Summary
Careful planning is essential for a successful SQL Server migration, which involves addressing both the how and why aspects of the migration. How refers to understanding the selection of appropriate migration tools and the development of a comprehensive migration plan. Why entails recognizing the benefits of migration. A critical element in this process is to evaluate the amount of downtime that the organization is willing to tolerate. Minimizing downtime during the migration process is crucial to maintaining operational efficiency and continuity.
You learned different tools and features to support and migrate SQL Server databases to SQL Server running on an Azure Virtual Machine, including Azure SQL Migration extension, back up and restore with Azure Blob Storage, detach and attach from a URL, log shipping, Azure Migrate, and a few others. The method chosen to migrate the database is typically dependent on how much time the SQL Server databases can be offline.
For further reading, you can refer to the following URLs:
- Migration guide: SQL Server to SQL Server on Azure VMs
- Extend on-premises Always On Availability Groups to Azure
- Transactional Replication