>> Migrating your databases to
Azure can be really difficult and complex.
In this episode, learn how
the database migration guides are new and
improved and are helping you migrate every step of the way.
This week on Data Exposed.
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>> Hi, I'm Anna Hoffman and
welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today, I'm joined by Mohamed Kabiruddin.
Welcome, Mohamed, how are you doing today?
>> Thanks, Anna. I'm doing very well. How are you doing?
>> I'm doing great.
We're happy to have you here.
Before we get started,
can you just tell us a little bit about what you do?
>> Sure. My name is Mohamed Kabiruddin.
I'm a Senior Program Manager in the Azure SQL team.
I work on database migration tools to help
our customers migrate databases to Azure,
but I also contribute a lot to the database migration content,
which is what we can talk about today.
>> Awesome. Cool. Well, it seems like we
have the right person on the show.
Today, we're going to be talking about some migration guides.
But before we get into the guides,
I'd love to hear your take because
it seems like you probably work on
migration topics, some of the customers,
a lot on how migrations go,
how should customers think about them,
and why does that lead into these guides and how does that help?
>> Yeah. We get a lot of questions from
customers on database migrations in particular,
specifically because database migrations can often
be a complex piece of exercise.
It has multiple steps.
Just to show you what steps are involved,
I'm going to quickly share my screen to show
the various steps that are involved in database migration.
As you can see, it's not
a simple process of just taking your databases,
moving into Azure and off you go,
but there's a definite framework and process around it from
discovering your assets to assisting
whether those databases are ready for migration,
and then dealing with migration tools,
making sure you achieve the right level of performance,
meeting your business objectives in data migration.
Finally, cutting over to the target platform in Azure
and then optimizing beyond your migration phase.
Again, as you can see,
it's a multi-step process and there's a lot of content,
there's a lot of information that we've
provided to our customers over
the years on how to do database migration successfully in Azure.
We wanted to bring that together to give customers
a single place or a hub
where they can access all that content from.
>> Awesome. That's very exciting.
I know, like you said, these things are complicated.
We thought to see a tour from you,
who it seems like you're one of the creators on
how these migration guides actually work.
>> Sure. Let me switch back to my screen again,
and I'm going to show you the brand new database migration's hub.
Basically, what you see on the screen here is the new
Azure Database Migration guides
that we've just announced and launched,
where you bring all the content as I mentioned
together at one single page where you can access
various documentation content that
we already have and we've published
some new content to make
your database migrations as
seamless as possible with all this content.
Firstly, if you look at this page,
you've got a whole bunch of menu items,
which we'll come to in a bit,
but the idea behind this page was to bring
together all your scenarios from
your source databases to target Azure databases.
You can see in each of these titles here,
you've got SQL Server as a source and
all the potential targets that you can migrate to Azure,
Oracle, DB2, Access, MySQL, SAP, Open-source, NoSQL.
Again, recovering the whole breadth of database platforms
that are out there and how you can
bring these to Azure Database Services.
We will continue to expand on these
as we build out more scenarios,
more tools, more products in the road-map,
but the idea here is for you to pick
a particular scenario based
on your requirements and dive into each of those.
As an example, if you have a scenario where you want to
migrate from SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance,
you would click on that particular link
and what you'll see is a detailed guide that
talks about the whole migration overview and
process behind migrating a SQL Server to managed instance.
In this particular page, you can see here,
we talk about the various sources
that we support for managed instance,
what are the considerations you need to have before
you start deciding to migrate to managed instance,
how would you choose the right managed instance,
[inaudible] , what are
the alternatives you have if
managed instance is not a suitable option?
The main purpose of this guide is to give you guidance
on tools and recommendations on how to migrate databases.
You will see a list of tools that
currently support migrations to managed instance,
both from recommendations point of view,
but also any alternative tools that we have,
and SQL native capabilities
that you could leverage to do the migrations.
Again, each of these are detailed documentation on their own.
The idea behind this guide is to give you
that overview page where
you can look at all these tools, and again,
keep drilling down into each of
those corresponding tools and links.
Once you've seen the tools,
we also talk about
various concentrations and when to use different services.
Again, each of these services have their own strengths,
so make sure you leverage
the right tool of your choice based on your requirements.
Again, if you click on each of those,
you'll be taken to detailed guides and docks that are on those.
Once you've looked through the tools,
we also talk about one important aspect
of any other considerations for SQL Server,
SQL managed instance migrations, for example.
If you have business intelligence components
and SQL Server like SSIS,
SSRS, and analysis services,
how would you go about migrating those two managed instance?
We talk a little bit about that in these guides as well.
Lastly, if you scroll down to the bottom of these pages,
we have published a whole bunch of utilities and assets that,
we as an engineering team
along with partnership with data ninja team
that's funded by engineering to go help
customers day in and day out to do migrations, have published.
These artifacts that are built by
engineering teams and data ninja teams in Microsoft,
and our customers leverage these
as they have specific needs and scenarios from migration.
Again, a great source
for information beyond just using migration tools.
>> Wow, this is really cool, Mohamed,
because what you, basically, you just said is like from this guide,
you pick your source, you pick your target,
and then you're getting a custom guide built from the experts;
from the engineering teams,
from the data ninja team along with all these different tools.
It seems like really useful thing for customers.
If a customer wanted to see
other customers who've been through this process,
is that something they can use this for as well?
>> Sure. If you flip back to the data migration guides hub,
and if you scroll down to the bottom of this page,
you'll see a whole bunch of customer
case studies that we published.
That we've carefully curated based on
the source and targets scenarios,
various regions in the world.
We've curated these so that you get
a relevant information on each of these customer scenarios.
For example, if you look at Willis Towers Watson in the UK,
they migrated their databases on from On-Premises to Azure SQL.
If I show you a snippet of what that customer study looks like,
you'd be looking at what Willis Towers Watson
went through as a migration process,
their reasoning behind migration,
how did they make it a successful process,
what benefits they got out of this migration and so on.
Again, this is a great place to learn from
other similar customers in your industry or in your region,
where you can go and leverage this content to learn more
from those already successful scenarios.
>> That's really awesome, Mohamed.
Thanks for sharing that with us.
We've got these guides,
which seems like you-all and the team have recently revamped,
and made them customizable, and easier to use.
Then we have these customer stories where
customers can go learn about people in similar situations,
or industries, or migration place.
Now, what about if a customer is
going through this and they have feedback?
>> Sure. One of the biggest advantages of having all these in
Microsoft Docs is that you have the ability as
a customer or partner to go and provide feedback.
If you scroll down to each of
these guides at the bottom of the page,
you'll have links to provide feedback
both for the product and for the content.
If you have any specific feedback on the content we published,
if you have come across a new scenario that
you would want Microsoft to incorporate into
this content or if you
want to share your learnings with other customers,
I would recommend you go and click on this link to provide
feedback where you'd be taken to a GitHub repo.
You can go and edit the text that you want,
add your content, give it a title, and submit a pull request.
The pull request will essentially come to the owner of the page,
we will have a look at it, validate it, and accept it.
Once that's accepted, it becomes live on the page.
It's very easy to provide feedback on the content,
but also on the product itself where you
can go back to that page and click
the other button down at the bottom
that provide feedback on that particular page.
This particular link here will take you right to Azure feedback,
where you can provide any feedback on features,
capabilities of products and services that we offer.
>> Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks, Mohamed.
This has been a really useful informative video. I learned a lot.
I now know where I need to go to learn more.
As we close out, do you have any advice to viewers
when they start to think about migration
and these guides that you-all have created?
>> I just showed you how you could
leverage one of our detailed guides to
migrate from SQL Server to Azure SQL managed instance,
but we also have a guidance and content that we
published for all other database platforms, including open source.
As an example, if you have a scenario where you
want to migrate MySQL to Azure database from MySQL,
you could click on this link where you will be taken to
the detailed guide on migrating from MySQL
On-Premises to Azure database from MySQL using MySQL workbench.
Again, very similar style to
other guides where you'll see all the prerequisites
and the considerations to migrate to MySQL databases.
We also have screenshots with specific guidance.
We have techniques and tools for different scenarios.
Basically, gives you that whole end-to-end migration journey
that you could leverage with MySQL workbench for MySQL.
Just as an example,
we also have other guides
for MongoDB to Cosmos DB, Oracle to Postgres.
These are some of the common scenarios that we see the customers.
Again, we'll be adding more content as we go,
as we build out more database platforms and more tools.
>> Great. Thanks, Mohamed for
that awesome insight and this wonderful video.
For our viewers, if you liked this video,
you have any feedback,
be sure to leave a comment and like this video,
go add some feedback in GitHub on the data migration guides.
Mohamed, thanks again for coming on the show with
us today and for all of you watching Data Exposed,
we hope to see you next time.
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