Migrate Servers to Azure

[farnworthz]

Hello,

 

I'm currently considering fully migrating our servers to Azure. I have set them up there as a test network, and so far, everything seems to be working well. However, our external support company, which provides us with VOIP, Firewalls, etc., has mentioned incidents where servers were infected with viruses, resulting in excessive bandwidth usage and substantial bills consisting of thousands of pounds, ouch!I'm not merely moving the servers to Azure and forgetting about them.

 

I plan to implement daily monitoring to keep track of costs. I have already factored in 2TB of outbound VNET data from Azure, and the projected costs seem reasonable to me, although it is somewhat pay-as-you-go. I'm also installing Sophos Protection on there to get rid of anything that shouldn't be on there.

 

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has fully migrated to Azure, as I am genuinely interested in this and believe it could be the right move for our MAT.

 

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Zak

[snagrat]

How many servers and what roles are we talking about?

[farnworthz]

Well, our environment is fairly small, we've already got a datacentre server with a company, that's our Main Domain Controller that is handling all printers (I know, I hate it). So, in Azure, I'm going to start with one that will takeover printers, and act as a second DC, until I can get it off on a seperate VM, I've looked at our data transfer on the XG and it's looking at about 60GB a month.

[Roberto]

The one thing I’d say is don’t focus on migrating servers to Azure, instead focus on migrating services to Azure. I know that sounds like I’m nitpicking, but it’s important for both managing costs and reducing complexity (and therefore security risks).

 

What do I mean? Consider a file server - could it be replaced by Azure Storage? Could a database server be replaced (or at least scaled back) by migrating at least some of your server-hosted databases to Azure SQL? Web servers with Azure App services, etc? Print server (as you mentioned this) by universal print?

 

I have no idea if any of that will be useful but the point is to work in a cost effective and efficient manner with the cloud, stop thinking ’servers’ and start thinking ‘service’

Edited September 14, 2024 by Roberto

[chaplic]

Agree with Roberto. I'm nearing completion of a project to close a physical datacentre of about 2000 servers and migrate to the cloud. Moving the server to Azure/ standing up a new one is very much the last option. If it's end user files, teams/onedrive/sharepoint should be your first port of call, then Azure Files

 

Then, using cloud equivalents which might be feature-poorer in some respects but much cheaper than the legacy equivalent (e.g. Azure Load Balancer vs an F5)

 

But assuming we have to move the server there are still things to consider. Could we remove need for a second server and use Azure Site Recovery? Can we turn off boxes overnight or reduce resilency. Can we avoid backup at all for some servers if we can automate and document builds?

[Aprice]

Agreed, I'd advise against just moving VMs straight to Azure unless there's a really good reason to do so. We use some VMs in the cloud for lightweight Linux VMs like Unifi controllers, PBXs etc as the cost to run them is trivial.

 

Replacing with services makes a whole load more sense, we're gradually moving customers away from on premises AD to Fully Entra / Intune. Print will likely move to PaperCut Hive. Running services is much more cost effective.