Five best practices for a successful Azure migration process

If you as an organization want to migrate your infrastructure to Microsoft Azure, Azure Migrate is an important tool to ensure this transition runs smoothly. To get the most out of Azure Migrate, careful preparation is essential.

In this blog post, we discuss the five best practices that will help you plan and execute a successful migration to Azure.

1. Collaborate with suppliers

Smooth communication and collaboration between your suppliers, your IT team and the teams responsible for the business applications is crucial.

The IT team understands the technical details and limitations of the existing infrastructure, while the application teams and vendors know the specific requirements of the business applications.

By bundling this knowledge, you can gain a better insight into which workloads are suitable for migration and which may need to be adjusted and/or modernized. A RACI matrix is a good tool to clarify who has what role in the migration process. This makes it clear who can be approached and when for what input.

2. Choose the right Azure Migration Tool

Azure Migrate provides both agent and agentless methods for discovering and evaluating your on-premises environment. Make a choice based on your needs. The use of agents provides more detailed information, but also brings additional complexity. Agentless approaches are easier to deploy, but provide less in-depth insights. By evaluating the pros and cons of both approaches, you will make the best choice for your migration project.

 
3.  Take on a holistic approach

A successful migration to Azure requires a holistic approach. It is important to not only focus on individual workloads, but also to look at the broader picture. Make sure you have an overview of the entire infrastructure, stakeholders and suppliers surrounding your workloads - look at how everything is connected and what the current performance is. All this helps to prematurely get rid of any show stoppers.

4. Map dependencies

Many business applications are interdependent on each other and on other infrastructure components. Before you start migrating, it is important to map these dependencies. This can help identify potential bottlenecks and risks, and determine a migration sequence that will not cause disruption. This can be quite complex and is often underestimated. It is therefore advisable to tackle this thoroughly.

5. Create a design

A solid design is the key to a successful migration to Azure. Take the time to develop a migration plan that takes into account all relevant aspects, such as workload optimization, scalability, security and regulatory compliance. A good basis is Microsoft's enterprise scale model in combination with the Azure Migration Framework.

Make further choices based on input from your business strategy and feedback from your business stakeholders. By following a well-thought-out design, you can minimize potential complications during the migration and increase the chances of success.

Conclusion

Planning and executing a migration to Azure requires careful preparation and a thoughtful approach. By following these five best practices, you can maximize the chance of a successful migration and ensure that a migration process is not unnecessarily delayed.