When making the decision to move SQL Server workloads to Azure, there are a series of questions that need to be answered.
- Why are you migrating to Azure?
- What are you going to migrate to Azure?
- Where will you migrate in Azure?
- How will migrate to Azure?
- When will you migrate to Azure?
This is the first in a series of blog posts providing information on making these decisions.
The answer to the first of these questions is extremely important to answering the others. In my experience, it is often neglected. The post below will assist in answering this question.
Migrating a workload to Azure provides two major benefits. When answering the question, “Why migrate to Azure?”, you need to determine which of these benefits you want to take advantage of.
When determining why you want to migrate SQL Server workloads to Azure, you need to decide how to take advantage of the benefits Azure provides. These benefits fall into two categories. First, Azure provides the ability to dynamically scale resources. Second, in many cases, administration and maintenance of resources is managed by Azure.
In today’s on-prem and virtualized environments, resources are often scaled for peak workloads. There peaks can occur weekly, monthly, or annually. During off-peak times these environments may utilize a fraction of the CPU and memory provisioned to them. Moving these resources to Azure allows CPU and memory to be scaled up during peak times and reduced when they are not needed. This minimizes cost and maximizes resource utilization.
Depending on the SQL Server option you choose to migrate to, patching, maintenance, and administration can be managed by Azure. The guarantees the OS and SQL Server are up-to-date and secure. It also transfers responsibility for maintenance and administration from your IT team, freeing them to focus on application innovation.
Migration to Azure also provides the opportunity to reduce costs by reducing or eliminating space used in data centers or hosting providers. By reducing capital and maintenance expenses, resources can be freed to improve existing applications and develop new functionality.
See this link from Microsoft for more information on drivers for migrating to Azure.
Upcoming blog posts on what and where to migrate in Azure will explain how to take advantage of these benefits.