Exploring the 5 Azure Migration Offerings

If you’re planning a move to Microsoft Azure, or looking to optimize your existing cloud setup, Azure’s migration tools —Azure Migrate, Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Data Box, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure App Service Migration Assistant— are definitely worth a closer look.

Each serves a specific purpose, from shifting on-premises workloads to streamlining cloud-to-cloud transitions. In this article, we’ll overview these tools and then zoom in some more on Azure Migrate.

The 5 Azure Migration Offerings at a Glance

1. Azure Migrate
   Azure Migrate is the central location for discovering, assessing, and migrating workloads to Azure. It handles traditional servers, applications, and data, offering agentless discovery and integrations with Microsoft and third-party tools. It’s built to simplify the migration process from end to end.
2. Azure Database Migration Service (DMS)
   Focused on databases, DMS streamlines moving on-premises systems like SQL Server, MySQL, or PostgreSQL to Azure’s managed database services (e.g., Azure SQL Database). It supports offline and online migrations, keeping downtime low and data consistent.
3. Azure Data Box
   For large datasets or limited bandwidth, Azure Data Box offers a physical transfer option. Load your data onto this secure device, ship it to an Azure data center, and it’s uploaded to the cloud. It’s ideal for bulk uploads or archiving.
4. Azure Site Recovery (ASR)
   ASR combines disaster recovery with migration capabilities, replicating (VMware and Hyper-V) VMs and physical servers to Azure. It also supports moves between Azure regions or from other clouds like AWS and GCP), ensuring continuity during transitions.
5. Azure App Service Migration Assistant
   Tailored for web applications, this tool automates migrating .NET and Java apps to Azure App Service. It assesses compatibility, flags issues, and executes the move, making web workload modernization straightforward.

These offerings cover a broad range of needs—servers, databases, large-scale data, disaster recovery, and web apps. Azure Migrate, though, stands out as the most versatile, so let’s take a closer look.

Azure Migrate: Your Migration Powerhouse

Azure Migrate isn’t only a tool, it’s a full platform for managing the migration lifecycle: discovery, assessment, and execution. It’s packed with features that make it essential for on-premises-to-cloud moves and laying the groundwork for broader Azure optimizations.

Core Capabilities of Azure Migrate

• Discovery and Assessment: Using agentless or agent-based methods, it inventories on-premises setups—VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers—and analyzes dependencies. It provides cost estimates and Azure resource recommendations based on your workloads.
• Integrated Tools: It ties into ASR for VM replication, DMS for databases, and third-party solutions like Carbonite, all manageable from a single interface.
• Dependency Mapping: Visualize how applications interconnect, ensuring nothing critical is missed during migration.
• Flexible Targets: Beyond on-premises, it supports migrations to Azure Stack, Azure VMware Solution, or between Azure regions.

Advanced Use Cases: Subscriptions, Tenants, and Beyond

While Azure Migrate excels at bringing on-premises workloads into Azure, optimizing your cloud setup, such as migrations between subscriptions, tenants, or shifting billing models, relies on different tools and strategies. Azure Migrate doesn’t directly handle these scenarios, but its discovery and assessment capabilities can still inform your planning. Here’s how these advanced use cases work and where Azure Migrate fits in:

• Migrating Between Subscriptions
  Azure subscriptions manage resources for billing and access control. To move VMs, storage, or other assets between subscriptions within the same tenant, you can use Azure Resource Mover. Resource Mover simplifies shifting resources while preserving configurations. Azure Migrate can still play a supporting role however by assessing your existing setup beforehand, ensuring you understand dependencies and resource needs before the move. This is useful for aligning resources with budgets or team structures.
• Migrating Between Tenants
  For mergers, acquisitions, or environment isolation, tenant-to-tenant migrations are key. Each tenant is tied to a Microsoft Entra ID directory, and moving resources across tenants involves reassigning subscriptions and recreating resources in the new tenant. Azure Migrate doesn’t perform this—it’s not built for tenant transfers—but its workload assessments can guide the process by identifying what needs to be recreated. Using one tenant per workload type (e.g., production, test, acceptance) enhances clarity and isolates credentials via separate Entra ID directories, improving security.
• Building Or Revamping Deployment Pipelines
  Redefining deployment strategies during migration often involves CI/CD tools like Github (Actions) or Azure DevOps. While Azure Migrate doesn’t integrate directly with these pipelines, its dependency mapping and assessment data can inform your shift from manual processes to automated ones using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) like BICEP or Terraform templates. This is particularly valuable for test or dev environments requiring consistent redeployment.
• Transitioning from EA to CSP
  Switching from an Enterprise Agreement (EA) to a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) model optimizes costs or taps into partner expertise. This involves administrative billing changes and potentially moving resources to a new CSP subscription. Azure Migrate doesn’t orchestrate this—it’s focused on on-premises migrations—but it can assess your EA-hosted workloads to plan the transition. Tools like Azure Site Recovery (ASR) handle the actual resource migration with minimal downtime, while the billing shift is managed separately. However this is far from ideal. For EA to CSP migrations, we can help you with a seamless EA to CSP migration method, one that doesn’t require any downtime.

Optimization Benefits

These advanced scenarios deliver tangible improvements:

• Simplified Oversight: One tenant per environment (e.g., prod, test) keeps things organized and easy to track.
• Cost Efficiency: Subscription moves or an EA-to-CSP shift can align spending with usage, tapping into CSP discounts or Azure Reservations.
• Enhanced Security: Separate tenants isolate Entra ID directories, ensuring test credentials don’t overlap with production.

Things to Watch

• Downtime: VM migrations are often low to medium impact, but tenant changes may require downtime for identity reconfiguration.
• Resource Limits: Some assets (e.g., Key Vault) are tenant-specific—Azure Migrate’s assessments catch these early.
• Automation Edge: Using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) greatly reduces manual effort, especially for larger migrations.

Takeaway

Azure’s migration lineup, Azure Migrate, DMS, Data Box, ASR, and the App Service Migration Assistant, offers a solid toolkit for getting to the cloud and staying agile once you’re there. Azure Migrate, in particular, is a standout for on-premises migrations, providing the insights and tools needed to plan broader optimizations. While it doesn’t directly handle subscription moves, tenant shifts, pipeline revamps, or EA-to-CSP transitions, its role in discovery and assessment lays the foundation for success.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the cloud. That’s why we meet you where you are. Contact us today to start your journey with DevOps Masterminds.