>> Azure Migrate is your one-stop shop for migrating to Azure SQL.
Learn how in this episode of Data Exposed.
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Welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today I'm joined by Raj,
a Program Manager on the Azure SQL team.
Raj, thanks for joining us again today.
>> Thank you. Let me introduce myself.
My name is Raj Pochiraju and I'm
a Principal Program Manager in Azure SQL,
and my teams core focuses to develop and
manage the database migration tools and
services that really help you to do
a seamless database migration journey from
your on-premises SQL Servers to Azure SQL.
>> Awesome thanks Raj.
We're super excited to have you back on
the show to continue our discussion around migration.
In this episode, we're really want to talk about is some of
the new capabilities that have recently
landed within Azure Migrate.
I'd love to get your take on what's
new and then we'll dive into some other things later.
>> Sounds good. Thanks for asking
that actually because we are very
excited to tell you that
we recently added a new capability into
an Azure Migrate service which has been there for a while.
But this new capability really help you to do
a SQL Server Data estate discovery and as well as assessments
at scale and really
understand the Azure SQL readiness to begin with.
The good thing with this service is that
you can really scan across your data estate for
SQL Servers and really find out
the specific deployment option on
the Azure SQL that really help to migrate with the less effort,
but at the same time render the performance
and high availability needs that
you're looking for your workloads,
and at the same time provide you
a recommendation which really optimizes your cost as well.
That way you really understand
which deployment option that I can migrate,
which is going to be size of my target database,
and then how do I migrate stuff.
That really help you to do that migration journey.
Think about this Azure Migrate as
a single-shop stop where
it really meets all your SQL Server Migration needs.
>> Cool, that sounds great.
I'd love to just dive a little deeper into what can you
tell us how it actually works?
>> Let me take user flow as
an example because it's easy to explain that way.
Think about you're running your environment,
the SQL Servers on a VMware environment.
Then now you really want to migrate to Azure SQL,
but you don't know which deployment option is good.
I'm going to migrate to SQL Servers which are running on the VM?
I'm going to migrate to managed instance?
If I decide to migrate,
what would be the size?
You really have a lot of questions in mind that you really want
some an answer to take the next step in the migration journey.
That's where this really help you.
You go on then, provisionally what I
do to migrate service and then simply
download a template that we
provided over there that you can really use that template to
provision an appliance machine
in your VMware environment and that will
really go on then remotely connect to
all your SQL Servers and scan across your SQL Servers,
and then really provide you'll the insights that you're really
looking for in terms of migrating to Azure SQL.
The good news here is that you don't have to
install anything on your SQL server machines.
You don't need to touch them.
We can scan through the remote machine that I talked about,
which we call that as an appliance machine,
as simple as that, actually.
>> That's pretty cool and surprisingly simple.
Really cool, also thanks for sharing in our class.
If you have something,
we've love to see it in action.
>> I'm more than happy to share a demo actually,
or maybe how the experience is going to look like to begin with.
Like I said, the Azure Migrate service is
a fully managed service on the Azure that really help
you to meet all your migration needs and in this case,
it would be the discovery and assessment migrate into Azure SQL.
Once you log onto the Azure portal,
you need to really look for the Azure Migrate service.
You see that the service
exists in my dashboard because
I've been playing around with a lot.
But otherwise, if you don't really have that in the dashboard,
simply you can type for Azure Migrate,
and then that will take you to
the Azure Migrate service, which I'm going to do that now.
You are on the Azure Migrate service here.
Like I said, it really provides you
a unified migration experience across your servers,
databases, and as well as applications too.
That's how you don't have to really use
multiple services and multiple tools to
migrate servers, applications and databases.
This is a single place where it really meets all
your migration needs and that is
the goal that we have in our mind.
Now, my goal here is that I have a VMware SQL server.
Now I really want to go on and discover it
first and then assess before even migrate.
For that reason I'm going to use this option,
Discover and Assess and Migrate.
Here. You see that my dashboard already has
discovered some [inaudible] so
find out some SQL server instance system, and everything.
Its because that I already did
the discovery and assessment using this migration project.
But otherwise, your very first step would be once you get to
the services that you have to create a migration project first.
Let me show you how that create experience is going to look like.
Actually, it's pretty simple.
You just need to pick a subscription where you really
want to create your project and then
provide a resource group information where we can keep
all those resources that are
needed for that project in that a resource group,
either you create a new one,
or you can really pick one of those existing already.
Then you just simply give a project name
and then you also select a specific region, geographical location,
where you want to really create your migration project so
that we can start uploading the data collected,
the discovery data, and as well as
the assessment information into
that particular geographical location.
Then you just hit the Create button, so as simple as that.
Once the project is created,
and you come back to this screen,
and then the next step is that you want to
start to discovering your SQL server environment.
For that reason you just click a discovery option
here and then there are four steps that you see here.
The very first step is that you need to really tell us
where your environment is sitting right now on the on-prem,
either it is hosted on the VMWare environment
or you have virtualized your SQL Servers in the on-Prem
using the Hyper-V technology or they're just bare metal
maybe or they might be running in
other clouds like AWS and GCP stuff.
Now, you want to really want to
understand what it really takes to migrate to Azure SQL stuff.
In this case it's a VMware environment.
Then remember in the previous slide I talked about the appliance
where you need to download an appliance to do that,
it's pretty easy actually.
We give you a dot to be Boyar file.
Think about that as the template file that you can use and
download your on-premises VMware environment,
and then just use that to provision.
When you provision that,
you don't have to do anything
beyond that point, just provision that VM,
it has all the software that is really required
for us to do the discovery and as well as the assessment,
so that's a good thing you don't have to work on that.
But otherwise, if you already have a VM,
you just want to leverage that
VM rather than provisioning in new one,
then simply you can download this zip file,
which contains the software that is really
required for you to enable the discovery and assessment.
It's your choice, how do you want to do
it? But it's pretty simple.
Once you do that,
then you log onto a maybe RDP
into or remote desktop into that appliance machine,
and then you start configuring it.
At that point of time, you need to use
the product key so that the product key
provides a link between
an appliance and as well as
the Azure Migrate project that you just created.
Then he just start discovery after that.
>> Cool. Seems pretty simple.
>> Yeah. Once the discovery is done,
now you start seeing that data comes over here
and to quickly take you to the discovery output as well here.
These are the number of discovered servers that you can
see all across your servers here,
and you can see that in this case,
I really want to examine the SQL Servers to begin
with and these other SQL Servers,
and we provide a lot of
information that we discovered out of those SQL Servers.
For example, we collect
all the inventory in terms of
the programs that are being installed.
There it is. Everything that has been running on that server,
you can get all that list here.
Then more importantly, we also tell you the number of
SQL server instances hosted on the box.
For example, if I click in one of those,
then we will take you into much deeper view there.
We give you the specific instance names and
the specific version that the instance is running on,
and the edition that is running on so that you have
some good idea of what is really running there.
Then we also give you the databases information as well.
Which databases are running on it?
What would be their size?
What's the status of those databases kind of stuff?
Then we also tell you whether the SQL instances is
configured as a fail-over cluster instances or
any availability group and other stuff.
It's very rich discovery and we keep on adding
more discovery insights into
this view as we
go to the next set of updates to the service to begin with.
Once the discovery is done,
the next step is you perform an assessment.
Doing an assessment is also a simple thing,
you go to the Assessment tab here and then pick that you want to
do is Azure SQL assessment to begin with.
Then you just give a name to it.
You can either use the default properties
of the assessment or you can really customize as well.
For example, if you wanted to bring
some licenses that you might already have to Azure SQL,
then you can also say that apply
my hybrid license benefits or if you did that as a capacity,
then you can do one year, three years kind of stuff.
You can customize this view so that you can
really capture those recommendations to you.
That's easy to create an assessment.
Once the assessment is created,
then let me show you the specific assessment results as
well so that you
understand how this assessment
really help you to find the readiness.
On the very high-end of our view,
we will tell you what Microsoft
is really recommending to you based on
your feature compatibility and as well as schema compatibility.
Then we also look at your performance information as well.
Then we really try to match with the various deployment options,
SKUs, and tiers that exists on the Azure side.
This is what really Microsoft is recommending to you to migrate.
For example, out of all those 248 SQL server instances,
it is telling you to migrate
187 SQL Servers migrating to the managed instance,
and there is only one we recommend you to go to SQL DB and REST.
You can migrate to the VMs as well.
That's recommendation that we provide to you so
that we make your addition making
easy by giving you the deployment
options so that you don't have to
do permutations and combinations.
Then once you go with these Microsoft recommendations,
then we also give you how much it is going to
cost for you to migrate to the Azure SQL.
That is in terms of compute and as well as in
terms of the storage cost as well,
so that you really understand
how much it is going to cost to you on a monthly basis,
which caters to the licensing benefits
that you are bringing into it.
So that we include your licensing benefits as well
that you provided in your configuration section of the assessment.
We give you those benefits as well then.
>> This makes a lot of sense because you're assessing not
only what am I ready to go to,
but you're also assessing my performance and how that
translates to various SKUs in Azure SQL.
Then how much is that going to cost based on
how I want to pay for this basically or what I already have.
It's really useful stuff, Raj.
>> It's very good. If you are addition backer,
then you can go to
the previous screen and then get the summary view.
But think about, I'm an LOB application owner,
for example, and I'm responsible for
migrating my own SQL server to begin with.
At that point of time, you can further drill
down into specific SQL server as well.
For each of those SQL servers,
we tell you whether it is ready for SQL DB or not,
whether it is ready for MI.
In this case, if it is ready for both,
then Microsoft also recommends
you a specific deployment option to you.
That's the beauty of this actually.
Though it is ready for both,
we think that you should migrate to managed instance that
meets your performance and high availability and at the same time,
with an optimizer cost.
We balance that approach.
Then we also give you the recommended SKU as well.
For example, let's examine this guy to
see what is Microsoft recommendation.
I'm sorry, I'll go here.
Like I said, it is ready for both,
but we recommend you to go to MI.
The reason is that we provide
some reasoning why we recommend you to go to managed instance by
looking at your performance compatibility and then match
a balance between a performance and
cost algorithm that is built into the system.
We look into a lot of factors like your CPU usage, memory usage,
your IOPS that are needed,
that we need to support when you migrate
to the Azure SQL and all this stuff.
For example, if you look at specific instance, which is not ready.
For example, I'll take this one.
The instance to 2014 SQL,
which is not ready for SQL DB,
but it is ready for Managed Instance.
In this case, the diction is very easy like SQL MI, right?
>> Right.
>> But if you really want to understand why it is not
ready for the SQL DB,
then you can also find that as well.
For example, you click on this.
It will tell you the specific block as it is
not ready for SQL DB, so I click on that.
It will give you the details where there is a TPC-C database
which is using a service broker feature
that is not supported on the SQL DB,
but it is supported on the Managed Instance as you know, Anna.
That way, you can even go deep into why I'm not SQL DB,
why I'm SQL MI.
If you have any of those questions,
then you can get to that detail as well.
That's how this report really help you to
take the decision which deployment option you want to migrate.
It also help you the specific clearance SKU that you can migrate.
More than anything else, it also gives you
a monthly estimate so that you have everything that
you need to start your migration journey, as a matter of fact.
>> Awesome. Thanks, Raj.
I think you've really shown us today how this really can be
your one-stop shop for figuring out how to migrate to Azure SQL.
As we close out, do you have any final tips for
viewers who are just maybe getting started with this?
>> Basically, taking a migration journey
is if you think it is a complex journey.
Yes, it is complex,
but Microsoft is there to help you to support
your migration journey either through the tools and services.
We also have the engineering by
global programs that we offer for
the customers to unblock your complex migrations.
You're not alone out there.
Microsoft is there to support you.
Just reach to us, actually,
in case if you really need any help
on your migration, generally, Azure SQL.
>> Awesome, great. Well, thanks so much, Raj.
For our viewers, thanks for joining.
We will put a few links to
various resources for you in the description.
Be sure to check those out.
If you liked this video, go ahead and give it a like,
comment and let us know what you think of Azure migrate.
We hope to see you next time on Data Exposed.
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