cloud, and every migration decision must balance application dependencies, operational requirements and a modernization roadmap that is already in motion. Mixed environments and legacy dependencies make that harder, and needing a different tool for assessment, migration, monitoring and management harder still. The result is more operational effort, inconsistency between teams, and modernization that moves slower than anyone wants. Azure Arc already solves the first half of that problem. It discovers and assesses SQL Server estates at scale, so you know which databases are ready to move. The second half has been the gap: once a database is identified as migration-ready, the path to Azure SQL Database runs outside Arc. You leave the experience you were working in, learn Azure Database Migration Service, configure a Self-hosted Integration Runtime, and juggle several tools to get one database across. That fragmentation costs time, and it is one of the reasons why assessments do not turn into migrations. What's new Azure Arc Database Migration now adds Azure SQL Database; including Hyperscale as a supported migration target, in public preview. You can migrate Arc enabled SQL Server databases to Azure SQL Database through a single, guided experience in the Azure portal. Behind that experience, the workflow integrates Azure Database Migration Service and streamlines Self-hosted Integration Runtime setup directly into the migration journey. You assess, configure, migrate, monitor and complete the migration without leaving Arc. This is a logical migration performed by DMS through the Self-hosted Integration Runtime, so there is no separate staging step for you to plan or maintain but it requires a planned downtime. Why Hyperscale For many teams, the database that most requires modernizing is also the largest one they run. Hyperscale is the Azure SQL Database service tier built for exactly that case: a fully managed platform designed to scale storage and compute independently as a workload grows, so a large SQL Server database can move to a managed service without being re-architected first. Making Hyperscale reachable from Arc matters because it removes a decision point from the middle of the journey. The databases Arc flags as migration-ready are often the ones whose size is used to rule out a managed destination; and now the assessment and the target sit in the same place. One portal, one operational model The principle has not changed: one portal for discovery, assessment and migration. The entire migration lifecycle is managed from a single tool in the Azure portal; assess readiness, select a target, configure settings, choose databases and tables to migrate, monitor progress and validate the results. Migrating to Azure SQL Database follows the same operational model already available for existing migration scenarios in Arc. The same migration dashboard, the same monitoring experience and the same guided workflow apply regardless of destination. That reduces the learning curve, keeps operational processes consistent, and lets your team choose the most appropriate Azure SQL platform for each database without changing migration methodology. How it works The flow starts where you already are, in the Database migration pane of your Arc-enabled SQL Server instance. Assess in Arc. Readiness assessments are generated automatically every weekend, and you can run one manually in a few minutes if you would rather not wait. SQL Server migration in Azure Arc is available by default for Arc-enabled SQL Server instances starting with SQL Server 2014 (12.x). Choose your target. Select Azure SQL Database, including the Hyperscale service tier, for the databases the assessment identified as ready. Set up DMS and SHIR, guided. The portal walks you through creating the Azure Database Migration Service resource and registering a Self-hosted Integration Runtime, inside the same workflow rather than as separate homework. Migrate. DMS performs a logical migration of your schema and data to the Azure SQL Database target through the integration runtime. Monitor and Completion. Track progress on the migration dashboard you already use, validate the results when the migration is completed. Microsoft Copilot is built into the Database migration pane to help you along the way. Why SHIR, and what it means for you The Self-hosted Integration Runtime secures bridge that it acts as the connectivity layer that enables Azure Database Migration Service to securely connect to the source SQL Server and the target Azure SQL Database for data movement. Azure DMS is a fully managed service for migrations to Azure data platforms and can be driven from the Azure portal, PowerShell or the Azure CLI — the runtime is simply how it gets to your source. In practice, setup is guided and one-time. You register the runtime once during the migration workflow, and subsequent migrations from the same environment reuse it. Nothing about how you operate your Arc-enabled instances changes. Learn more details in the technical documentation. Get started Trying the preview takes three things: an Arc-enabled SQL Server instance, a recent readiness assessment, and a target Azure SQL Database. In the Azure portal, open your Arc-enabled SQL Server instance, go to the Database migration pane, review the assessment results, and choose Azure SQL Database as your target. The portal takes it from there. Learn more: SQL Server migration in Azure Arc What is Azure Database Migration Service Create a Self-hosted Integration Runtime Step-by-step guidance for the new target We want your feedback For product feedback, feature requests, or migration pain points you'd like the team to track and act on, please share them through aka.ms/sqlfeedback under the Migration & Modernization category.
DNS connections
In 2021, I bought a domain and connected it to a Microsoft 365 account at the time. Over the years, I did not renew the domain and the 365 membership. Luckily last month, the domain was still available so I bought it back. Now, I can’t connect it to my new 365 account because it is still connected with the old one. I don’t have the username so I’m stuck at the moment
IMAP Migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365
Hello Team, Greetings!! We have recently been experiencing significant delays during IMAP migrations from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 and would like to understand if there are any known issues or recent changes affecting IMAP migration performance. We are aware that Microsoft provides the native Google Workspace migration method, which would generally be preferable. However, in our migration scenarios, we have split routing/coexistence configured, with the domain configured as Internal Relay in Exchange Online. Because of this setup, we are currently unable to select/configure the required target delivery domain as expected during the native Google Workspace migration process. Could you please confirm: Whether there are any known issues, throttling, or performance degradation with IMAP migrations from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 recently? Whether the Internal Relay/split-routing configuration can affect the native Google Workspace migration process or the availability of the target delivery domain option? Is there any recommended configuration or workaround that would allow us to use the native Google Workspace migration while maintaining split routing? Any guidance or recommended approach would be highly appreciated.Large Dataverse Database Migration
Hello folks, Hoping someone has come across this challenge before - customer has a 1.5Tb+ prod database that needs to be reduced drastically. Is there a Support request route we can raise to create a DB copy into the customers Azure SQL? this would be the quickest route to get a copy before running bulk deletions. Long Term Retention wont be enough in this case either. Any thoughts welcome. TIA
Migration Manager for Dropbox to Sharepoint
Hello, we've just migrated some dropbox folders and files across and noticed that the dates modified are wrong and aren't correctly showing within sharepoint or file explorer (via sync). Has anyone experienced similar issues with migration manager? Client is requesting for us to have this resolved and to ensure that the date modified shows the correct dates as shown in dropbox. Thank you
Support Live Session Migration for Windows 11 Enterprise Multi-Session AVD Hosts
Description Azure Virtual Desktop administrators regularly encounter maintenance scenarios where a Windows 11 Enterprise Multi-Session session host must be removed from service to apply urgent patches, investigate platform issues, replace a host, or perform emergency maintenance. The current approach requires placing the session host into drain mode and waiting for active user sessions to disconnect or forcing user logoff, which can disrupt productivity and user experience. It would be valuable if Azure Virtual Desktop supported live migration of active user sessions between Windows 11 Enterprise Multi-Session hosts within the same host pool, similar to the way virtual machine live migration minimises downtime during infrastructure maintenance. This capability would allow administrators to move active sessions from one session host to another without requiring user disconnection or application interruption. This feature would provide significant operational benefits, including: Reduced user disruption during planned and emergency maintenance. Faster remediation of unhealthy or degraded session hosts. Improved patching and update operations. Reduced dependency on large maintenance windows. Improved service availability for business-critical AVD environments. Better support for future hot patching and rolling maintenance scenarios. While Windows 11 Enterprise Multi-Session differs significantly from Windows Server and traditional VM live migration technologies, the ability to seamlessly relocate active user sessions between healthy hosts in a host pool would be a major enhancement for enterprise Azure Virtual Desktop deployments operating at scale.
How much of your Microsoft 365 environment can you actually see at once?
Not how many users you have. Not how many sites, teams, apps or flows you have. How much of it can you actually see connected together? I've been working across Microsoft 365 environments for a while, and I kept running into the same thing. There is no shortage of information. If anything, there is probably too much of it. Users, groups, permissions, SharePoint, Teams, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Dataverse, OneDrive, Exchange, Intune, licensing, configuration... It's all there. But when you're actually trying to understand how everything fits together, it can be a different story. You open one blade. Find something. Open another. Cross-check it. Go back. Open something else. Before long, you're jumping between different parts of the tenant trying to build the bigger picture in your head. And if you're working with larger environments, that gets difficult pretty quickly. The information isn't necessarily missing. The relationships between the information are what can be difficult to see. That got me thinking about a slightly different question: Instead of "where do I find this information?" "Show me what's connected to this." That's where VisibleState started. Start anywhere. Follow the connections. Imagine starting with a single user. Instead of seeing that user simply as a record with a list of properties, imagine being able to explore the relationships around them: User → Groups → SharePoint → Teams → Power Apps → Power Automate → Power BI → Dataverse → OneDrive → Exchange → Intune Then the questions become different: What does this user have access to? Is that access direct or coming through a group? What resources are connected to them? What depends on something they're associated with? Which licenses are involved? Are there relationships that look unusual? If something changes, what else might be affected? Those questions aren't necessarily about finding another piece of information. They're about putting information that already exists into context. A report can tell you that something exists. A connected view helps you understand what it is connected to. Illustrative example below — not a real customer environment. I'm not suggesting Microsoft 365 doesn't already give us this information Quite the opposite. Microsoft 365 already gives administrators an incredible amount of information and tooling. The thing I've been thinking about is what happens when you want to look across those boundaries. Sometimes I don't want another export. I don't want another list. I don't necessarily want another dashboard. I want to start with something I'm looking at and ask: "What's connected to this?" And then keep following the trail. That's the idea I'm exploring with VisibleState. The interesting part is what happens when you change the viewpoint The same relationships can be useful for completely different reasons. For example: Administrators may want to understand access, permissions and dependencies. Security and governance teams may want to find unusual relationships or exceptions. Compliance teams may need to understand who can access something and why. People managing multiple environments may want a consistent way to understand what's there without rebuilding the picture manually every time. Leadership may not need to see the graph at all. They may simply want to know what's important, what's exposed and what could be affected. It's still the same underlying environment. You're just looking at it from a different angle. And that's where I think things get interesting. Where I'm at with it VisibleState started as something I was building to make my own work easier. I was spending a lot of time investigating environments, tracing access and putting information together for reports. The individual tasks weren't necessarily difficult. It was the jumping between different places and reconstructing the bigger picture that took the time. So I started building something that would let me approach the environment through the relationships instead. It's grown quite a bit from where it started, and I'm continuing to build it. I'm not posting this as a product launch, and I'm not looking for people to sign up. I'm genuinely interested in whether the problem I'm seeing is familiar to other people working with Microsoft 365. So I'm curious... If you could start with any object in your Microsoft 365 environment and immediately see what it's connected to, where would you start? Would it be: Users and access Groups and permissions SharePoint and Teams Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI and Dataverse Licensing and resources Governance and unusual relationships Something completely different Maybe you've already got a good way of doing this. Maybe you still find yourself jumping between different services and piecing things together manually. Or maybe I'm looking at the problem from the wrong direction. What's the one relationship in your Microsoft 365 environment that you wish you could see instantly?
Has anyone migrated from one Google Workspace to another after a company merger?
Hi all, Our company recently went through a merger and we now have two separate Google Workspace accounts that need to be consolidated into one. I need to move everything across, emails, contacts, calendars and tasks, for all users without anything getting lost in the process. Honestly not sure where to begin. Google's native tools seem limited for something like this and I don't want to start without a solid plan. Has anyone gone through a similar consolidation? How did you handle it and is there anything you wish you had known before starting?
