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Microsoft Azure is an ever-expanding set of cloud services to help your organization meet your business challenges. It’s the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive, global network using your favorite tools and frameworks.Below article gives a quick summary of what needs to be done to proceed planning with your on-premise infrastructure moving to Azure cloud.
Microsoft recommends using the 3 step process which is Assess -> Migrate -> Optimize
Assess – Discovery
Using cloud migration assessment tools, compile an inventory of the physical and virtual servers in your environment. This data can include profile information and performance metrics about your applications. At the end of this step, you’ll have a complete inventory of servers with metadata for each, allowing you to build your cloud migration plan.
Assess – Map On-premise applications
Using information from your discovery, map your servers to represent your on-premises applications. This will help you identify dependencies or communication between servers so you can include all necessary application components in your cloud migration plan to help reduce risks and ensure a smooth migration. Group your servers logically to represent the applications, and then select the best migration strategy for each application based on its requirements and migration objectives.
Assess – Evaluate
With your application groups mapped, evaluate how best to move each on-premises application. The evaluation also gives you a snapshot of compatibility for each current application you want to run in Azure and the estimated cost to run it.
Cloud migration assessment tools can help you evaluate paths for migration. These tools provide insights, such as recommended Azure resources and migration strategies for your application servers.
Migrate
Migration to the Azure cloud can be handled through any of the 4 approaches. They are Re-host, Refactor, Re architect, Rebuild
Optimize
In this phase, use Azure security and management resources to govern, secure, and monitor your cloud applications in Azure
Migrating the existing servers to Azure Cloud
You can use the Azure Migrate tool that’s installed on your on-premises servers that performs an assessment on what can be migrated to Azure and if there will be any compatibility issues and how they can be resolved.
The following guide provides steps on how you can use Azure Migrate
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/migrate-overview
Using the Azure migration tool and do a P2V (Physical to Virtual) , V2V (Virtual to Virtual) migration to Azure
Create new VM as per the specs needed and migrate the data manually
Our recommendation is Option 2 for servers needing an upgrade of operating system
For other servers we can use P2V or V2V or create a new server and migrate data and application
How to connect from your Office to Azure Infrastructure?
From a security point of view, a Site to Site VPN is the best way to connect from your office to resources in Azure Cloud .
The following guide provides steps on how you can set this up: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-howto-site-to-site-resource-manager-portal
The recommended/tested VPN devices by Azure can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-about-vpn-devices
For staff working outside office like Home users, Sales staff etc we can establish a VPN connection using a VPN client to Azure server
Do I need AD server on premise?
Many people ask this question whether we need to have Active Directory in our office and also in Azure.
It is possible to have the AD created in Azure. But please note Azure AD is not meant as a replacement for on-premises Active Directory. It is a backup of your AD data and you can also use it to integrate with applications hosted on Azure, such as Single Sign On
For your reference, we have the following guide which should be useful in this case: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/connect/active-directory-aadconnect
Azure is Productive – Hybrid – Intelligent – Trusted
Productive – Azure Reduce time to market, by delivering features faster with over 100 end-to-end services.
Hybrid – Develop and deploy where you want, with the only consistent hybrid cloud on the market. Extend Azure on-premises with Azure Stack.
Intelligent – Create intelligent apps using powerful data and artificial intelligence services.
Trusted – Join startups, governments, and 90 percent of Fortune 500 businesses who run on the Microsoft Cloud today.
Are you looking for technical support ?
Please contact technology service team at Emerge to get support in migrating your infrastructure to the Azure Cloud
