Do you need to upgrade your entire server environment to Azure at once, or can you do it progressively? In this episode of TNtv 3Qs Sales Director, Chris Montgomery and Cloud Services Manager, Aaron Oliver continue to part 3 of our Azure series. They explore how companies can migrate their current server environment to Azure without disrupting workflow. Learn more about creating a hybrid environment with Azure & ThrottleNet in this week’s episode.
Video Transcript
In this episode, we are discussing how you can upgrade your entire server environment to Azure without moving it all at once. Your organization has the option of applying Azure solutions progressively or whatever best fits your needs. ThrottleNet’s Sales Director, Chris Montgomery and Cloud Services Manager, Aaron Oliver continue discussing the Azure series and how companies can infiltrate the server environment that they currently have seamlessly into their daily workflow. Read more to learn how Azure can benefit your organization and how you can migrate to an Azure server environment form your on-premise server environment.
All or Nothing?
- If a business wants to start moving more towards Azure, do they have to take their entire server environment and push it up there?
Or is this something they can do in pieces and dip their toe in the water to see if this is something that will work well for them? - Answer: That’s the beauty of Azure. You can move all of it or just move individual servers or services
- With Azure, you can create a virtual network that will have a VPN connection just like if it was another office, so your on-prem infrastructure can “talk to” the new infrastructure that you put in the Azure environment to give you a seamless transitions (gives you the option of having servers in-site and/or servers in the Cloud)
- It all acts as one large infrastructure in a hybrid environment
- The Gradual Approach: crucial servers & services can be moved to Azure’s Cloud while keeping others on-site
Would a User Notice Any Difference?
- User Experience: Seamless transition with the same applications and services
- Answer: No, from a user’s standpoint they would still be using the same applications and services just like they were connecting to the original on-premise services
- As you move those services to the Cloud, the user’s really shouldn’t notice a difference if it’s done correctly.
Given the fact that they can move in sections to do whatever they want to do,
Where’s a Good Place to Start?
Depends on the organization and what their needs or decisions about how they are going to move are made.
We are seeing a lot of clients decommission their file servers and move to Azure’s Active Directory along with OneDrive and SharePoint to facilitate those file server needs to eliminate the need for remote workers to have VPNs
Where to Begin:
- Decommission file servers
- Move to Azure’s Active Directory
- OneDrive & SharePoint
- Remove required VPNs
- Sync local active directory with Azure active directory so you can keep all of your permissions and security roles intact as you make this move from on-prem to cloud
- From there you can do whatever you want. You can pick out individual applications that you’d like to move to the Cloud (moving entire server or just the application itself)
The same thing goes for SQL servers, you can move the SQL server as it sits on prim to a virtual machine in the Cloud
Or if your application allows it, instead of paying for an entire virtual machine in the Cloud, you can just pay for a SQL database in the Cloud & then have your application that you moved to the Cloud talk to that SQL instance without ever having a virtual machine at all, it can be serverless.
Things to Consider:
- Can access your apps anywhere
- Can move SQL server
- Can lower costs & exposure
- May not need a server altogether
- As you move certain pieces, you may find that you can do certain things without servers and other processes for your business that might require a server on the backend can be moved in chunks as well.
- Whatever fits your needs and benefits your company the greatest
**Increase efficiencies by moving apps to the Cloud, and reduce capital costs by not replacing end-of-life servers.
Why Move?
- Now that we understand where you might want to consider starting, what are some of the benefits a company should expect to derive?
- What it means to your business:
-Reduce capital expenditures
-Reduce server maintenance costs
-Removes warranty renewals
-Reduces data center hosting costs
-Increase the server security
-Meet your compliance requirements
-Scalability drastically improved
-Only pay for what you need - Get you out of the hardware purchasing & hosting business
- Reduce the maintenance on all those physical servers, Microsoft now takes care of al that for you when your servers are in Azure
- Reduce some of your power consumption costs if you’re having to rent a data center for some of your servers now, some of that cost would get rolled up in your Azure per-month pricing
- Also going to increase the security that’s available to your organization, won’t have to worry about access to a shared data center
- If you’re a company that has compliance requirements, Microsoft has documentation that they will provide to partners and vendors if needed for any kind of audit that you might have to undergo
- In general, you will only pay for what you need
- Instead of scaling up those big hardware stores, it’s going to allow you to pay for what you need & not pay for things that you aren’t using or for servers that may sit in the background and do nothing
