Microsoft Blog on Data Transference Processes
The latest update to SQL Server on Azure Arc brings a new migration assessment experience, designed to simplify and clarify the process of moving SQL Servers to Azure, while offering improved cost insights and transparency.
This new experience automates and continuous assessments of SQL Servers, evaluating their readiness for migration to Azure SQL, identifying potential risks, compatibility issues, and suggesting mitigation strategies. By default, these assessments are produced once a week, providing up-to-date insights on migration readiness without the need for manual intervention.
The new assessment experience also offers right-sizing and cost clarity, providing best-fit recommendations on Azure SQL service tiers and SKU sizes based on historical workload performance. This enables organizations to align their performance needs with Azure costs, delivering clearer cost insights upfront and avoiding over- or under-provisioning.
Integration with Azure Migrate and AI capabilities further enhances the new experience. Microsoft has introduced AI assistants in Azure Migrate tools that generate natural language summaries of migration assessments, including cost optimization insights. These AI-driven summaries help organizations understand cost implications, compliance, and workload placement recommendations to reduce latency and meet residency requirements.
The new experience consolidates discovery, readiness assessment, sizing recommendations, and cost estimates into an automated and continuously updated process. By simplifying migration planning, it reduces complexity and helps teams make confident, well-informed migration decisions faster.
In addition, the new experience offers deployment options for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc, precomputed savings for all prices for savings options, and savings visibility for easier comparison during migration. It also provides migration strategy-based recommendations alongside chosen pricing settings, and projection of cost split by Compute and Storage for each configuration.
The new migration assessment experience utilizes pricing for the West US region and fixed USD in all assessments, and is accessible from the portal alongside chosen pricing settings. A refreshed landing page and detailed views for single Arc SQL Server instances have also been introduced to make the path to Azure clearer and more cost-effective.
Overall, the new migration assessment experience in SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc provides a streamlined, transparent, and cost-aware migration assessment experience that empowers organizations to plan migrations with improved clarity and confidence.
Technology in data-and-cloud-computing, specifically SQL Server on Azure Arc, offers advanced migration assessments that utilize AI and automation. These assessments evaluate the readiness of SQL Servers for Azure migration, provide cost insights, and suggest optimized service tiers and SKU sizes, enhancing migration planning and reducing operational costs.
