Microsoft provides a wide range of integrated solutions that span from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), onsite data centers, and hybrid configurations with support for both Windows and Linux. Azure Site Recovery’s strong migration capabilities have never been easier to use.
Today, only Azure seamlessly connects your on-premises data center to the cloud. Azure’s superior capabilities, first-rate services, and integrated solutions help you break new ground. Because there is no steep learning curve in Azure, your organization can be productive from the start. If you want to build a true hybrid cloud platform with an easy integration between your existing on-premises assets and the power of Azure, but are restricted to another public cloud such as AWS, consider utilizing Site Recovery’s new migration capabilities. Microsoft Hyper-V Replica is available as part of the Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) and is free to try or for migrations for the first 31 days.
The four simple actions needed to move your applications from AWS to Azure. They are as follows:
Prepare Azure Resources
- In order to prepare for your applications to be moved to Azure, you must set up infrastructure components in Azure. The Site Recovery vault will be your starting point for all of your ASR adventures. In Azure, follow the Quick Start Wizard’s instructions to deploy two IaaS VMs: a configuration server and a master target server. To deploy these VMs, you will need an Azure account and to have created a Site Recovery vault. The AWS Management Console provides an easy way to deploy the VMs in AWS. You will also need access to an AWS account, as well as an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket in which to store your VM images.
Prepare AWS resources
- To deploy the process server, you’ll need an EC2 instance running the process server component. Keep in mind the guidelines for sizing of the process server when deploying it. The purpose of the process server is to have access to your application’s VMs on AWS, therefore it is suggested that you put it in the same subnet as them. To enable communication with the process server, both the VMs you are moving and their associated security groups must allow inbound TCP and UDP connections on ports 135-139, 445, and 1024-65535. After you’ve finished this procedure and registered your process server with the configurations server, you’re ready to proceed to the next stage.
Discover and “protect” AWS VMs in Azure
- Finally, you can begin searching for your VMs on AWS at this point. To discover all the EC2 instances you want to migrate to Azure, create a protection group and use the “add physical machine” workflow. You may easily identify them by using the EC2 instance’s private IP address, but there’s also the benefit of having a pleasant, color-coded map of your AWS environment in the Azure portal. After you select all of the VMs you want to move and click “Protect,” the process server will begin replicating your selected VMs’ disks to Azure storage. The first replication can take some time, but future incremental changes will replicate much more quickly. Depending on your network connection, AWS region, and other factors, this process can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more.
Perform a final sync and planned failover
- Once all of your disks have been replicated to Azure storage, you’re ready to do a final sync. This is done by taking a snapshot of each VM’s disk on AWS After this step is complete, all the VMs you identified in the previous step will begin to replicate to Azure. This can be a long running operation depending on the size of the virtual machines, the network capacity and the process server. Once this initial replication is successful you are ready for migration.
Finally, as you’ve seen, it’s simple to move your apps from one cloud to the next. Take advantage of Azure’s truly hybrid hyper-scale public cloud and migrate your applications. After the first 31 days, moving Windows virtual machines from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Azure is quick and painless thanks to the assistance of the Azure Site Recovery (ASR) service. AWS to Azure is a cost effective migration with many benefits, so don’t wait any longer and get started today!
