The perfect source system for testing cloud migration tools (intro)

In the year 2019, I built an advanced VMware and Azure-based lab to teach my Microsoft colleagues about hybrid scenarios. I am working on a deployment of something similar and even more advanced these days to support testing migration tools and understand how workloads get into the Cloud.

This is my 2 node vCenter back in 2019. I had a similar deployment on Hyper-V.

My hybrid lab back in 2019 was supporting the first and largest Microsoft Technical event in Budapest (called Tech Summit). At that time, I was curious about how to move workloads to Azure by using only Microsoft 1st party tools (what was available at that time).

VMs (Azure M i grate)

Databases (Azure Database Migration Service)

Applications (Azure Websites Migration Assistant now called Azure App Service migration tools)

**Azure Migrate, back in 2019.** There is only one 3rd party option available. Actually, the Turbonomic (IBM acquired) option came just after Cloudamize (Atos acquired, via Cloudreach in late 2021, recently). There is a massive market consolidation going on.

**Azure Migrate today.** Look at how many new 3rd party tool integration options have been added. Amazing. Something similar is happening at both AWS and GCP - customers have more and more options to choose from.

Now as cloud-native becomes more popular I will add such workloads to my lab. Thanks to my recent DevOps learnings I will add a little automation with Terraform since I am super bored of clicking next-next-finish: I was doing this all my life. Take a look at my LinkedIn profile/projects.

I was doing great labs all my life. LABs are good because you will experience fewer surprises working with customers in a production system if you tried before. Ideally, not a day before. But years before, multiple times. So you see the product evolution, not just the current version.

And yes, I will have typical 3 layer apps with database, middleware, web frontend, load balancer, you name it. OMG. I was on some job interviews recently, I can’t believe that everyone is still talking about this common setup through the technical interview process. Seems everyone copy-pasted the interview questions.

I wanted to finish my lab in January 2022 and explain what and why I deployed on various source systems, but this can wait. I got something way more exciting to research for this weekend. Stay tuned!