Migrate VM to Azure with Native Workload Support

Migrating a VM to Azure with native workload support is a straightforward process that can be completed in a few easy steps. You can use Azure Migrate to assess your on-premises environment and plan your migration.

One of the key benefits of using native workload support is that it allows you to move your workloads to Azure without having to re-architect them. This can save you a significant amount of time and resources.

To get started, you'll need to create a project in Azure Migrate and add your on-premises environment to it. This will allow you to assess your environment and identify any potential issues with your migration.

By using native workload support, you can ensure a smooth and efficient migration process that minimizes downtime and disruption to your business.

To prepare for migrating your VM to Azure, you'll need to set up the correct permissions and prepare your on-premises Hyper-V hosts and VMs. This involves creating a new migration project on the Azure portal and adding the necessary tools for assessment and migration.

First, you'll need to create a new Azure migration project, which requires entering details such as subscription, resource group, and project name. You'll also need to choose a region for deployment.

Next, you'll need to select the assessment tool, which can be the Microsoft tool or a third-party provider. For this example, we're using the Microsoft assessment tool.

To start assessing your Hyper-V VMs, you'll need to download the Azure Migrate appliance from the Azure portal. This involves clicking on "Discover" and selecting "yes" with Hyper-V, which will prompt you to download the VHD file.

Here are the key steps to prepare for migration:

By following these steps, you'll be well-prepared to start migrating your VM to Azure.

To migrate your VM to Azure, you'll need to execute the migration process, which involves several key steps. You can use VMware vMotion to migrate live virtual machines with minimal downtime and no disruption to end users.

One popular method for migrating large or complex VMs is to use VMware vMotion, which allows for a seamless transition. This technology is especially useful for migrating large VMs that would take a long time to copy or reconfigure.

To ensure a smooth migration process, it's essential to use a dedicated ExpressRoute circuit between your on-premises data center and the Azure region where your AVS cluster is located. This will provide high-bandwidth, low-latency migration.

Here are some benefits of leveraging proven technology during the migration process:

Deploying your Azure VMware Solution environment is a crucial step in the migration process. It's where you take your plan and turn it into a reality.

To begin deployment, you'll need to submit an AVS capacity request for the nodes required in the selected region. This is a necessary step to ensure you have the necessary resources to support your environment.

The next step is to deploy a landing zone to integrate the ExpressRoute connection when ready. This will provide a secure and reliable connection between your on-premises data center and the Azure region where your AVS cluster is located.

Check this out: On-premise to Azure Migration Step by Step

After that, you'll need to deploy the AVS resources. This is where the magic happens, and your environment starts to take shape.

Here are the steps to deploy your AVS environment in a concise format:

Finally, don't forget to test migration thoroughly. This is a critical step to ensure a smooth transition to your new environment.

In Phase 5: Post-Deployment, you can finally dismantle or reuse your on-premises VMware environment, depending on your plan.

After migration, monitoring and governance must be implemented and integrated into your overall IT management strategy, just like ensuring continuous availability of workloads.

To keep data secure, use the Azure Backup service for backing up Azure VMs and enhancing data resilience, crucial for maintaining data integrity.

This is a critical step in the migration process, ensuring a smooth transition to your new environment.

When migrating to Azure, it's essential to manage and monitor your workloads effectively. Adopting Azure's services provides new administration and monitoring tools that can help streamline your workflow.

Backing up Azure VMs is a crucial post-migration best practice to ensure business continuity in case of any unexpected issues. This can be done using Azure's built-in backup services.

Securing disks using Azure Disk Encryption is another important step to protect your data and meet compliance requirements.

When you migrate your workloads to Azure, you'll have access to new tools for administration and monitoring.

These tools can help you manage your workloads more efficiently and effectively.

Backing up your Azure VMs is a crucial post-migration best practice.

Securing your disks using Azure Disk Encryption is also a must, to protect your sensitive data.

Readers also liked: Azure Devops Migration Tools

Tracking the progress of your workload migration is crucial for a smooth transition. You can track job status in the portal notifications, which will keep you informed about the status of your migration.

To get a more detailed view, you can monitor replication status by clicking on the numerical value next to Azure VM in Migration and modernization.

Here are the key stages of replication you should be aware of:

When migrating to Azure, it's essential to prioritize security and management. Backing up Azure VMs is crucial to ensure business continuity and minimize data loss in case of a disaster.

Azure Disk Encryption is a must-use feature for securing disks, protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access. This feature provides an additional layer of security for your migrated workloads.

Intune and Defender for Endpoint can enhance Azure Virtual Desktop management, ensuring secure and efficient virtual desktops.

For another approach, see: How to Change Virtual Network/subnet in Azure Vm

Azure Migrate is the platform used by Microsoft Azure Migration Services to help organizations discover, assess, size, and migrate private and public cloud workloads to Azure.

The two main tools in Azure Migrate are Azure Migrate: Discovery and Assessment and Azure Migrate: Server Migration. Azure Migrate: Discovery and Assessment evaluates on-premises VMs running in VMware and Hyper-V environments and physical servers for migration readiness, sizing requirements, cost, and dependencies.

The discovery and assessment tool uses lightweight appliance software that runs on-premises to gather and send the required data to Azure. This appliance is agentless, meaning nothing gets installed on the discovered servers.

Azure Migrate appliances are available for VMware, Hyper-V, and physical/public cloud environments. The table below lists the supported Azure Migrate appliances and their characteristics:

Azure Migrate: Server Migration helps organizations with the actual migration of on-premises VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs, physical servers, and public cloud VMs to Azure. This tool uses a replication appliance to migrate agent-based VMware VMs, physical servers, and public cloud VMs to Azure.

Expand your knowledge: Azure Cloud Migration

Pricing can be a significant factor in choosing the right migration tool. Azure Migrate offers a free server migration for the first 180 days, but storage and data transfer charges will apply during that time.

Storage and data transfer charges can add up quickly, so it's essential to factor them into your budget. After 180 days, Azure Migrate costs $25/month per replicated server.

The Database Migration Service (DMS) also offers a free trial period of 180 days. This means you can test the service without incurring any costs.

DMS has two pricing tiers after the free trial period: standard and premium. The standard tier remains free for all customers, supporting offline migration and offering 1-, 2-, and 4-vCore options.

The premium tier, on the other hand, supports both offline and online migration and provides 4 vCores at a cost of $0.404/hour. This tier is ideal for customers who need more advanced migration capabilities.

Integrated partner tools, such as the ones offered by Azure, are priced based on vendor licensing agreements. If you want to use these tools, you can contact the vendors directly or purchase the required licenses through the Azure Marketplace.

You might like: Free Azure Vm

Adopting Azure's services provides new administration and monitoring tools, including backing up Azure VMs and securing disks using Azure Disk Encryption.

Azure Monitor enables convenient access to metrics and details of cloud assets, collecting, processing, and analyzing telemetry data to provide suggestions for resolving issues.

To effectively monitor your Azure assets, you should familiarize yourself with the following Azure Monitor tools:

Intune and Defender for Endpoint enhance Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) management, ensuring secure and efficient virtual desktops, and Trust AIS for expert integration support.

Business continuity with backup is crucial for any business. Switching to native Azure increases customer flexibility, allowing tailored uptimes and SLA requirements to be addressed.

Azure Backup keeps Azure VM data backed up in secure vaults to ensure against data loss. This means your data is safe even in the event of a disaster.

Customers can also continue using third-party tools from their on-premises solution, giving them more options for managing their data.

Discover more: Azure Vm Backups

Testing and validation are crucial steps in migrating your VM to Azure. You can test your migration without impacting your on-premises machines, which remain operational and continue replicating.

To run a test migration, you can click Test migrated servers under Azure Migrate: Server Migration in the Migration tools section. Alternatively, you can right-click the VM to test and select Test migrate.

You can use the test Azure VM to validate the migration, perform application testing, and address any issues before doing the full migration. This is a simulated migration that creates an Azure VM using replicated data.

A test migration does not impact the on-premises servers, as they remain operational and continue replicating to Azure. You can view and manage the test Azure VM like any other Azure virtual machine.

To do a test migration, follow these steps:

You can migrate Hyper-V VMs using Azure Migrate, which runs a lightweight Hyper-V VM appliance to assess and migrate the virtual machines.

To replicate Hyper-V VMs, you can select the virtual machines you want to replicate to Azure, choosing to apply them directly from the Azure Migrate assessment.

In the compute tab, you can change the VM size, OS disk, availability set, disks, and VM name, ensuring VMs conform with Azure requirements.

Azure Migrate will automatically provision other Azure resources for the migration, like a Service bus, gateway storage account, log storage account, and key vault.

You can replicate up to 10 machines together, and if you need to replicate more, replicate them simultaneously in batches of 10.

Here's a step-by-step guide to replicating Hyper-V VMs:

To ensure a smooth migration to Azure, it's essential to implement post-migration best practices. Keep data secure by backing up Azure VMs using the Azure Backup service.

To maintain continuous availability, replicate Azure VMs to a secondary region with Site Recovery. This will help prevent downtime and data loss in case of a disaster.

For increased resilience, consider deploying Microsoft Cost Management to monitor resource usage and spending. This will help you optimize your resource allocation and reduce costs.

Here's a summary of the key post-migration best practices:

Next, investigate the cloud migration journey in the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure to further optimize your migration process.

To ensure a smooth transition after migration, it's essential to follow best practices. Backing up Azure VMs using the Azure Backup service keeps data secure.

To maintain continuity, replicate Azure VMs to a secondary region with Site Recovery. This ensures workloads stay running and continuously available.

For increased resilience, consider deploying Azure VMs to a secondary region. This setup allows for automatic failover in case of an outage.

To monitor resource usage and spending, consider deploying Microsoft Cost Management. This tool helps keep track of costs and optimize resource allocation.

Here are some key best practices to keep in mind:

Now that you've completed the cloud migration process, it's time to take the next steps. Investigate the cloud migration journey in the Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure.

To ensure a smooth transition, consider reviewing your organization's cloud adoption strategy. Investigate the cloud migration journey in the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework.

By doing so, you'll be able to identify areas for improvement and optimize your cloud migration process.