Tips to migrate your on premise infrastructure to azure cloud 

The decision to migrate to Azure Cloud Services may seem as simple as just shifting IT infrastructure. However, there are some best practices and planning that must be followed for successful Azure migration.  

Here are 10 tips you need to follow for successfully migrating your on-premise infrastructure to Azure Cloud Services.   

Azure Governance is key 

To successfully migrate from on-premise to the Azure platform, you need to ensure everyone in your company is aware of and adopts the right rules. Azure Governance must be the basis for Cloud Migration. Azure Governance lays down the ground rules for what to do and what not to do the Azure platform.  

Therefore, the best practice would be to follow the rules before you’ve started your Azure migration plans. However, if you’ve already migrated to the platform without planning, you can seek guidance from Azure consultants like Nuvento, who’ll guide you through the best ways to manage your work on your new platform. 

Azure Governance serves as the baseline for auditing; letting consultants help you with what you need to do to keep your framework secure. This way governance rule sets allows the platform’s auditing and helps to understand if the platform is running as required. Azure Governance also helps with continuous optimizations.  

So, businesses must make sure to use a networking structure that suits their line of business and continuously optimize, letting your working concepts move as technology and connectivity changes. This will eventually allow your workforce, your employees, every individual contributor in your project to work on their own. When the rules are straightforward and understood, it makes it easier for the individual contributor to make better and informed decisions, and work in an agile manner.  

Consider IT- and department-specific requirements 

From an IT perspective, users must make sure everything is under control and compliance is followed. Therefore, IT departments need to ensure the right policies are in place and they need to consider the billing aspects of using the platform.  

As for the other departments, the platform must allow them to be agile and innovative, and if they want to coordinate developing department-specific software solutions on the platform, they must be able to with the support of the IT. The IT team therefore has to be farsighted and involve all teams in the critical decisions that involve adopting the new platform and educating teams on the scope of their Azure adoption.  

Assess your infrastructure 

Assessment is a critical part of your on-premise to Azure migration journey. Therefore, a close assessment of your infrastructure will allow you to better prepare yourself for the migration.  

Needless to say, the right information is key to successful assessment. So, if you decide to migrate your servers as they are to Azure, it could be disaster in the making. Simply because server sizing for an on-premise solution is entirely different from how it works on cloud for scalability and costs. So, right-scaling is important. Run an assessment of scripts on your VMs for a month at least for good assessment, so you are sure of what you need to migrate your systems to Azure.  

Also, check your inventory and check your contracts. You could be using certain solutions that need extra contracts for use outside of an existing solution. Therefore, it is important you check all your contracts before migration to ensure it is smooth. It is also important to define your need for migration. If your migration plan does not provide any measurable value, it wouldn’t make sense to go ahead with it. So, make sure you know the benefits of migration and ensure that you’re in for major reduction in efforts or costs and so on before you do.  

Do not rebuild your on-premise structures 

Do not try to bring in the old on-premises structures into cloud. It is essential to adapt your applications to the cloud environment to enable a framework on which your business can seamlessly function. Cloud has a different way of functioning, and securing you processes and applications. Therefore, you need to find out the best practices to build on the new platform.  

If you’re looking to use functions like cognitive services and so on, do not rebuild your on-premise structures on cloud, because it won’t fit and won’t give you the right results. New services need new ways of functioning and so, it is important to be agile in your approach toward migration.  

Azure consumption is billed 

Every resource you use on Azure incurs a cost. So, if you need to use them, you need to pay for them. When you migrate to Azure and integrate new applications, you might see your business model undergoing a transformation. There will be new monthly costs of using the Azure platform services, for example, if you need to use a facial recognition service, it is billed per usage.  

Here, it is important to have in place cost monitoring to ensure your Azure infrastructure costs are under check. Also, a good structure of subscriptions, role-based access controls and tagging policies help to control and divide costs.  

Identity is the new perimeter 

Identity is a key part of security in the Azure platform. To keep your access and infrastructure safe and intact, use multi-factor authentication and privileged data identity management. It’ll give you insights on who’s accessing what on your infrastructure. A good identity management plan will allow your workforce and yourself to be always on, work from anywhere and still be secure. 

Include all platform users in the migration plan 

Involve all users of the new platform in the migration plan. Understand what they need and evaluate the services that should help them in their work. Else, there will be one team who doesn’t appreciate the new platform and will block your migration process.  

Focus on building a framework that meets the needs of all your customers – internal customers as well. Focus on all the benefits you want from the platform, focus on key users. If anybody does not understand an aspect of an application, explain it to them and have them on the same page as you are. Explain that these services would not take away jobs, rather it would let them be more efficient at it.  

If a process needs to be changed to align with how the new platform works, go ahead with it and be agile. Stay up to date with all the changes in Azure, integrate with platforms, right-size, optimize to make the best out of your migration for all your teams. 

Look at transformation instead of migration 

Instead of simply migrating, transform your services into the new platform. Build logical blocks for your transformation, for example – do not move your ERP without moving your database or vise versa. Keep an eye for your technical and licensing documentation. You must ensure that you have all the required approvals for using solutions you used on your on-premise system on your cloud platform after migration.  

Clearly define your infrastructure requirements, cost factors and so on. And importantly, check your application compatibility to know how well your existing applications will work on the new platform. And consider all processes you’d have to go through: such as development and deployment, updates and upgrades, helpdesk processes and SLAs.    

You must be up-to-date 

Continuous learning and growing your knowledge about the platform is essential for success on it. Azure releases changes very often and users the get updated on the latest best practices to follow while using the platform from those emails.  

Organizations must also review how their architecture is working on a regular basis. Infrastructure is changing fast, so you need to be updated on how best to change yours for improved performance and best experiences.  

Audit your governance yearly/quarterly/monthly and take decisions for change quickly, without waiting too long. Adopt new opportunities quickly, and if it doesn’t deliver the desired result in thee weeks, drop it. So, stay up-to-date, take decisions fast and move with the changes in your infrastructure.  

Plan for the future  

Plan solutions end-to-end – think about who will use it, what will the back-end framework be like and so on. Planning will let you forecast your costs, thereby saving money.  It will help with keeping an eye on resources and scale them as per usage. An important step in migration is to move from infrastructure. Everybody migrates infrastructure to Azure because it is easy involving migration from one VM to another VM.  

However, an important step in migration is optimization, moving to platform services, being more agile, thinking about new ways and most importantly getting rid of all on-premise old infrastructure.  

If you need further guidance on migrating your infrastructure to Azure, get in touch with us. Nuvento’s Azure experts will have a look at your framework and help you move through your migration journey.