Microsoft Azure Migration Issues - And How To Avoid Them

As experienced Azure professionals, we have had the opportunity to work with a diverse range of clients and assist them with their Azure migrations. Over the years, we have encountered and successfully addressed a variety of challenges and issues that businesses may face during the migration process. Some of the common azure migration issues we have encountered include complexity, security concerns, integration difficulties, cost management, and lack of expertise. By thoroughly understanding these challenges and implementing the right solutions and strategies, we have been able to help our clients successfully migrate to Azure and realize the benefits of cloud computing.

"Navigating the Cloud: A Complex Journey"

Migrating to the cloud can be a complex process, especially for businesses with a large and intricate IT infrastructure. Deciding which workloads and applications to move and how to do so with minimal disruption can be a daunting task.

Technical factors to consider include compatibility, data migration, and application migration.

Compatibility: It is important to ensure that workloads and applications are compatible with Azure and will function properly once migrated.
Data migration: Migrating data to Azure can be a complex process, especially for large amounts of data. It is important to consider the type of data being migrated, the amount of data, and the tools and technologies needed to perform the migration.
Application migration: Migrating applications to Azure can also be complex, especially if the applications are customized or have many dependencies. It is important to carefully plan the migration process to ensure that the applications are properly configured and tested in Azure.

"Safety First: Protecting Your Data and Systems in the Cloud"

Ensuring the security of data and systems in the cloud is crucial for businesses. However, this can be challenging as both the business and the cloud provider have a role to play in security. Key technical considerations include identity and access management, network security, and data encryption.

Identity and access management: It is important to properly configure identity and access management to ensure that only authorized users have access to sensitive data and systems.
Network security: Businesses should ensure that their data and systems are protected by firewalls and other security measures to prevent unauthorized access.
Data encryption: Encrypting data at rest and in transit can help to protect it from being accessed by unauthorized parties.

"Connecting the Dots: Integrating Your Systems with Azure"
Integrating existing systems with Azure can be a challenge, particularly if the systems are not compatible or operate differently. Technical considerations include compatibility, integration tools, and data integration.

Compatibility: It is important to ensure that the existing systems are compatible with Azure and can be integrated seamlessly.
Integration tools: There are a variety of tools and technologies available to help with the integration process, such as Azure Integration Services and Azure Functions.
Data integration: Businesses may need to integrate data from their existing systems with Azure, which can be challenging if the data is stored in different formats or structures.

"The Cost of Change: Evaluating the Financial Impact of Migration"
Migrating to Azure can be expensive, especially for businesses with a large amount of data and applications. It's important to carefully weigh the costs and benefits of migration to ensure it makes financial sense. Key technical factors to consider include pricing and resource utilization.

Pricing: Azure has a variety of pricing options and it is important for businesses to carefully evaluate which option is best for their needs.
Resource utilization: Properly configuring and utilizing Azure resources can help to minimize costs and ensure that the business is not paying for more resources than it needs.

"Expertise is Key: Ensuring a Smooth Migration with the Right Skills"
Lack of expertise in cloud computing can make the migration process more difficult for businesses. Training existing IT staff or hiring outside consultants with Azure expertise can help to ensure a smooth migration. Technical considerations include training and consulting services.

Training: Providing training to IT staff can help to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use Azure.
Consulting: Hiring outside consultants with expertise in Azure can help to ensure that the migration process goes smoothly and that the business is properly utilizing the platform.

In summary, migrating to Microsoft Azure can be a complex process with many technical and financial considerations. Ensuring the security of data and systems, integrating existing systems, and properly evaluating the costs and benefits are all important factors to consider. With the right expertise and planning, businesses can successfully migrate to Azure and realize the benefits of cloud computing.

Over the years we have helped clients with Azure and have experienced a wide range of issues first hand.

If you are planning to migrate to Microsoft Azure here are some important things to keep in mind.

1. Dealing with Mental Paradigm Shift

The key challenge at the centre of Azure migration comes from misunderstanding the differences between applications hosted on cloud and traditional local deployments. There are many concepts that are unique to the cloud and capacity planning and resource management are conceptualized differently, as one example.

The bottom line is that whoever is managing the migration needs to understand the unique attributes of Azure as a cloud platform and the mental shift that needs to occur when developing in the cloud.

2. Provisioning enough Local Bandwidth

One of the most overlooked issues when migrating to an IaaS platform like Azure is how much bandwidth provisioning is needed. This is especially important if a hybrid cloud solution is in use. There may be a lot of traffic running between locally hosted systems and remote cloud elements in such a case. Hence, it should be noted that traffic which previously ran over high-speed, low-latency LAN will now run over the WAN.

Local bandwidth therefore becomes a bottleneck. An architecture specialist experienced in Azure migration services is useful in calculating the cost-benefit impact these bandwidth changes create.

3. System Downtime Planning

When making a major migration downtime is inevitable. Eliminating all downtime is a fantasy, so it is better to accept that there will be downtime and plan for it accordingly. Carefully estimate how much downtime each step of migration will cause and try to spread it out and schedule it to have minimal impact.

4.Dealing with existing Dependencies

Applications these days seldom operate in a vacuum. When migrating an application to cloud, dependencies should be taken into account. There are various connection configurations that may be invalidated by the move and so these should be determined before taking the plunge to prevent serious service interruptions.

5. Common Database Migration Problems

Many enterprise applications depend on external databases in order to complete their functions. While it is possible to migrate applications to Azure while hosting the database in-house, moving the database itself to Azure is an attractive proposition and has many benefits.

However, it is very important to identify and predict compatibility issues between Azure storage and the existing application storage. Incompatibilities with supported commands or variable types is possible where the source database was created with now obsolete versions of database software. Converting the database without a loss of fidelity or function often requires changes to applications and the services of database specialists prior to moving to Azure.

6. Virtual Machine Conversion and Transfer

The adoption of VMs by the enterprises has been astounding and so it is very likely that any IaaS migration will include a number of existing virtual machines. While Azure is an excellent VM hosting choice and has wide compatibility with VMs from Windows Server 2008 R2 and quite a few Linux VMs, it is a prudent idea to verify compatibility for each VM meant for migration.

7. Security Issues

One of the main concerns of CIOs when considering moving infrastructure and software outside to a cloud platform is information security. Using secure protocols at the application level is good enough depending on the specific use case, but creation and implementation of a virtual private network with end-to-end encryption is definitely a solution that everyone should consider.

8. Managing and Monitoring Applications

Wherever your applications are hosted, you need to have the right processes in place in order to manage those applications effectively. Before you deploy to a production environment in the cloud you will need to ensure that you know what service level agreements you need and what your capacity planning strategy is.

How will customer billing work? Where will the data for application monitoring go?

Luckily the Azure SDK comes with a diagnostic API that can expose issues with event logs, crash dumps and trace failures. By using the API, it is possible to set up monitoring rules that will make monitoring and planning relatively straightforward.

9. Application Compatibility

Apart from making sure that databases remain compatible when running on Azure, it is also necessary to ensure that applications are compatible before taking a leap to the cloud. The key to this is testing. Put the application into an Azure test environment and then begin the testing process.

It is important that this be thorough, since discovering serious compatibility issues after going to production is very problematic to rectify without major service disruptions.

10. Disaster Recovery Planning

While it is unlikely that catastrophic data loss or application errors attributed to Azure will occur, however it is very important to have a robust disaster recovery plan in place. Azure itself can be used to restore losses if used as a backup solution for local storage. Be sure to study the types of disaster scenarios that are unique to cloud hosting on platforms like Azure and plan accordingly.

Fail To Plan, Plan To Fail

Underestimating the migration planning scope and requirements is a cardinal sin when migrating to Azure. The key take away should therefore be “measure twice and cut once”, as the adage goes. As an instructive example, an Enterprise migrates its legacy system to Microsoft Azure in IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) model to make their credit card payment process much more secure.

With the successful Azure migration solution, the enterprise was able to add extra layers of security, achieve zero downtime & zero data loss and cut costs by 75%.

Read more from our blog