AZ-305 Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions Exam

Evaluate on-premises servers, data, and applications for migration

Discovery and Readiness Assessment using Azure Migrate

Azure Migrate assessments provide a centralized way to evaluate on-premises servers, data, and applications for migration to Azure. The assessment process begins with discovery, where a lightweight Azure Migrate appliance inventories servers, databases, and applications without installing agents. This inventory captures performance metrics such as CPU, memory, storage IOPS, and network utilization over time. It also maps application dependencies to reveal how servers and services interact. These initial steps establish the performance baselines and topology required for accurate migration planning.

After discovery, Azure Migrate performs a readiness evaluation to determine whether workloads can migrate to Azure services. The assessment checks for compatibility issues with operating systems, database versions, storage sizes, and other configuration settings. Each workload is categorized as Ready for Azure, Conditionally ready, Not ready, or Unknown, guiding remediation efforts before migration. Assessment settings like target region, storage type, and compute families influence the readiness outcomes. This ensures that every workload is validated against suitable Azure targets.

The assessment then generates right-sized recommendations and cost estimates for target Azure resources. Performance-based sizing uses collected utilization data and percentile analysis (for example, 95th percentile) multiplied by a comfort factor to recommend optimal VM sizes, disk types, or database SKUs. As-is on-premises sizing bases recommendations solely on existing server configurations. Finally, the tool calculates monthly costs by aggregating compute, storage, licensing, and ancillary service charges based on selected pricing settings. This end-to-end cost estimation helps determine whether to rehost, refactor, or rearchitect workloads.

To help assess recommendation reliability, Azure Migrate assigns confidence ratings to performance-based assessments. Ratings from one to five stars reflect the availability of required data points, such as CPU, RAM, IOPS, and network I/O metrics. Low confidence prompts administrators to extend profiling duration or switch to on-premises sizing, while high confidence confirms accurate recommendations. The assessment results—readiness status, right-sizing, cost details, and migration guidance—are packaged into reports for stakeholders. Based on these insights, migration teams can choose the optimal approach and timeline for moving workloads to Azure.

Conclusion

To successfully migrate on-premises servers, data, and applications to Azure, it is important to conduct a thorough assessment using tools like Azure Migrate. The assessment process includes discovering server inventories and resource utilization, evaluating compatibility with Azure services, generating cost estimates, and making migration recommendations. By following these steps and considering readiness evaluations and confidence ratings, organizations can ensure a smooth and efficient transition to the Azure cloud platform.