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Tutorial: Assess VMware servers for migration to AVS

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As part of your migration journey to Azure, you assess your on-premises workloads to measure cloud readiness, identify risks, and estimate costs and complexity.

This article shows you how to assess discovered VMware virtual machines/servers for migration to Azure VMware Solution (AVS), using the Azure Migrate. AVS is a managed service that allows you to run the VMware platform in Azure.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to:

  • Run an assessment based on server metadata and configuration information.
  • Run an assessment based on performance data.

Note

Tutorials show the quickest path for trying out a scenario and using default options where possible.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

Before you follow this tutorial to assess your servers for migration to AVS, make sure you've discovered the servers you want to assess:

Decide which assessment to run

Decide whether you want to run an assessment using sizing criteria based on server configuration data/metadata that's collected as-is on-premises, or on dynamic performance data.

Assessment Details Recommendation
As-is on-premises Assess based on server configuration data/metadata. Recommended node size in AVS is based on the on-premises VM/server size, along with the settings you specify in the assessment for the node type, storage type, and failure-to-tolerate setting.
Performance-based Assess based on collected dynamic performance data. Recommended node size in AVS is based on CPU and memory utilization data, along with the settings you specify in the assessment for the node type, storage type, and failure-to-tolerate setting.

Note

Azure VMware Solution (AVS) assessment can be created for VMware VMs/servers only.

Run an assessment

Run an assessment as follows:

  1. In Servers, databases and web apps > Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment.

  2. In Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment, select Assess.

  3. In Assess servers > Assessment type, select Azure VMware Solution (AVS).

  4. In Discovery source:

    • If you discovered servers using the appliance, select Servers discovered from Azure Migrate appliance.
    • If you discovered servers using an imported CSV file, select Imported servers.

  5. Select Edit to review the assessment properties.

    Page for selecting the assessment settings

  6. In Assessment settings, set the necessary values or retain the default values:

    Section Setting Details
    Target and pricing settings Target location The Azure region to which you want to migrate. Azure SQL configuration and cost recommendations are based on the location that you specify.
    Target and pricing settings Environment type The environment for the SQL deployments to apply pricing applicable to Production or Dev/Test.
    Target and pricing settings Offer/Licensing program The Azure offer if you're enrolled. Currently, the field is Pay-as-you-go by default, which gives you retail Azure prices.

    You can avail additional discount by applying reserved capacity and Azure Hybrid Benefit on top of Pay-as-you-go offer.
    You can apply Azure Hybrid Benefit on top of Pay-as-you-go offer and Dev/Test environment. The assessment doesn't support applying Reserved Capacity on top of Pay-as-you-go offer and Dev/Test environment.
    If the offer is set to Pay-as-you-go and Reserved capacity is set to No reserved instances, the monthly cost estimates are calculated by multiplying the number of hours chosen in the VM uptime field with the hourly price of the recommended SKU.
    Target and pricing settings Savings options - Azure SQL MI and DB (PaaS) Specify the reserved capacity savings option that you want the assessment to consider, helping to optimize your Azure compute cost.

    Azure reservations (1 year or 3 year reserved) are a good option for the most consistently running resources.

    When you select 'None', the Azure compute cost is based on the Pay as you go rate or based on actual usage.

    You need to select pay-as-you-go in offer/licensing program to be able to use Reserved Instances. When you select any savings option other than 'None', the 'Discount (%)' and "VM uptime" settings aren't applicable. The monthly cost estimates are calculated by multiplying 744 hours with the hourly price of the recommended SKU.
    Target and pricing settings Savings options - SQL Server on Azure VM (IaaS) Specify the savings option that you want the assessment to consider, helping to optimize your Azure compute cost.

    Azure reservations (1 year or 3 year reserved) are a good option for the most consistently running resources.

    Azure Savings Plan (1 year or 3 year savings plan) provide additional flexibility and automated cost optimization. Ideally post migration, you could use Azure reservation and savings plan at the same time (reservation is consumed first), but in the Azure Migrate assessments, you can only see cost estimates of 1 savings option at a time.

    When you select 'None', the Azure compute cost is based on the Pay as you go rate or based on actual usage.

    You need to select pay-as-you-go in offer/licensing program to be able to use Reserved Instances or Azure Savings Plan. When you select any savings option other than 'None', the 'Discount (%)' and "VM uptime" settings aren't applicable. The monthly cost estimates are calculated by multiplying 744 hours in the VM uptime field with the hourly price of the recommended SKU.
    Target and pricing settings Currency The billing currency for your account.
    Target and pricing settings Discount (%) Any subscription-specific discounts you receive on top of the Azure offer. The default setting is 0%.
    Target and pricing settings VM uptime Specify the duration (days per month/hour per day) that servers/VMs run. This is useful for computing cost estimates for SQL Server on Azure VM where you're aware that Azure VMs might not run continuously.
    Cost estimates for servers where recommended target is SQL Server on Azure VM are based on the duration specified. Default is 31 days per month/24 hours per day.
    Target and pricing settings Azure Hybrid Benefit Specify whether you already have a Windows Server and/or SQL Server license or Enterprise Linux subscription (RHEL and SLES). Azure Hybrid Benefit is a licensing benefit that helps you to significantly reduce the costs of running your workloads in the cloud. It works by letting you use your on-premises Software Assurance-enabled Windows Server and SQL Server licenses on Azure. For example, if you have a SQL Server license and they're covered with active Software Assurance of SQL Server Subscriptions, you can apply for the Azure Hybrid Benefit when you bring licenses to Azure.
    Assessment criteria Sizing criteria Set to be Performance-based by default, which means Azure Migrate collects performance metrics pertaining to SQL instances and the databases managed by it to recommend an optimal-sized SQL Server on Azure VM and/or Azure SQL Database and/or Azure SQL Managed Instance configuration.
    Assessment criteria Performance history Indicate the data duration on which you want to base the assessment. (Default is one day)
    Assessment criteria Percentile utilization Indicate the percentile value you want to use for the performance sample. (Default is 95th percentile)
    Assessment criteria Comfort factor Indicate the buffer you want to use during assessment. This accounts for issues like seasonal usage, short performance history, and likely increases in future usage. For example, consider a comfort factor of 2 for effective utilization of 2 Cores. In this case, the assessment considers the effective cores as 4 cores. Similarly, for the same comfort factor and an effective utilization of 8 GB memory, the assessment considers effective memory as 16 GB.
    Assessment criteria Optimization preference Specify the preference for the recommended assessment report. Selecting Minimize cost would result in the Recommended assessment report recommending those deployment types that have least migration issues and are most cost effective, whereas selecting Modernize to PaaS would result in Recommended assessment report recommending PaaS(Azure SQL MI or DB) deployment types over IaaS Azure(VMs), wherever the SQL Server instance is ready for migration to PaaS irrespective of cost.
    Azure SQL Managed Instance sizing Service Tier Choose the most appropriate service tier option to accommodate your business needs for migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance:

    Select Recommended if you want Azure Migrate to recommend the best suited service tier for your servers. This can be General purpose or Business critical.

    Select General Purpose if you want an Azure SQL configuration designed for budget-oriented workloads.

    Select Business Critical if you want an Azure SQL configuration designed for low-latency workloads with high resiliency to failures and fast failovers.
    Azure SQL Managed Instance sizing Instance type Defaulted to Single instance.
    Azure SQL Managed Instance sizing Pricing Tier Defaulted to Standard.
    SQL Server on Azure VM sizing VM series Specify the Azure VM series you want to consider for SQL Server on Azure VM sizing. Based on the configuration and performance requirements of your SQL Server or SQL Server instance, the assessment recommends a VM size from the selected list of VM series.
    You can edit settings as needed. For example, if you don't want to include D-series VM, you can exclude D-series from this list.
    As Azure SQL assessments intend to give the best performance for your SQL workloads, the VM series list only has VMs that are optimized for running your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). Learn more.
    SQL Server on Azure VM sizing Storage Type Defaulted to Recommended, which means the assessment recommends the best suited Azure Managed Disk based on the chosen environment type, on-premises disk size, IOPS and throughput.
    Azure SQL Database sizing Service Tier Choose the most appropriate service tier option to accommodate your business needs for migration to Azure SQL Database:

    Select Recommended if you want Azure Migrate to recommend the best suited service tier for your servers. This can be General purpose or Business critical.

    Select General Purpose if you want an Azure SQL configuration designed for budget-oriented workloads.

    Select Business Critical if you want an Azure SQL configuration designed for low-latency workloads with high resiliency to failures and fast failovers.
    Azure SQL Database sizing Instance type Defaulted to Single database.
    Azure SQL Database sizing Purchase model Defaulted to vCore.
    Azure SQL Database sizing Compute tier Defaulted to Provisioned.
    High availability and disaster recovery properties Disaster recovery region Defaulted to the cross-region replication pair of the Target Location. In the unlikely event that the chosen Target Location doesn't yet have such a pair, the specified Target Location itself is chosen as the default disaster recovery region.
    High availability and disaster recovery properties Multi-subnet intent Defaulted to Disaster recovery.

    Select Disaster recovery if you want asynchronous data replication where some replication delays are tolerable. This allows higher durability using geo-redundancy. In the event of failover, data that hasn't yet been replicated may be lost.

    Select High availability if you desire the data replication to be synchronous and no data loss due to replication delay is allowable. This setting allows assessment to leverage built-in high availability options in Azure SQL Databases and Azure SQL Managed Instances, and availability zones and zone-redundancy in Azure Virtual Machines to provide higher availability. In the event of failover, no data is lost.
    High availability and disaster recovery properties Internet Access Defaulted to Available.

    Select Available if you allow outbound internet access from Azure VMs. This allows the use of Cloud Witness which is the recommended approach for Windows Server Failover Clusters in Azure Virtual Machines.

    Select Not available if the Azure VMs have no outbound internet access. This requires the use of a Shared Disk as a witness for Windows Server Failover Clusters in Azure Virtual Machines.
    High availability and disaster recovery properties Async commit mode intent Defaulted to Disaster recovery.

    Select Disaster recovery if you're using asynchronous commit availability mode to enable higher durability for the data without affecting performance. In the event of failover, data that hasn't yet been replicated may be lost.

    Select High availability if you're using asynchronous commit data availability mode to improve availability and scale out read traffic. This setting allows assessment to leverage built-in high availability features in Azure SQL Databases, Azure SQL Managed Instances, and Azure Virtual Machines to provide higher availability and scale out.

  7. Select Save if you make changes.

    Assessment properties

  8. In Assess Servers, select Next.

  9. In Select servers to assess > Assessment name > specify a name for the assessment.

  10. In Select or create a group > select Create New and specify a group name.

    Add servers to a group

  11. Select the appliance and select the servers that you want to add to the group. Then select Next.

  12. In Review + create assessment, review the assessment details, and select Create Assessment to create the group and run the assessment.

    Note

    For performance-based assessments, we recommend that you wait at least a day after starting discovery before you create an assessment. This provides time to collect performance data with higher confidence. Ideally, after you start discovery, wait for the performance duration you specify (day/week/month) for a high-confidence rating.

Review an assessment

An AVS assessment describes:

  • Azure VMware Solution (AVS) readiness: Whether the on-premises servers are suitable for migration to Azure VMware Solution (AVS).
  • Number of Azure VMware Solution nodes: Estimated number of Azure VMware Solution nodes required to run the servers.
  • Utilization across AVS nodes: Projected CPU, memory, and storage utilization across all nodes.
    • Utilization includes upfront factoring in the cluster management overheads such as the vCenter Server, NSX Manager (large), NSX Edge, if HCX is deployed also the HCX Manager and IX appliance consuming ~ 44vCPU (11 CPU), 75 GB of RAM and 722 GB of storage before compression and deduplication.
    • Limiting factor determines the number of hosts/nodes required to accommodate the resources.
  • Monthly cost estimation: The estimated monthly costs for all Azure VMware Solution (AVS) nodes running the on-premises VMs.

You can select Sizing assumptions to understand the assumptions that went in node sizing and resource utilization calculations. You can also edit the assessment properties or recalculate the assessment.

View an assessment

To view an assessment:

  1. In Servers, databases and web apps > Azure Migrate: Discovery and assessment, select the number next to Azure VMware Solution.

  2. In Assessments, select an assessment to open it. As an example (estimations and costs for example only):

    AVS Assessment summary

  3. Review the assessment summary.

Review readiness

  1. Select Azure readiness.

  2. In Azure readiness, review the readiness status.

    • Ready for AVS: The server can be migrated as-is to Azure (AVS) without any changes. It starts in AVS with full AVS support.
    • Ready with conditions: There might be some compatibility issues, for example, internet protocol or deprecated OS in VMware and need to be remediated before migrating to Azure VMware Solution. To fix any readiness problems, follow the remediation guidance that the assessment suggests.
    • Not ready for AVS: The VM won't start in AVS. For example, if the on-premises VMware VM has an external device attached such as a CD-ROM the VMware VMotion operation fails (if using VMware VMotion).
    • Readiness unknown: Azure Migrate couldn't determine the readiness of the server because of insufficient metadata collected from the on-premises environment.

  3. Review the suggested tool.

    • VMware HCX or Enterprise: For VMware servers, the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) solution is the suggested migration tool to migrate your on-premises workload to your Azure VMware Solution (AVS) private cloud.
    • Unknown: For servers imported via a CSV file, the default migration tool is unknown. Though for VMware servers, it's suggested to use the VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) solution.

  4. Select an AVS readiness status. You can view the server readiness details, and drill down to see server details, including compute, storage, and network settings.

Review cost estimates

The assessment summary shows the estimated compute and storage cost of running servers in Azure.

  1. Review the monthly total costs. Costs are aggregated for all servers in the assessed group.

    • Cost estimates are based on the number of AVS nodes required considering the resource requirements of all the servers in total.
    • As the pricing is per node, the total cost doesn't have compute cost and storage cost distribution.
    • The cost estimation is for running the on-premises servers in AVS. The AVS assessment doesn't consider PaaS or SaaS costs.

  2. Review monthly storage estimates. The view shows the aggregated storage costs for the assessed group, split over different types of storage disks.

  3. You can drill down to see cost details for specific servers.

Review confidence rating

Server Assessment assigns a confidence rating to performance-based assessments. Rating is from one star (lowest) to five stars (highest).

The confidence rating helps you estimate the reliability of size recommendations in the assessment. The rating is based on the availability of data points needed to compute the assessment.

Note

Confidence ratings aren't assigned if you create an assessment based on a CSV file.

Confidence ratings are as follows.

Data point availability Confidence rating
0%-20% 1 star
21%-40% 2 stars
41%-60% 3 stars
61%-80% 4 stars
81%-100% 5 stars

Learn more about confidence ratings.

Next steps