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TRANSCRIPT
Setting the Scene – Successful Migration Strategies
April 2017
V 1.0
MSP Azure Migration
Program
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Table of Contents Setting the Stage: A Perspective on Successful Cloud Migration Strategies ......................... 4
The Complex and Highly Visible Application Migration Strategy .......................................... 4
The Comprehensive “Entire Datacenter” Migration Strategy ................................................... 4
The Quick and Simple Migration and Adoption Strategy ......................................................... 5
Scenario 1: Migrating the Web (www) Server or Other Classic Web Server
Application ............................................................................................................................................. 5
Scenario 2: Migrating a Simple Client/Server Application................................................... 6
Scenario 3: Migrating Additional Server Systems ................................................................... 7
Additional Azure Services for Consumption .............................................................................. 7
Customer Familiarization of Azure ......................................................................................................... 9
Accelerating Additional Workload Migrations to Azure................................................................. 9
Detailed Planning for Subsequent Workloads ................................................................................. 10
Setting the Stage: A Perspective on Successful Cloud
Migration Strategies
As a Microsoft partner looking to help customers migrate to the Microsoft Azure Cloud,
there are many approaches to get them to adopt the cloud. This guide highlights
various migration strategies typically used in moving customers to the cloud and also
covers the one migration strategy that has proven to be more successful than others.
This strategy has helped rapidly build customer confidence with Azure resulting in faster
adoption and more cloud migration wins. The next section describes these strategies in
more detail.
Note: Partners may have a tried and proven migration strategy of their own and may to
adopt this strategy to get their customers to migrate to Microsoft Azure. The guidance
in this document is not a requirement partners must follow, however in lieu of any other
strategic guidance, this process has proven to drive faster onboarding and Azure
adoption.
The Complex and Highly Visible Application Migration Strategy
Some early adopter cloud migration initiatives have targeted taking one of the
customer’s most important, highly visible application and focusing on moving that to
the cloud. While a “win” for an organization’s most important application sets a
precedence to then migrate “everything else” to the cloud, the experience has been that
the process often takes several months if not years to complete. While the organization
will be highly committed to Microsoft because of the time and effort spent in planning
and executing on the initial migration, the process is extremely time consuming and any
changes in an organization’s key stakeholders, decision makers or priorities can derail a
lengthy pilot and migration process.
The Comprehensive “Entire Datacenter” Migration Strategy Other early adopter cloud migration strategies have sought to assess ALL servers and
applications an organization has in their datacenter and plan a holistic migration
roadmap to the cloud. While this addresses the entire breadth and depth of an
organization’s cloud migration strategy, this too is very time consuming and fraught
with risk. Many organizations have a large number of servers and applications that most
often times IT is not even aware of. This exercise, while comprehensive, doesn’t result in
a migration “win” for months, if not years.
The Quick and Simple Migration and Adoption Strategy What has proven to be the most effective strategy in advancing an organization’s
adoption to the cloud has been to start with just a handful of simple applications to
migrate to Microsoft Azure and focus on a migration “win” within days. Building on that
success is akin to a “snowball effect” approach, gaining customer confidence and
accelerating the adoption of Microsoft Azure. The strategy starts with an initial
discussion with the customer to identify the initial 2 or 3 applications that would likely
be the fastest and easiest to migrate to Azure. Combined with a commitment to cross
train the customer on core Azure administration and management tasks, this will help
the customer “cross the chasm” to the public cloud quickly and with an expedited,
pleasant first experience.
Additionally, what has also proven to accelerate the migration and adoption of Azure is
educating the customer about the reliability, scalability, agility, and security and
simplicity built into Azure. This, combined with positioning Azure as a complimentary
service to an organization’s ongoing IT strategy (and how this choice is not any more
complicated nor different than what the organization has done in the past), will expedite
Azure adoptions. Below are a few scenarios that partners should consider migrating for
the previous (and most effective) strategy.
Scenario 1: Migrating the
Web (www) Server or Other
Classic Web Server
Application
A common “first server” cloud
migration application has been
migrating the organization’s
public www server or other classic
Web server application. Typically,
the Web (www) server is a
standalone server that is not joined to any particular security domain running a
simple Web application. These applications have relatively high visibility within
the organization but have simple technical infrastructure needs and are ideal
choices.
As a simple Web-based application, the cloud implementation typically involves building
a standalone Windows or Linux Virtual Machine in Azure and then uploading code
(potentially via FTP, Visual Studio upload or other file transfer protocols). The Web
application can be staged and tested thoroughly prior to being brought online. Simple
dev and test cycles can validate the readiness of the application to be brought online
within days of initial migration effort. Also, because Web applications commonly are
DNS driven for public access, a failback of the application can be accomplished within
seconds with a simple DNS change – should a cutover to production on the cloud
platform prove to be problematic.
Note: Technical guidance is provided in Phase 3 of the IP/Content framework describing
the common Azure network integration and first/second workload migration process.
Scenario 2: Migrating a Simple
Client/Server Application
Similar to the first scenario, an application
environment utilizing Microsoft IIS/Web (or
Apache in case of Linux) services as a
frontend and something like Microsoft SQL
Server (or MySQL) on the backend can
potentially be an excellent “first application”
to migrate to Azure. Many times, these
simple Web/database applications are running on a single server,
making the migration to Azure simple.
Such a self-contained application (that has limited dependencies on the integration of
the frontend and the backend) can result in a quick test cycle with a push to live
production within a few days from the start of the migration process. And as a Web
based application is typically dependent on just a DNS entry pointing to the live
production system, a failback can be initiated to route users back to the original
application should any problems occur during the cutover process.
Scenario 3: Migrating Additional Server Systems
With the initial round or two of servers migrated from on-premise to Microsoft Azure,
customers will have an initial experience with Microsoft Azure. They will also gain
familiarity with the administration and management process of Azure and be more
confident in proceeding with more complex migration scenarios.
It’s at this point in this initiative that the partner will advance to Phase 4 and gain access
to a tool like Cloudamize to run an assessment on a handful of more complex
application scenarios. Cloudamize will identify dependencies between server workloads,
size the current server and application workload, and allow the customer and partner to
prioritize the next 12-15 servers that’ll be migrated to Azure.
It is still the best practice guidance to select easier workloads to migrate to Azure. The
goal of the initiative is to migrate 20 virtual machines to Azure in a short period of time.
While the next workload(s) can be a little more complex that the first couple workloads,
keeping the migration efforts manageable will ensure completion of the first 20 Virtual
Machines to Azure. This will provide the best experience in a short period of time.
Additional Azure Services for Consumption
There are a number of other Azure Services that are commonly enabled during an Azure
migration initiative. These services do not involve the migration of virtual machines to
Azure but extend an organization's capabilities (and consumption of Azure) in broader
ways. Since these services are relatively quick to implement and not actively intrusive to
the general operations of the server and application, they tend to be quick workloads to
enhance an organization's Azure experience.
Additional Azure Services 1: Selecting a Simple
Workload for Azure Backup
A simple additional azure service that can
typically be implemented in a very short
period of time is leveraging the Azure
Backup functionality for an enterprise. Azure
Backup is non-intrusive to running servers
and has proven to yield positive experiences
and add value. An initial experience with
Azure Backup typically focuses on a couple
workloads commonly in an organization’s DMZ network or simple Web-based
workloads. These servers are frequently not on a routine backup schedule and/or have a
limited amount of data on them, thus are quick to backup. They also incrementally add
value and provide the customer with an added capability while showing how simple and
quick Azure Backup is for data recovery and protection.
After initial backup processes are completed, cross-training or simple demonstrations to
the customer of how a file (or files) can be quickly selected and restored provides a
comfort factor that Azure Backup is similar to old traditional backup systems the
customer is likely familiar with, while also showing that it works efficiently and effectively
by ensuring the least possible RPO’s or RTO’s. This rapidly grows the customer’s
confidence in Microsoft Azure as an easy, quick to configure and dependable cloud
service.
Additional Azure Services 2: Selecting a Simple
Workload for Disaster Recovery in Azure
Another simple Azure service that can typically
be implemented in a very brief period of time
is leveraging disaster recovery functionality in
the Azure Site Recovery (ASR) service in Azure.
Again, selecting a server that might be in an
organization’s DMZ network or a Web-based
frontend server is ideal for an initial ASR
disaster recovery implementation. A small or simple application server can minimize
the replication and failover times and provide a smoother first experience of ASR’s
capabilities.
Many organizations typically either have very expensive disaster recovery solutions in
place – costing hundreds of thousands of dollars – or have no disaster recovery
solutions at all. An ASR snapshot and Azure-based recovery of a small application can
be completed in a matter of days to show the value of ASR (and Azure) as a low cost
and extremely effective disaster recovery solution. Building on a successful first
engagement with ASR for other applications can provide an extended project with a
customer. Partners can work with customers on building disaster recovery planning,
implementation, failover testing & ongoing monitoring and management services.
Customer Familiarization of Azure The biggest blocker most partners face in helping an organization migrate to Azure is its
lack of familiarity with Azure. For decades’ organizations have gotten used to the
performance and reliability derived through their use of servers and applications within
their datacenter or in the datacenters of their trusted managed service provider
locations. Azure is a new thing for these customers and with the new comes concerns of
reliability, security and a general lack of conceptual understanding of how the “public
cloud works”.
The quick and simple migration and adoption strategy followed by a familiarization
training exercise allows customers to migrate an initial application or two to Azure and
experience how Azure is no more different than what they have today. As the
organization cycles through ongoing management and maintenance processes in Azure
and experiences the similarities of Azure to how things are done today, their comfort
levels with Azure increase and it enables the organization to trust additional migrations
(including the highly visible and strategic applications) to Azure.
Accelerating Additional Workload Migrations to Azure While the quick and simple migration and adoption strategy can get a partner to secure
a migration “win” quickly, there is a tendency for organizations to “stop there” and “see
how this goes” for an extended period of time. It is important for the partner to have
already built into the migration plan and timeline the expectation that after the initial
couple workload(s) have been migrated to Azure, the partner services engagement
automatically proceeds with additional workloads. This continued cadence on migrating
3-4 additional workloads (involving 15-20 servers) provides a substantial footprint in
Azure that ensures a certain “stickiness” for the customer to proceed ahead with the
migration of ALL of their servers and applications to Azure.
It is this consistent migration planning and execution process that will help a partner
ensure a rapid pace for the customer to “commit” to Azure. After the first couple
workloads are migrated (typically within 2-3 weeks of initiating the migration efforts),
the next 3-4 workloads comprising of an aggregate 10-15 servers should already be
identified, scheduled and initiated for migration. This effort can be completed within 46
weeks of the initial migration efforts and will have an organization running 15-20 servers
or Virtual Machines in Azure within the first 2 months.
Detailed Planning for Subsequent Workloads While a partner may have helped a customer quickly get a foothold in Azure, the
completion of “all” workloads to Azure will likely not proceed as rapidly. When the
simple workloads are done, the organization is left with complex workloads. These are
typically workloads with a lot of cross-server and application dependencies, varying
application vendor cloud support and mission critical applications that have a very
structured and methodical process that needs to be followed with stringent change
management controls.
It is at this point that a partner should step back and assist the customer in a more
structured and methodical migration planning and execution process. The planning
process of a complex application could take 2-3 weeks or even 2-3 months to properly
plan out the architecture, design and migrate it to Azure.
This is where application capacity planning, timing the migration cutover, security
considerations, change management controls and application continuity systems have
to be in place before the application can be moved to Azure.
However, since the customer has already migrated over an initial 15-20 servers to Azure
and has already been cross-trained on how Azure works and how to monitor and
manage basic Azure workloads, this will enable partners to handle more of the complex
and mission critical applications.