Migration domain controllers and SQL server to Azure

Question

Good day.

I have a customer that wants to migrate their on-premises workloads to the cloud. They want to Migrate Domain controllers(they have 2), an SQL server, and a few other VMs to the cloud. All they have set up on the domains are AD, DNS, DHCP, and GPOs. Their current AD structure is separated into 2 domains abc.com and def.com but they're thinking of combining both domains into one(domainname.com as the parent domain and have separate child domains).

I am trying to wrap my head around this and need some guidance on the right approach to take for the migration. Recommended steps to get this completed are welcomed.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

For Active Directory restructuring, refer to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19188 Pls note that this is an extensive undertaking. To migrate servers to Azure, you might want to consider Azure Migrate - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/migrate/migrate-services-overview hth
Marcin

Answer 2

Since you need to migrate a small number of virtual machines, deploying the entire Azure Site Recovery infrastructure for that purpose may be an overkill. Consider copying and importing your VMs VHD(X) files directly into Azure or use a small free tool called V2V Converter https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter to automate this process.

As for the SQL server, please check if Azure SQL fulfills your SQL database requirements: https://azure.microsoft.com/de-de/products/azure-sql. Azure SQL will surely be much cheaper than running an entire VM for pure SQL server purposes.

Good luck with your migration process!