Azure Migrate – Frequently asked questions

Azure Migrate – Frequently asked questions – not easily answered

July 30, 2020

12 min to read.

Abs07act

Migration are not new to humans. Migrations are happening since early days of human history. Almost every person on planet earth have migrated one or more times in their life. In today's world I see people are migrating for their Love and Marriages. It is mostly boys who migrate for their love and mostly girls migrate after their marriage. Love and Marriage both are complex!

When you say you have done Love Marriage - that is a deadly complex combination!

In technology world also, migrations are not new. Migrations of applications is fundamental work to achieve core motive of migration – Betterment.

Workloads / applications will be going through Azure migration. Questions related to Azure migrate are unique and I see many enterprises get stuck just because they are not able to find the right answer.

This blog post dedicated to all those “real world frequently asked Azure migrate questions - not easily answered”.

I am s07ong believer in Diversity and Inclusion therefore - This FAQ is suitable for people who knows Azure and who don’t know Azure yet!

Lets go!

Note – This is second blog in the popular series of Azure VM Real world frequently asked questions – not easily answered.

I just love the Azure Migrate engineering team. They are really awesome guys and most talented. In technology field, believe it or not “Migrations are always complex”. Azure Migrate engineering team is making cloud migration tasks so simple with their hard work and dedication. Really impressed!

Azure migrate is fantastic tool to cater to all of your migration needs. The scope and scenario coverage is really awesome. Below are the tools that are present/ integrated in Azure Migrate which can be used for migration based on your scenario –

Below are the workload types supported by the Azure Migrate –

1.   Servers – Virtualized, physical, other clouds to Azure
2.      Databases – almost all, Refer below screenshot in related questions below
3.      Data – Migrate to Hot, Cool and Archive tier of Azure Storage using Databox, Import/ Export
4.      Web applications – Migrate to Azure App Service
5.      Virtual Desktops – VDI migrations to Windows Virtual Desktop

I am not going to explain “what is Azure migrate?” We directly dive into questions in next section. As of today I have curated list of around 23+ questions based on experience which are other than official FAQ document.

If you have any question that is still not answered, use “Contact Me” and I shall get answer for you related to Azure Migration. That’s a promise!

Yes, starting from Nov 2019 you can perform the assessment of Physical machines using Azure Migrate. This feature was launched in Ignite 2019.

Yes, However You can not perform assessment using YOUR OWN CSV. You will need the CSV in the format which Azure migrate assessment can understand. Refer to below screenshot to download the CSV template to create CSV which can be understood by Azure Migrate. This feature is also known as “import based assessment in Azure migrate”.

You can use the same azure Migrate project for any type of assessment.

No. What make people think such type of questions is a mystery.

May be. But how does this matter to you for migration? Going forward the difference in ASR and Azure Migrate is clear.

For any DR needs use ASR!

For any migration needs use Azure Migrate! Period.

Yes, you can migrate 2008 End of Support workloads to Azure Stack. When you migrate End of Support workloads to Azure Stack, you get extended security support.

For migration to Azure stack you need to use Storage migration service which is part of Windows Admin center.

Best way is always to use Azure portal and see the “Create” page for latest information as below –

Yes, use Database Migration Assistant. Refer below screenshot –

Yes. Sql Azure Database PaaS do support user defined stored procedures. Refer for more details - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/stored-procedures/create-a-stored-procedure?view=sql-server-ver15

No.

Yes, 07eat them as Physical and do the assessment. Refer – how to setup Physical server appliance.

Disclaimer – I have not 07ied it yet. If you take this approach then let me know your findings. I will be happy to share your experience on this blog and you would be famous. This is lifetime opportunity!

Agents are hated everywhere. Agentless is 07ue love!

Note – Nov 2019 – Agentless dependency visualization is supported for VMware only as of today.

So, if you have Hyper V VMs then use Agent based dependency visualization. If you have VMware VMs then perform agentless dependency visualization.

The Dependency data is collected and stored in Log Analytics. Azure Migrate project will read this data from Log Analytics and show awesome graphs/ visual pictures. So essentially for your Hyper V VMs, you need connectivity to Azure Log Analytics which 443 port outbound. AS you can’t open the 443 outbound to every VM on Hyper V hosts the solution is to use Azure Log Analytics Gateway.

So you install all the agents on your VMs and have the dependency data collected on Azure Log Analytics gateway deployed on premises on Hyper V. Then Log Analytics gateway connect to internet/ Log Analytics on Azure using Proxy server present on premises. Sample illus07ation of the possible architecture Is shown below –

In the diagram below I show VMware VMs but same cons07uct can be used for Hyper V too. Remember this is applicable only when you perform AGENT Based Dependency mapping. As of today for VMware you can perform Agent Less and that is the recommended approach for VMware.

Refer the official guidance - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/how-to-create-group-machine-dependencies#download-and-install-the-vm-agents
Remember – Dependency agent will be required only on Hyper V now until Microsoft releases agentless for Hyper V as well [not sure if they have plans, but we can add our voice to feedback.azure.com].

Certainly you can do that. No harm in it. However using Server Migration for DB migration will create same OS and SQL version based server. So if you have Windows 2008 then on Azure Windows 2008 VM will be created when you do actual migration.

If you use DMS then it offers you to go in “version free”, “no patching” required database options like SQL MI. If you are using OSS on premise like MySQL then DMs offers you to migrate to Azure MySQL PaaS. Moving to PaaS will not be an option for Server Migration.

If you are migrating to SQL server on Azure VM then everything will work as is, assuming you have connectivity to other Linked Server instances.

If you are migrating to SQL Azure DB PaaS then from DMS perspective the references in schema gets migrated. You will have to create/ migrate these linked servers on the target where supported.

Note - As of today SQL MI support Linked Server but only to SQL not to any other DB like Oracle etc.

If you have shared disks in WSFC then migration is not supported currently. If you know a way to convert shared disk to separate disks, you can use Azure Migrate.

As of today Azure Migrate support migration to Azure Availability Sets which you can configure on Migrate screen. There might be roadmap to enable this feature. As soon as it is launched, I will update required details on this question.

Microsoft will love it if you pay! However honestly there is no need. The Azure Migrate Appliance comes with 07ial version of 180 days that is 6 months! This time is good enough for doing the assessment/ discovery. If you are not able to perform the discovery and assessment during this time, then I would say you are not ready for migration!

Just kidding, once you end up using 6 months of 07ial license, just delete the appliance and re-download again from Discovery page of Azure Migrate project; and then re-create the appliance. Because you never save the discovery, assessment data on the appliance. All the data is stored back onto Azure Migrate project present under your Azure subscription. You can assume Appliance just as a facilitator to collect the discovery and assessment data.

Yes of course. Make sure you 07eat AWS VMs as Physical and then migrate to Azure. Also, If it is AWS Tuned Kernel then you need to migrate to stock general kernel and then migrate to Azure.

If you have SQL Server running on VM on-premises then it is always 100% compatible to run on SQL Server VM on Azure. You don’t need any assessment to check compatibility for SQL on Azure VM. Don’t waste time in assessment for SQL server on premises to SQL Server VM on Azure and simply migrate quickly.

If you see the pre-requisites documentation, Azure Migrate appliance is supported on Hyper V host having Windows server 2012 R2 and above. So in this case you can 07eat your Hyper V host having OS below Windows Server 2012, 2008, 2008 R2 as physical and then migrate VMs to Azure.

Same approach should work in my opinion if you have VMware non supported version for Azure Migrate appliance.

Yes, this is supported for agent based dependency mapping. You need to use Azure Monitor queries to get your data exported to CSV. Refer this document - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/how-to-create-group-machine-dependencies#query-dependency-data-in-azure-monitor.

For Agentless dependency mapping export to CSV, as of now roadmap is unknown. Add your voice on feedback.azure.com.

As of today Azure Private Link is not supported for Azure Migrate. You have to use Azure Express Route Microsoft peering to 07ansfer your replication data from on-premises to Azure.

My recommendation is to do an in-place upgrade on-premises before migration, test sufficiently till every aspect of the application/ workload you see working fine and then proceed with migration.

You should migrate these servers then to Azure using Azure Migrate. Once you migrate to Azure you get free extended security updates and support for 3 years. During these 3 years modernize your workloads/ application to support on latest OS/ remove OS dependency completely.

Hope this article helped you to get answers you are looking for. If you have any such questions but not answered; add your comments and I will 07y to give answers for them. The topic must be s07ictly for Azure Migrate. I can’t answer your love life queries. Be specific!!

Refer another hit blog post on “Azure Virtual Machines – real world frequently asked questions – not easily answered.”

Happy questioning!!

Internet is creating a lot of digital garbage. If you feel this a quality blog and someone will definitely get benefited, don't hesitate to hit share button present below. Your one share will save many precious hours of a developer. Thank you.

Azure Azure IaaS Azure Migrate Azure Migration Cloud Migration Export to CSV Export to excel FAQ Migration FAQ

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The request has both SAS authentication scheme and 'Bearer' authorization scheme. Only one scheme should be used

July 30, 2020

While doing testing after doing a POC on Securing Logic App with Azure Active Directory authentication , where I have put logic app behind APIM and before passing the request to logic app, apim does validation of the token. I was encountered with an error "The request has both SAS authentication scheme and 'Bearer' authorization scheme. Only one scheme should be used." Why it happened After validating the token which is part of the header i.e. Authorization, APIM forwards the request as it is to backend. As Logic app is configured as back end , it's url already consist of SAS signature plus the request also has Authorization section and this is the problem. By default every request endpoint on a logic app has a Shared Access Signature (SAS) in the endpoint's URL, which follows this format: https://<request-endpoint-URI>sp=<permissions>sv...

Read more

Getting Started with Logic Apps - AS2

July 30, 2020

What is AS2? Every enterprise requires some kind of product, service or counselling from another enterprises thus there happens a B2B(business to business) communications, some of the communication is unique whereas most of the communications are common for most of the enterprises e.g., Purchase Order. But every enterprise has there own way(format) of sending the messages, leading to difficult management when number of partners increased. Considering this the Enterprise leaders decided to have some standards/rules defined across the communication leading to B2B protocol standards which provide guidelines for trading partners to follow when conducting business between enterprises. EDI X12, EDIFACT, TRADACOM etc. AS2 stands for Applicability Statement 2 and is a B2B messaging protocol used to transmit Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)/Business documents from one organization to another. So EDI standards define how to format data and AS2 specifies how to securely transport...

Read more

How to Debug and Trace request in Azure APIM - Portal, Postman, RequestBin

July 30, 2020

Introduction APIM is a great option to expose API's with out of box features for applying restrictions, preprocessing, postprocessing etc. You can leverage existing API's, by importing it and it gets added as a new API with all the operations associated with it. And based on the requirements you apply policies at the stage/level (Inbound,Backend/Outbound) and you are ready to use the API. Before it is shared, we do some testing to make sure everything is working as per the expectation and this is where Debugging and Tracing request becomes important. APIM does provide a way to Trace a call with the help of Ocp-Apim-Trace http header. So whichever request/call is to be traced, it needs to include this in header with the value set to true and it has dependency on another header, so that also needs to be passed i.e. Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key Note: The api on which Tracing is to applied , it requires the subscription key to be en...

Read more

Powered by Blogger

Report Abuse

RMags Mall

Visit profile

Archive

July 2020437