Azure Readiness Assessment Process and Benefits

The Azure Readiness Assessment Process is a crucial step in determining whether your organization is ready to migrate to Azure. It helps identify potential obstacles and areas for improvement.

The assessment process typically involves a series of questions and exercises to evaluate your organization's current infrastructure, applications, and processes. This helps to identify potential roadblocks and areas for improvement.

A well-planned assessment can save you time and resources in the long run by highlighting potential issues before they become major problems.

An assessment with the Discovery and assessment tool measures the readiness and estimates the effect of migrating on-premises servers to Azure.

This assessment helps you understand what's involved in migrating your servers to Azure.

To prepare for an assessment, you need to create an Azure Migrate project and add the Discovery and assessment tool to it. This is a crucial step before you can proceed with setting up an Azure Migrate appliance.

Make sure you've created an Azure Migrate project and have the Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool added. You can't start an assessment without this in place.

You'll also need to set up an Azure Migrate appliance, which discovers on-premises servers and sends metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate. This appliance is the key to gathering the information you need for your assessment.

Let's take a closer look at the types of assessments available. There are several options to choose from, each designed to help you migrate your on-premises servers to the cloud.

Azure VM assessments are used to migrate your on-premises servers to Azure virtual machines. You can assess your on-premises servers in VMware and Hyper-V environments, as well as physical servers, for migration to Azure VMs.

Azure SQL assessments are used to migrate your on-premises SQL servers from your VMware environment to Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Azure App Service assessments are used to migrate on-premises web apps from your VMware environment to Azure App Service.

Azure VMware Solution (AVS) assessments are used to migrate your on-premises servers to Azure VMware Solution (AVS). You can assess your on-premises VMware VMs for migration to Azure VMware Solution (AVS) using this assessment type.

The Discovery and assessment tool will show the correct count for each assessment type if you click on the total number of assessments to navigate to all the assessments and recalculate the Azure VM or AVS assessments.

Here are the details of the two sizing criteria options available for Azure VM assessments:

You need to create an Azure Migrate project and have the Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment tool added to get started.

To create an assessment, you'll need to set up an Azure Migrate appliance, which is a crucial step in the process.

An Azure Migrate appliance discovers on-premises servers and sends metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate.

The same appliance also discovers ASP.NET/Java web apps running in your environment.

To ensure a smooth process, make sure you've completed these prerequisites before moving forward.

To run an assessment, you can use a lightweight Azure Migrate appliance to collect server metadata. This appliance discovers on-premises servers and sends metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate.

You can also assess servers by importing server metadata in a CSV format. This is a convenient option when you already have the necessary data.

To assess with the appliance, you need to set up Azure and your on-premises environment to work with Azure Migrate. This involves creating an Azure project and adding the Discovery and assessment tool to it.

Once you've set up the environment, you can deploy a lightweight Azure Migrate appliance. This appliance will continuously discover on-premises servers and send server metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate.

After deploying the appliance, you can gather servers you want to assess into a group and run an assessment for the group with assessment type Azure VM.

To run an assessment, follow these steps:

The assessment properties for Azure App Service include:

Data Collection is a crucial step in the Azure readiness assessment process. You can collect data in two ways: by using a CSV file or by deploying an Azure Migrate appliance.

If you choose to use a CSV file, you'll need to download a template, add server data to it, and then import it into Azure Migrate. This will allow you to discover servers added with the import and run an assessment for the group with assessment type Azure VM.

The appliance, on the other hand, collects metadata and performance data for VMware and Hyper-V servers. This data is then sent to Azure Migrate for assessment.

Here are the key steps to collect data with the appliance:

The appliance doesn't require anything to be installed on the servers you want to assess, making it a convenient option.

If you're using the Azure Migrate appliance for assessment, the appliance collects metadata and performance data for VMware and Hyper-V. The appliance discovers on-premises servers and sends server metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate.

The appliance collects metadata such as server configuration, operating system, and software installed. Performance data includes CPU and RAM utilization, disk IOPS, and throughput.

Here's a breakdown of the data collected by the appliance:

The appliance continuously discovers on-premises servers and sends server metadata and performance data to Azure Migrate. This data is used to calculate assessments, including Azure readiness, sizing recommendations, and monthly costs.

Azure VM Assessment reviews VM properties and guest operating system to determine Azure readiness. The assessment uses the operating system specified for the VM in vCenter Server for VMware VMs.

For Windows Server operating systems, Azure provides full support for versions 2016 and later, making them ready for Azure. Windows Server 2012 R2 and earlier versions are also fully supported.

Some older Windows Server versions, like Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2, have passed their end-of-support dates and require a Custom Support Agreement for Azure support. Other unsupported Windows versions, such as Windows 2000 and Windows 98, might start in Azure but receive no OS support.

For Linux operating systems, Azure endorses certain versions, making them ready for Azure. Other Linux versions might start in Azure but are recommended to be upgraded to an endorsed version.

Azure Migrate can't identify the OS when it's specified as "Other" in vCenter Server. Similarly, 32-bit operating systems might start in Azure but may not receive full support, making them conditionally ready for Azure.