Easily migrate SQL Server applications to the cloud with Azure

February 15, 2023

Microsoft Azure knows SQL Server best and will support your cloud migration at no cost for qualifying scenarios.

The SQL Server platform has been successfully driving transformative business results with Microsoft customers across industries for over 25 years, enabling breakthrough innovation through unique capabilities like industry-leading performance¹ and security built-in.

Microsoft’s continuous investments in SQL Server enable more flexibility with options for companies looking to simply save on costs, or to really transform their current SQL Server–based applications and data estate.

These options include:

Azure SQL Managed Instance, a fully managed cloud database that is compatible with SQL Server back to version 2008.
A serverless compute version that stops, starts, and scales with your workloads.
Elastic pools for managing groups of databases with ease.
Hyperscale, the flexible, high-performance service tier that scales to meet demand—all unique to Azure.

Reasons for choosing Azure over other clouds for your SQL Server applications go beyond having access to more options to meet your business and technical needs. SQL Server running in Azure also enables higher savings than AWS with faster performance¹, lower downtime^2, and AI-based, automatic tuning that continuously maintains peak database performance. Azure SQL is based on the SQL Server database platform, the least vulnerable commercial database in the NIST National Vulnerability Database for over 10 years³.

With Microsoft you can also decide where you want to run your SQL Server databases in your own datacenter, the cloud of your choice, or hybrid and multicloud deployments with Azure Arc–enabled SQL Managed Instance and the recently launched SQL Server 2022.

SQL Server 2022

The most Azure-enabled release yet, with continued performance, security, and availability innovation.

Learn more

If you’re considering moving to the cloud, besides getting the most out of a cloud-based SQL Server, you can take the first step with Azure free of charge. I’m pleased to share that the new Microsoft SQL + Apps Migration Factory initiative can support your low-friction migrations of SQL Server and Windows Server–based applications at no cost.

The Microsoft SQL + Apps Migration Factory is a delivery model offered through the Unified/Customer Success resources that gathers skilled professionals, comprehensive processes, and tools to help you plan, execute, and migrate qualifying SQL Server workloads and associated application virtual machines (VMs) to Azure with near-zero code changes. In other words, it blends the technical components of cloud migration with the business and human components—so critical to helping you achieve your goals.

With this offer, you can get specialized assistance to help choose the migration approach that suits your business, such as moving a single workload or having a migration in phases, as well as guided savings and application assessments. All with the main goal of having a seamless and efficient workload migration without business disruption. Once your environment is migrated, our team can also help ensure the SQL Server workload is properly secured and performs adequately.

Hundreds of customers have already signed up to leverage this Customer Success Factory delivery model to accelerate migrations of known low-friction scenarios that do not require refactoring. Typical use cases favored by customers have included out-of-support SQL Server and Windows Servers, dev-test environments, disaster recovery (DR) environments, and applications with a compelling business need to migrate to the cloud in the near term that do not require refactoring or rewriting. This approach also minimizes the risk of business disruption as the migration journey is jumpstarted with these low-friction scenarios and advancing your digital transformation priorities in a phased manner. We like to think of this approach as eating your cake one slice at a time and we can support slices as small or as big as you need. You can even come back for seconds and thirds at any time to advance your migration and modernization journey in an iterative and controlled manner.

So, if your SQL Server estate, including associated Windows Server–based apps, has these or other scenarios that are ready to migrate in the near term without refactoring to optimized Azure SQL and Azure VM destinations, talk to your Microsoft account team about the Factory delivery model or apply now to get started.

Learn more

¹Microsoft Azure SQL Managed Instance benchmark vs. AWS RDS for SQL Server using Azure Hybrid Benefit pricing, May 2022

²Service Level Agreements Summary | Microsoft Azure

³National Vulnerability Database (NVD), National Institute of Standards and Technology

⁴Subject to the limitations described in the full SQL + Apps Migration Factory program specifications here, and provided that the SQL Server workloads are low complexity with no code changes, Microsoft agrees to assess and migrate SQL Server databases and SQL Server-associated applications from your datacenter or AWS EC2 to Azure at no cost to customer. Migrations must be completed by June 30, 2023.