In January 2020, Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2008 and 2008R2. In addition, support for SQL 2008 and 2008R2 ended in July this year.
That means the end of regular security updates - don't let your infrastructure and applications go unprotected by not acting before it happens.
Many businesses are taking this as an opportunity to review their server workloads and consider moving them to Azure.
End of support doesn't have to be a bad thing - look at it as an opportunity to embrace the power of the cloud, enhance performance and improve reliability. You could even end up saving money!
If you want to understand Azure a bit more and all that it offers try our recent blog article which explains all!
Take a look at the workloads you're running now. here is it? How old is the hardware? Is it using soon-to-be end of life software?
You can use tools like Azure Migrate and Microsoft Data Migration Assistant. The TCO Calculator can be a handy tool to estimate savings when moving your workloads to Azure.
The output of the Assess phase should be a list of items you’ve discovered, and ranked according to business impact and value. This should allow you to to prioritise the systems you need to migrate. You need to gain a good understanding of the applications you need to migrate, the architecture they need, and any dependencies. Engage your software and platform IT support teams, they'll have some thoughts!
Some of the questions you’ll want to ask include:
Once you've worked out what needs to and can migrate it's time to you need to think about the approach.
Some applications may need to stay in your office for performance or specific system or security requirements, they'll just need to be upgraded.
Others, you could take the opportunity to rebuild, delivering new features and performance improvements and solving some of those long standing problems.
Lastly, you could simply rehost it to Azure but on a newer, supported server.
Once you've settled on the best approach, and worked out the costs, it's time to get on with your migrations.
Give yourself plenty of time and ensure everything is thoroughly tested before going live. Take the opportunity to make sure everything is set up according to best practice and security is at the core of all your decisions.
Involve your application support teams and IT support teams - they'll be able to guide and assist you and help you identify any issues before they catch you out.
And most of all, make sure you have tested, redundant backups, just in case anything does go wrong during a migration. A good roll back plan is important as even the best planned migration can hit a stumbling block and it's good to give yourself the opportunity to pause and re-think things.
The final phase, this can be where you really start to see the benefits. Hopefully by this point some of your applications have made their way into Azure and it's time to explore this new world some more.
Things like cost savings, increased efficiencies and reduced capital expenditure. You can also start to explore things like machine learning and AI which just weren't possible on your own platform.
You can experiment, innovate and, where necessary, fail fast without any big outlay in time or cost.
Now is a good time to consolidate what you learned during your cloud migration or on-premises upgrade. Most organisations take an incremental approach to migration, starting with a few small or simple workloads to help them understand and master the technology and business issues, then progressing to larger and more complex workloads. Each workload presents an opportunity to reflect on learning and improve your Assess phase for the next migration.
We've included some useful resources below, which should help you with your move to the Cloud.