Legacy CRM systems and applications

Question

Hi all,

Many of our customers have on-prem environment where they have applications which need to be accessed just few times a year. They would like to decommission on-prem environment and we are looking into azure vms and virtual desktops. Many of these CRM systems and legacy apps are running on Windows Server 2008 R2.

What is the right way to go? Azure VM's or azure virtual desktop? Can anyone please help us with this?

Answer 1

I would go the Azure VM's path as it allow older OS to be run. (even Windows Server 2003 in example)

If the CRM need to be there for a long time, like 10 years+, I would still recommend to virtualize it to a small host on-prem as you never know when the support will be cut to run older OS.

I recommand that too as I guess you will use the ad sync's tool to migrate the account, but the older CRM system might have domain join or such restriction. Which could potentially force you to create another Azure VM to host a domain controller online if you need to keep the domain the same for that VM if needed.

Answer 2

Hi Troops

Regarding your first question, setting up a site-to-site VPN in Azure does not cost extra, but you will need to pay for the VPN gateway and any data transfer costs associated with the VPN connection. The cost of the VPN gateway depends on the SKU you choose and the amount of data transferred. You can find more information about VPN gateway pricing on the Azure pricing page.

If users do not need access to the VM outside the office, you can use RDP and a public IP address to access the VM. However, keep in mind that this can be less secure than using a VPN connection, as RDP traffic is not encrypted by default.

Regarding your second question, if you preserve the configuration of the Nav server and choose the same VM specs in Azure, that should be enough in terms of CPU and RAM. However, keep in mind that the performance of the VM in Azure may be different from the on-premises VM, depending on factors such as network latency and storage performance. It's a good idea to test the performance of the Nav server in Azure before migrating production workloads to ensure that it meets your performance requirements.

Hope this helps!

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