With rising demands from the ever-changing business landscape and now with the global pandemic, organizations large and small continue to accelerate digital transformation initiatives to thrive in the new hybrid world. Organizations that have migrated their core business applications and databases to the cloud have overcome many of the challenges several industries have encountered since the global pandemic began. The fundamental step towards a successful digital transformation is enabling organizations to migrate and modernize to the cloud.
To help migrate SQL Server databases to Azure, we are announcing a new migration experience that will not only help assess and migrate SQL Server databases to Azure with minimal downtime, but to do so using Azure Data Studio powered by Azure Database Migration Service. Azure Data Studio is a popular tool used by database administrators, data operations professionals, and developers to manage databases both on-premises and in the cloud.
Use the Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio to migrate to either Azure SQL Managed Instance (Platform-as-a-Service) or to SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (Infrastructure-as-a-Service). As part of this Public Preview announcement, the extension will support migrations for both online (for migrations that require minimal downtime) and offline (for migrations where downtime persists through the duration of the migration) modes that suit the requirements of various applications.
Get started with the Azure SQL Migration extension from the server connections in Azure Data Studio and launch the Migrate to Azure SQL wizard to begin.
The new Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio brings together a simplified assessment and migration experience that delivers the following capabilities.
- Integrated assessment and migration experience. A responsive user interface that provides an easy-to-navigate step-by-step wizard to configure, run and monitor database migrations.
- Assessment for cloud readiness. An enhanced assessment engine that can assess SQL Server instances and identify databases that are ready for migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines.
- Minimal downtime migrations. A robust, scalable, and secure Azure Database Migration Service that provides reliability and resiliency for database migrations and orchestrates data movement activities to deliver a seamless migration experience with minimal downtime.
Sample database readiness assessment for Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine.
Starting today, the new Azure SQL Migration extension is available in the Azure Data Studio marketplace. Azure Data Studio provides the flexibility as a cross-platform database tool for data professionals who use on-premises and cloud data platforms on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
To provide secure and easy access to source database backups and to upload them to Azure, we are providing the flexibility to set up a self-hosted integration runtime on a machine that can connect to the on-premises environment. All of these data movement activities are automated and orchestrated by the Azure Database Migration Service, thereby reducing the effort to perform database migrations.
The database backup files can be provided in an on-premises network file share where the service will utilize the self-hosted integration runtime to fetch the database backups. Alternatively, the database backup files can be provided in an Azure storage container where the service can fetch the backups and migrate them to the desired target. The extension also provides monitoring of database migrations along with a detailed view of database backups’ metadata and restore status on the target Azure SQL MI or SQL Server on Azure VM.
We believe that this new migration experience will empower you to successfully complete your database migrations to Azure SQL and in turn deliver greater business outcomes.
To learn more
- Get started with the Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio
- Read how to migrate databases with Azure Data Studio
- Watch Getting started with Azure SQL readiness assessments and migrations from Azure Data Studio
- Visit the data migration guides hub for documentation on various database migrations
