Migrate Legacy Databases to Azure: Five Essential Tips to Ensure a Successful Cloud Migration

With the current economic climate, migrating legacy databases to the cloud is a strategic move that can offer numerous financial benefits, including cost savings, enhanced TCO, reduced time to market, and improved flexibility. As a DBA tasked with cloud migration to Azure, you play a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth and successful transition while navigating the migration process and effectively addressing the challenges of managing hybrid environments.

The following tips will help DBAs tasked with migrating their databases to Azure to stay within their operating budget and maintain the access and control they have with their current on-premise estates:

1. Assess the situation

• Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the existing on-premises infrastructure cost and compare it with the estimated costs of Azure services.
• Establish a TCO to determine the cloud cost baseline and guide your cloud strategy.
• Evaluate the compatibility of your legacy databases and identify any dependencies, performance bottlenecks, and areas that require optimization and those already cloud-ready.

This analysis will help you strategize your migration plan and decide which databases can be moved to Azure immediately and which may require additional preparation.

2. Migrate and Optimize: Plan for Success

A successful cloud migration goes beyond merely moving data from on-premises to Azure.

• Take the time to optimize your databases for the cloud environment.
• Consider factors like performance, security, and scalability.
• Leverage Azure’s native tools and services to streamline migration and ensure your databases perform optimally in the cloud.

Many cloud migration strategies can be implemented. Some to consider in your journey are:

• Lift and Shift – An approach to migration that doesn’t require any code changes, which will work for a quick migration or one that doesn’t require any modifications.
• Refactor – This strategy is for those requiring minimal application changes and is ideal if you want to apply innovative DevOps practices as a container strategy for workloads.
• Rearchitect – This approach is for those that will redesign the application to fully utilize cloud capabilities functionality and optimize it for cloud scalability. These modifications are ideal for DBAs who want to use existing application investments to scale.
• Rebuild – Building the application from scratch using Azure cloud technologies is optimal for innovating DevOps practices and leveraging newer technologies such as AI, IoT, and blockchain.

Before starting the migration process, it is essential to determine the most suitable cloud strategy and pattern for each database, which will help streamline the migration process.

3. Maximize Value: Embrace Hybrid Flexibility

In a hybrid environment, you have the unique advantage of leveraging both on-premises infrastructure and the cloud. Maximize the value of this flexibility by strategically distributing workloads between the two domains and determine where you can increase or cut back on your cloud usage. Host business-critical and sensitive data on-premises for enhanced security and control while deploying less sensitive data and applications in the cloud for scalability and cost-effectiveness.

4. Safeguard: Prioritize Data Security

Data security is paramount in any migration process, especially with public cloud usage. Implement robust security measures for both on-premises and cloud-based databases. Utilize encryption, authentication, and access controls to safeguard sensitive information.

5. Manage: Monitor Performance in Hybrid Environments

Hybrid cloud environments can be complex, and obtaining a clear picture of the entire estate can be challenging. DBAs should adopt a hybrid monitoring solution that offers comprehensive visibility into cloud and on-premise databases, as well as in-depth metrics that aren’t available in the native monitoring solution.

Conclusion

The speed of change within platforms like Azure and AWS is as impressive as the technology itself.  Migrating legacy databases to these platforms can deliver significant advantages, including cost savings, enhanced TCO, reduced time to market, and improved scalability. To ensure a successful migration, DBAs must plan meticulously and consider database compatibility, security, performance, and data migration techniques. Collaborate with stakeholders, developers, and cloud specialists to align objectives and achieve a smooth migration process. Reinvest time and cost savings to value-added projects that will shorten time to market.

Unlocking the full potential of a cloud migration requires constant learning. These tips can be a starting point for DBAs tasked with an important project by their organization and ensure that the company’s most valuable resource, data, is well-accounted for in the transition.