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Microsoft is expanding its Azure migration tools and services as it works to get businesses onto its cloud platform.
Among the new developments flagged during the vendor’s 2021 Ignite digital event was that its Azure Migration Program (AMP), which provides assistance to simplify cloud migration, will offer expanded support for application modernisation scenarios in the coming weeks.
Specifically, AMP will support the modernisation of popular web apps, including .NET, Java and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) apps.
“These apps can be modernised to a customer’s choice of compute (i.e., Azure Kubernetes Service or Azure App Service) and database (i.e., Azure SQL or MySQL or PostgreSQL),” Microsoft said in a statement.
The AMP expansion builds on existing support for migrating data centre infrastructure, databases and virtual desktop infrastructure, with the vendor suggesting the new additions help to enable coverage for a rich set of migration and modernisation scenarios spanning applications, infrastructure and data.
Meanwhile, Azure Migrate, the central hub of Azure cloud migration services and tools, now has three new capabilities in preview.
The hub now includes an app containerisation tool, with support for ASP.NET and Java web applications, to help users migrate applications to containers running on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Additionally, the hub’s new Azure PowerShell module adds support for the Server Migration tool’s agentless method of migrating VMware virtual machines (VMs) to Azure.
Moreover, the Azure Migrate hub’s unified discovery and assessment capabilities for Windows, Linux and SQL server now lets users discover and assess their SQL servers for migration to Azure and their databases from within the Azure Migrate portal.
At the same time, the new Azure Migrate Azure PowerShell module, which is now available in preview, has added support for the Server Migration tool’s agentless method of migrating VMware VMs to Azure.
According to Microsoft, users can now configure and manage replication of servers to Azure and migrate them to Azure VMs using Azure PowerShell cmdlets in an automated, repeatable manner.
Other updates included FastTrack for Azure, a technical enablement program that assists with the deployment of cloud solutions, which now offers two new services – accelerating production deployments for cloud native applications and support for Hybrid/Azure Arc deployments starting with servers.
The company also noted that new best practice guidance on adopting hybrid and multicloud approaches has been added to Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework, a collection of documentation, guidance and tools to help customers accelerate their cloud adoption.
“This new guidance enables customers to take advantage of the benefits of hybrid and multicloud adoption while also ensuring consistent security, governance and compliance across the board,” the company said.
